Random Light Bulbs and Methodically-Inflicted Stolen Bases
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Sad as it may sound, Dr. D was noodling through the February 2012 Hey Bills. He enjoyed the cogency of this remark:
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1. Sports Is Life. How many times, TODAY, did you and I commit this crime against logic, do you suppose. Of trying to explain (for example) why a friend thinks a certain way ... when actually there's very little reason to imagine he thinks that.
This specific example comes up because Dr. D frequents the Dilbert twitterfeed. Scott Adams spends about 20% of his time good-naturedly advising followers that they are "hallucinating" Adams' beliefs about things. They do this despite the fact that Adams explains his non-positions, time and time and dozens of times again.
James makes it sound so easy to avoid that particular little baseball trap, "How much is it worth to get some people who can manufacture runs."
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2. There are very few things in sports that puzzle Dr. D as much as this: that SB's don't correlate with winning. It sounds almost like saying speed is irrelevant. But I guess teams that are smart enough to get "athletic" players are also smart enough to avoid stolen base attempts. One word: Earl.
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3. The 2017 Mariners were #12 of 15 American League teams in baserunning: they lost -12 runs on the basepaths compared to the average AL team, that being the Angels. (The KC Royals, wow!,were very nearly the average AL team, but the Angels were average-r.)
The Mariners were average in stolen bases, lousy for caught stealing, though with their 89 SB's vs. 35 CS's they still profited about 15-20 bases for the attempts.
After a lousy start, Jean Segura wound up 22:8. Taylor Motter was 12:1. Gamel scrounged 4:1, a nice little indication towards intelligence. Everybody else was bad or irrelevant, assuming Jarrod Dyson is now irrelevant.
BABVA,
Dr D