Randy Johnson signs with the Giants
DMZ · December 27, 2008 at 10:16 am · Filed Under Mariners
This means there’s a reasonable chance he’ll be starting against the M’s here in Seattle in one of the May 22-24th games.
Ooooh boy.
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55 Responses to “Randy Johnson signs with the Giants”
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I played college hockey, and soccer all my life.
Good try though.
I think the people making these arguments have never played team sports, and cant measure chemistry so it must not exist.
Once again, since you seem to be rather slow picking this up:
Saying we don’t have the tools to adequately measure and quantify something is not the same as saying it doesn’t exist.
Teams overachieve and underachieve every season what do you think the reason for this is
There could be any number of reasons that don’t present themselves adequately to statistical analysis: luck, chemistry, injuries, aging effects on players that don’t always manifest as gradual improvements/declines, but are sometimes quite dramatic changes in performance, inadequacy of our statistical measurements, and so on.
The problem is we honestly don’t possess the tools to untangle all of this, on top of the fact that pure, dumb, craps table luck is a confounding element to our analysis- a .500 team is something like a 1-in-20 shot to win 90 games, and then all you need is a bit of luck to win some playoff series…
So, let’s put it this way: since you feel chemistry is a real element that needs to be part of analysis:
I think this site is great, but i always thought it missed the point on team chemistry. I realize it cant be measured or even traded for, but when it does come together it is very recognizable.
How would you “recognize” chemistry in a way that’s independent of a team’s win-loss record and playoff performance after the fact- in a way that tells you BEFORE the season “hey, these guys might have some”? Please note that we can project and evaluate player and team performance using statistical analysis, and do a decent job of it (statistical systems regularly beat writers/”experts” in predicting win-loss records over a season, for instance).
This is the problem- a lot of people use terms like “chemistry” as part of a confirmation bias to explain what happens in baseball (good teams must have chemistry, bad teams don’t). The problem is that without testable hypotheses (like, say, teams with higher OBPs score more runs) that we can confirm through data and observation, we’re not saying anything meaningful in an empirical sense when we say “yeah, that chemistry sure is important”, because we can’t untangle it from any other number of factors like luck… and why should the site authors write about things that basically boil down to “I have no idea how to evaluate this”, when there are lots of other areas to write about that CAN be evaluated, and it’s not like a couple of sabremetrically inclined bloggers would have insight into clubhouse chemistry, anyway?
THEN READ MORE CAREFULLY.
I repeat. That was an insulting statement. It thoroughly missed the point everyone here has made about chemistry. AND YOU’RE STILL MISSING THE POINT.
You enjoy insulting the people around here?
My bad guys lets not argue, but focus all of our energy on a winning season for the Mariners next year! Lets Go M’s!
Seriously… Don’t get your panties in a bunch.