tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5064547517730087223.post6938382576805017860..comments2024-02-17T04:00:25.925-06:00Comments on The Platoon Advantage: Theories of valueThe Common Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09994070642805307798noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5064547517730087223.post-41857836027736832042011-09-14T14:16:35.181-05:002011-09-14T14:16:35.181-05:00I agree with you Bill, but that's the system w...I agree with you Bill, but that's the system we have.<br /><br />More people seem to be worried about the definition of the award than the actual process of how it is given out. Change the process, the definition will change also.<br /><br />Until then, there isn't much we can do about it. If the government says, "would you like to pay more taxes, or a lot more taxes", you take the best avaialble option until you change the system of who determines the tax in the first place.The Baseball Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02259799886656706541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5064547517730087223.post-10976006312609034192011-09-13T15:10:02.103-05:002011-09-13T15:10:02.103-05:00There are only 30-32 who get to vote, though, on e...There are only 30-32 who get to vote, though, on each individual award (two writers from the market of each team in the league). It's a pretty tiny sample. And you always get at least one or two (like the one Seattle writer who voted for Miguel Cabrera over Mauer in 2009) who do things that just tell you that they're either not paying attention or don't know what they're doing. <br /><br />And the BBWAA at large is full of people who haven't written about baseball in decades, some who have <i>never</i> written about baseball, but were sports editors or something once upon a time and now draw political cartoons or edit science magazines or something. If you're going go throwing blind faith around, the BBWAA isn't a good place for it to land.Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07840958382433052735noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5064547517730087223.post-37126562163426250792011-09-13T15:00:04.474-05:002011-09-13T15:00:04.474-05:00Seems to me that 'valuable' is in the eye ...Seems to me that 'valuable' is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, the voter.<br /><br />The guys who vote, all of them, have earned the right to do so, even if we don't agree with their decisions. There are over 500 of them.<br /><br />If the majority of them decide the same way, that's enough of a sample size to satisfy me. I might disagree, but I don't get a vote.<br /><br /><br /><br />McNair: I can't say I'm very fond of the United States of America as a name for a new country. <br />John Hancock: I don't care what you think. You don't have a vote. YOU'RE NOT A MEMBER OF CONGRESS.The Baseball Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02259799886656706541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5064547517730087223.post-29528250564218405772011-09-13T06:58:32.098-05:002011-09-13T06:58:32.098-05:00Interesting post and just as interesting comments....Interesting post and just as interesting comments. Don't have much to add to such elegant thinking.William J. Taskerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02313204947130235560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5064547517730087223.post-60735056062927212242011-09-12T17:46:43.682-05:002011-09-12T17:46:43.682-05:00David, your argument is against a particular imple...David, your argument is against a particular implementation of the PLAYOFFS+ theory, the one that assigns zero value to Kaline's contributions because his team managed to miss the playoffs by one game. This, however, isn't the only possible construction. The more nuanced one I mentioned in the following sentence would assign multipliers to Kaline's value based on the fact that he helped his team win games number ... 87, 88, 89, ... (or whatever win numbers the implementation came out requiring). I'm not sure that this less extreme model is so broken as to call into question PLAYOFFS+ entirely.<br /><br />Also, and this is a failing on my part for not thinking of this, PLAYOFFS+ probably isn't nearly as compelling for the period of time you're talking about -- in 1967, there were twenty teams and just two of them got to play extra games, so "making the playoffs" is not even a phrase that necessarily makes sense applied to that context.<br /><br />Studes, I'm not immediately repulsed by STORY+, but I think it could take a lot of the fun out of end-of-season arguments. If we acknowledge that it's all purely subjective, then we're just stuck in the same land we are about painting or movies or books. You like X, I like Y, we can articulate why that's so, but we're just <i>explaining</i> things to each other. We have no real hope of <i>convincing</i> each other. That (illusion of?) possibility of convincing someone else that you're right is what I think brings a lot of energy to an awards debate that can be rendered relatively objective.<br /><br />I only hinted at it in the piece, but since Bill brought it up -- on the merits of the various theories, I'm WINS+ all the way. Win curves or no, my inner sense of justice doesn't let me ignore a great season just because a player (e.g.) plays for a crummy owner.Jason Wojciechowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16935366214824790506noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5064547517730087223.post-3417767837968234102011-09-12T17:26:26.333-05:002011-09-12T17:26:26.333-05:00A few thoughts:
I think taking Playoffs+ to its l...A few thoughts:<br /><br />I think taking Playoffs+ to its logical conclusion would involve Championship WPA, which we've used in the THT Annual the last couple of years. That shows how absurd the interpretation could get, but you don't have to take the idea to its logical conclusion. Playoffs+ can still make sense.<br /><br />I might add: throw out WAR for MVP consideration. Who cares about replacement level for awards? Just measure what actually happened on the field. Replacement level makes a lot of sense for a lot of things, but it doesn't have to be used for everything. <br /><br />I've got an idea: Story+. Which players provided the most inspirational story over an extended period of time? Consider stats, but don't get carried away with them. MVP is all about perception and fan interest. It isn't about stats.studeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16997355084010474450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5064547517730087223.post-24195581614657809522011-09-12T17:09:21.637-05:002011-09-12T17:09:21.637-05:00I suppose, except for the fact that, when taken to...I suppose, except for the fact that, when taken to its logical conclusion, PLAYOFFS+ makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. First of all, an excellent player on an excellent team should never win the award. The 1975 Reds won their division by 20 games. Therefore, Joe Morgan's 12.0 WAR was meaningless. They <i>still</i> would have won the division, with or without him. Therefore, worthless. Second, and by the same token, Joe Foy's contribution to the 1967 Red Sox (to the tune of 1.0 WAR) was more valuable than Al Kaline and his 7.3 WAR - the Red Sox don't win the league without Foy, and Detroit finished one game out, which means no one from that team could possibly be "most valuable." This is so beyond absurd that it's unbelievable anyone would make such an argument. But the PLAYOFFS+ model supports it. Now, I actually don't have any problem with writers just picking a narrative and going with it, as long as there are numbers to support it. But pretending players from non-playoff teams have no value (at least when it comes to MVP voting) is ludicrous.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15304178130464809737noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5064547517730087223.post-23077450146295980902011-09-12T17:06:53.506-05:002011-09-12T17:06:53.506-05:00I really like this piece, but I'm going to con...I really like this piece, but I'm going to continue dismissing the ambiguously gendered Jon Heyman adherent out of hand. Because the problem isn't that that line of thinking is unrelated to a consistent theory of value; the problem is that that theory of value makes no sense in this context. There are certainly definitions of "value" and "valuable" which can be applied to make very-good-player-on-a-pennant-winner A more "valuable" than great-player-on-a-loser B, and I don't think that's ever really been the issue. (It's the PLAYOFFS+ crowd that's always saying "it's called the Most VALUABLE Player," as though that word means one definite thing.) <br /><br />But. It's an individual award, meant to recognize individual accomplishments, and it's looked back on fifty or sixty years after the fact as a marker of a great individual season. So of all of the plausible definitions of the word "valuable," it simply makes no sense at all to apply the one that ties a player's "value" to things that are almost completely out of his control. <br /><br />So I continue to think it's a position that can't be defended and, for the most part, deserves to be mocked. Just not because of the definition of the word "value" itself.Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07840958382433052735noreply@blogger.com