Phil, Kim, Nick, Josh, and Eric have captured America's hearts. With their cuteness and stuff.
Phil: Because we have to
Kim: Year of the facepalm
Nick: Don't say we didn't warn you.
Josh: Right town. Right team. Wrong year.
Eric: If rebuilds were easy, anyone could do it.
So, now that we've brought personal bias into this, don't hesitate to vote repeatedly for whoever you think you can recognize on a first-name basis.
UPDATE: The erroneous caption credits have been fixed. I think. h/t Nick (dying laughing)
Either way, Nick won’t be impressed, I suspect.
The one that is not impressed is hilarious.
Interesting stuff.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/how-mlb-announcers-favor-american-players-over-foreign-ones/261265/#.UDvNrE0yrds.facebook
@ Aisle424:
Like I said in the last thread, MB and were beating that drum at OV around 2006 or 2007, whenever the Strange Fruit pieces went up. It’s nice to see some empirical data (however tenuous the methodology) back up a stance for which we’ve been arguing for some time now.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Yeah, and it covers all of MLB, not just the Cubs. It makes it easier for the defenders to argue that nothing is wrong because they hear the same stuff from national media, so it can’t possibly ALL BE WRONG, right?
This study suggests that, yes, yes it is.
@ Aisle424:
Good point. Somehow I doubt those folks will be persuaded, though. (dying laughing)
Hey Adam, just a heads-up that it looks like your listing of the submissions got intercepted by the innerweb gremlins and scrambled up a little … my submission was the Rebuild.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
It was a terribly unfortunate coincidence that they just so happened to pick the week when Jim Thome, the most beloved white guy in all of Caucasia, happened to make history and Carlos Zambrano, reviled among stereotypes, happened to do something more Zambrano-y than anything he’d ever Zambranoed before. You can’t necessarily throw out all the conclusions they made, but it’s hard to imagine it didn’t skew the results enough to render the statistical analyses less than bulletproof. Doing all the research in one week, a week in which both major events were likely to be mentioned by every broadcast team at least once in that time period, gave those two events undue weight in the study.
I think the general assertions are probably correct, but it’s not the most reliable study on the planet.
And my GAWD I am way hotter than I originally thought! Glad you got our picture posted finally!
@ Eric:
Fixed. Thanks, Nick.
@ AndCounting:
Yeah, the methodology is definitely an issue.
@ AndCounting:
I don’t know why they didn’t exclude those major events. Like eliminating the top and bottom scores of judges.
Vince Young ————> Cut
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Okay, I see that he’s a football player, but why is his getting cut significant?
@ Aisle424:
AC looks suspiciously like Steven Colbert
@ josh:
Force of habit. Ryno was a big Longhorns fan.
For how terribly he started out, I was pleasantly surprised to see Brett Jackson is OPSing in the .730s now. And a Cubs player that has an OBP 100 points higher than his average?!?!? Incredible. Even if the average is only .206 (dying laughing)
@ Aisle424:
I don’t know why they even picked that time. But yeah, I was expecting them to explain what they did to compensate for those events, but no explanation came.
AndCounting wrote:
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Oh okay. I just didn’t know if there was some poetic justice at work or something.
@ Suburban kid:
Check. Mate.
@ Suburban kid:
Well, they didn’t appear to do anything to account for the Thome/Zambrano events, so they never explained their non-activity. And I read those reasons for why they picked August, and they were bad reasons. Right after the trading deadline, rosters are normalized? That’s dumb. It’s the time when rosters have gone through the most significant upheaval across the league.
I voted for Ernick
@ AndCounting:
Oh, so you did know why.
/dick
Oooh, blocked by the bishop.
@ AndCounting:
Regarding Thome/Z, they did mention that these were special events and that they “needed to be accounted for”. It’s true they didn’t say how they did that, but they did say they needed to do it.
My guess is that they limited counting of Thome/Z mentions to those that happened on the day of the events, or maybe only on the four broadcasts of the two specific games.
But maybe they forgot?
@ Suburban kid:
I think they merely said, “Hey, keep in mind: Thome and Z happened, k?”
New Race to the Top standings with an Elimination/Magic Number column added.
@ Aisle424:
The Astros are a juggernaut of shit.
@ AndCounting:
Maybe so, in which case the reader can just throw those out from the two top ten lists. Yes it would have been better if the authors did this, and added the next two guys who were mentioned a lot.
