Trampling on the grave of newspapers

And speaking as someone whose laptop dual-boots linux, who uses open-office, who even did a couple freelance articles for linux.com after being laid off ...

Open-source software does not represent the best. Or even close.

 

Buck, they've added staff, slowly, and some of the quote unquote new additions have moved to the top of the ladder. (If you have one of the first BPs, compare it to the newest one...nice additions)

 

Jesus Christ dude. You just shattered my world.

 

Christ, when do you think I have time to read about baseball in this century?

 

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The Cubs never won.
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Fucking newbie!!! I haven't played the 2008 season on my TIVO yet! *kicks cat*

 

What exactly is it about these baseball types?

Not only must they play 162 games (closer to 200 in you count exhibitions). Then they actually employ people to sit around and calculate what Derek Jeter's batting average is against left-handed pitchers with runners in scoring position in parks west of the Mississippi River on the third Wednesday of the month when there was a full moon the night before. Good Lord!!

The whole damn sport needs to stop overanalyzing shit like that and get busy cleaning out the drug syringes from the clubhouses and regaining some serious credibility. Right now, the sport is in the same echelon as weightlifting, cycling and track and field in that the public regards the performers as all guilty of doping. I hate to paint everyone with such a broad brush, but when so many of a sport's big names are found to be liars and cheaters, how in the world can it hope to have any credibility??

 

Stan is plotting to bite you for that, BTW.

 

Not to get this going again but ... just because I feel compelled to make the point, sabermetrics was actually created, in part, to get beyond the inanity of meaningless stats like what someone's batting average is "on the third Wednesday of the month when there was a full moon the night before," not to propogate them.

Also, eh, whatever. It's self-serving tripe. Of course people who are producing that stuff are going to write about how terrific it is, and how pure they are because they aren't making money off of it, and how that somehow makes it ... better, I guess? We're no better, though. How many, "You NEED newspapers!" columns have we seen in the last year?

 

Actually, we are better.

 

Yet this self-serving tripe is used by many a front office. Kind of strange when you stop to think about it.

 

Well, if player A hits .216 in those situations, and player B hits .345, and they're both sitting on the bench and available to pinch-hit, I suspect the manager wants to know which guy it would be better to use.

The beauty of a 162-game schedule is that this kind of stuff happens often enough to get a large enough sample size to make an intelligent decision.


Believe it or not, football coaches also like to know what plays the opponent likes to run on a 3rd-and-2 from the left hash inside the 20 in the fourth quarter when they're in a three- or four-receiver set.

It's called preparation.