USAFChief

I realize it's scoreless into the 5th, but when did May become a 90-92 MPH pitch-to-contact guy?

1. Offensive stats are not inaccurate. Lucky maybe, or unlucky. Unsustainable, unrepeatable, likely to regress, sure. But not inaccurate...remember, WAR isn't forward looking, it looks at what happened. We know exactly what someone hit, for any amount of PAs. Offensive stats are nothing if not accurate. 2. Well, you can disagree, but you're disagreeing with the definition as posted at Fangraphs, which says precisely that: "A player can have a plus UZR and have played terrible defense." Those aren't my words.

Friend only to the undertaker.

According to son number 2, 41%.

I tend to agree. Still, they have to finish better to be better, IMO. Counting chickens, unhatched, and all that.

It was time to trade the 'Hammer, but I'll miss him. He put one in the third deck, but not one ounce of showboating. He followed the flight of the ball briefly off the bat, realized immediately it was gone, put his head down, and started a fast trot. Not even a glance at where it landed. Professional. Respectful.

IMO, if you don't win more games, you're not a better team. This isn't Olympic Figure Skating...you don't get style points. YMMV.

I'm incredibly encouraged by Vargas. I know it's early, but to me he looks like the best hitter the Twins have brought up in quite some time. I like him better than Arcia, for sure.

To me, the problem with comparing offense and defense and attributing it to "luck" is this: While it most certainly is true to say that (to pick a name at random) Pedro Florimon was "lucky" to string together a good month and hit .400, it is not at all true to say it didn't really happen. No matter now lucky it was, we know for a fact he hit .400 and the value of that cannot be disputed. He had 100 ABs, got 40 hits, and hit .400. Nobody contends he didn't really hit .400. It represents exactly what happened on the field. Compare that with what the designer's of UZR say...a good or bad UZR doesn't mean that's what happened: ...a player’s UZR, be it one year, one month or 5 years, is not necessarily what happened on the field and is not necessarily that player’s true talent level over that period of time either. That is why we regress, regress, and regress! A player can have a plus UZR and have played terrible defense, because the data we are using is far from perfect. If it doesn't represent what happened on the field, I have a hard time giving it any credit. If we're going on opinions, I'll go with the opinions of professional baseball people, or myself, rather than MGL. You can't have a .400 BA and have hit poorly. Luckily maybe, but not poorly. Those hits actually happened. But if you can have a plus UZR, and "played terrible defense," the measurement system needs work. EDIT (meant to include this with the original post): As for regression, I'd say if you're "regressing" data to represent what happened in the past, you're doing it wrong. I can understand regressing data to guess at what might happen in the future. But what happened, happened. It shouldn't need to be regressed to more closely represent truth, should it? Does Baseball Reference regress Joe Mauer's 2009, because it probably doesn't represent his "true talent level?" No. Nor should it. While I'm at it...I'll take a shot at the "UZR is accurate in large sample sizes" argument as well. (Unsurprisingly) I don't buy that argument. If it's innacurate in small sample sizes, it is innacurate in larger sample sizes as well. Adding up several small bunches of innacurate data gives me one big bunch of innacurate data, IMO. Not to mention, if WAR is being used to compare players across eras, there isn't PBP data for any players except those from the last decade or so, so "WAR" for Babe Ruth, for example, is derived without even the flawed data used to derive WAR for today's players. Personally, I don't understand how smart people pay any attention to it.

Winnah!

Fair enough. My bad.

We're good cooks, too, Mrs Chief and I. She cooks, I eat.

Is beer still vegan if you use it to wash down the Filet Oscar?

Nice job, Mr Hughes.

Since food seems to be the topic du jour, Chief and Mrs Chief are in the process of cooking dinner: chicken fried steak mashed potates (with a little cream cheese, sour cream, and onion salt) gravy candied carrots We're...uh...not vegan.

They serve that at a nice Italian place in Saskatchewan.

Me too. At the nice steakhouse down the street.

Chief might have been making a snarky guess. Maybe.

Yup, he didn't know what they were, but he et 'em anyway.

Soy beans?

Ick.

Re-he-he-he-he-he-lly.

You'll forgive me for thinking if he really missed 2 months due to "a flu bug," that's not going to do much to change the opinion of those who think he might be a bit soft.

I don't think Mauer gets mistreated by many fans in the upper midwest. But I do think that whatever "mistreatement" he gets from fans and media would be mulitplied several fold if he were playing in Boston (or another major media market, where people expect to win), taking up 25% of the payroll, and putting up a .717 OPS after missing a lot of time over the past few years.

If I shouldn't use it to compare players, which is what it's designed to do, and which the designers say it does, what should it be used for? And why should I pay any attention to it?