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Murray Chass on those newfangled numbers

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by KnuteRockne, Mar 24, 2007.

  1. PHINJ

    PHINJ Active Member

    Well the difference between QB rating and something like VORP is that QB rating is determined by a set of arbitrary values that have no connection to scoring points or winning games. VORP is tied tightly to runs and their correlation to wins.
     
  2. PHINJ

    PHINJ Active Member

    What doesn't make sense?

    Let's say you have Harmon Killebrew at 3B. Let's say he contributes 120 runs with the bat but costs his team 10 runs with the glove. Ken Boyer contributes 100 runs with the bat and his glove saves his team 10 runs. Thus their contributions are exactly the same (assuming the value of a run is the same for their teams and there aren't ballpark or other distortions at play).

    Just because Team A values "big slugger" at 3B doesn't make Killebrew's real value any greater.
     
  3. MertWindu

    MertWindu Active Member

    Because your simplistic "every team has the same needs" theory only counts if every team is starting from the same point. Different teams have different specific needs to fill. If you don't think that's true, then this conversation is going to go around in a big circle and accomplish absolutely nothing.
     
  4. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Thank you. I could not possibly agree with this more.

    Few things aggravate me as much as the attitude Chass (and certain posters) have taken here: "VORP is bullshit, and I can proudly say I have no idea what it is." A professional baseball writer doing his job should know what VORP is. If you still think it's bullshit, fine.

    It's just bizarre to me that so many sportswriters boast about their ignorance and act like having knowledge of a sport outside of football and (maybe) baseball is somehow beneath them. Ignorance isn't clever. It's just lazy. I'd add auto racing to hockey and soccer as the sports that get that treatment.

    Baseball writers throw in the twist Chass displays here: the notion that "baseball men" saying "he just looks like a ballplayer, doesn't he?" or "he has a toughness we need" has a wisdom and legitimacy that carries more weight than statistical proof that the same player is completely incapable of getting on base.
     
  5. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Has anyone seen "The Band " thread?
     
  6. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Well, when a team needs three runs at one time, I daresay it values the slugger. The point is, such numbers are not indicative of value all by themselves, and there's an insidious faction out there that says there are. As with economic models, just because you can do some neat tricks with math doesn't mean they correspond to how you should proceed in real life when you are dealing with humans and not robots
     
  7. jagtrader

    jagtrader Active Member

    What he said.
     
  8. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Well, the NFL quarterback ratings are considered a joke if they are considered at all. And accuracy to certain parts of the field is interesting, but it may be a function of whether Deion Sanders is the cornerback or whether a street free agent had to fill in.
     
  9. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    I would like to add to Murray's list.

    - don't want to read about how Marvin Miller should be in the HOF

    - Don't want to read about how the Yankees are the Evil Empire.
     
  10. there's no such thing as a quarterback rating

    there is something called a passer rating

    it's really not esoteric at all -- just considers four things -- completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdowns per attempt and interceptions per attempt

    an outstanding way to measure a passer's efficiency, obviously a far more telling system than simply using completion percentage - David Carr had one of the highest completion percentages in NFL history in 2006 and Rex Grossman had one of the highest completion percentages in Super Bowl history. neither was an efficient passer though, and their passer ratings demonstrate that
     
  11. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Well, quarterback passer rating, whether it accurately measures anything or not, is something that I doubt any teams use in deciding whether to keep a quarterback. There has to be a 12-step program for someone who takes such a team- and spurious-conditions-based sport like football and tries to average everything.
     
  12. nobody said any team would use base roster decisions on a passer rating.

    just like no baseball team would look at a pitcher's 5.06 ERA and decide to get rid of him. they'd probably look at how he was pitching.

    doesn't mean fans, team officials, writers, etc., don't use it though
     
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