One thing for sure is that they couldn’t account for such events in advance. Any week they picked to mobilize the tracking of 190 broadcasts could have had exceptional events take place.
Regarding what time of year to do it, I don’t know if it really matters if you can only do one week. If you could do two months, I’d probably do May and August to escape some of the hyperbole of April and September.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
I can’t believe they are 10 games ahead of the Cubs.
@ josh:
Suburban kid wrote:
The Cubs have been bad, but the Astros have been complete shit. They won 3 games in July and then only 5 so far in August. They are 8-42 in the last 2 months. That’s impressive losing.
Aisle424 wrote:
Regarding Thome/Zambrano, both were huge events and they likely cancel each other out.
@ McKayla Maroney:
That’s a better Ruxin face than Ruxin.
@ Aisle424:
They’ve turned it into an art form. I kind of hope that the Astros underslot on their top pick again so the Cubs can snag the best available player, though. Though I do wonder if the Astros really want to pass on Mark Appel twice.
Ramirez still gathering numbers…
@ mb21:
I don’t see how they can cancel each other out since they both bias the data toward the same conclusion (i.e., that white players get positive coverage and latinos get negative coverage).
Why the hell does Vitters bat 2nd and BJax bat 7th? Seems like it would make sense to flip them.
Edit: Didn’t realize that would make the first three hitters lefthanded. I’d still do it though.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
(dying laughing) for some reason I was thinking Thome was getting negative coverage, but that obviously wouldn’t be true. That being said, I think it’s a large enough sample that I doubt the results would be all that much different. Would it be better if it’s over a month or longer? Sure, of course, but considering how obvious it’s been for years the results only confirm what I and others have thought for a long time now. What I’d be curious about is whether or not announcers are more racially biased than the average Joe.
@ PFD:
I’ve mentioned that about 5 times. Batting Vitters 2nd is dumb. It’s dumb even if he’s hitting as well as the projections think (not at all good). He’s a terrible OBP guy. Just terrible. Dumber than shit to have him bat 2nd.
One other reservation I have about the study is that in order to demonstrate that the announcers are biased based on race, the groups of players being compared (whites and latinos) would have to be identical in every other respect besides race. Clearly that is not the case (e.g., white players are more likely to be pitchers). It’s not racist to consider the possibility that a higher proportion of latino players have characteristics (other than their race) that incur the derision of announcers.
Sveum’s lineups have been strange of late. But if you’re going to tinker, I guess now is the time to tinker. (dying laughing)
There’s enough time left in the season to fall in love with Brett Jackson all over again.
/not that there’s anything wrong with that’d
@ Rice Cube:
He’s nearly a league average hitter (93 wRC+ after his last at-bat). All things considered, that’s outstanding.
@ mb21:
Yeah, but Vitters is… oh god! He’s negative!?!
@ Rizzo the Rat:
I don’t think it’s necessarily racist, but it’s almost certainly wrong. To think that there is a considerable difference between races in professional sports when it comes to such things are being a professional, playing hard, playing the game the right way and so on and so forth seems absurd to me. I don’t think we need to look any further than Alfonso Soriano. Nearly every person he’s worked with has said he’s one of the hardest working players they’ve ever seen. They say he’s always in a good mood, always has a smile on his face and loves to play the game, but if you listen to the announcers or the journalists you get the feeling he’s the laziest person around, is hated by his co-workers and hates the game. From what I understand Ryan Braun is much the same and prior to his positive drug test nobody had a negative word to say about him as far how he plays.
6 K, 4 BB over the last 7 days for BJakks. No coincidence that has come with a dramatic increase in OPS.
BABIP!
I thought that was gone.
mb21 wrote:
That’s not really what I was driving at. Just that there are all kinds of confounding factors. For instance, power hitters that strike out a lot are often seen as being less “clutch” than other hitters. I don’t dismiss the possibility that race is the deciding factor, but it’s possible that it’s incidental and the difference in coverage is due to some other population difference.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Possible, but given the history and current state of race relations in the US, not probable.
Via Miles:
I have no idea what that last statement meant.
Well played, Josh:
If I could shoot rainbows from my ass, I would never wear pants.
This is rather appropriate for the current line of conversation (dying laughing)
That ain’t right.
Rice Cube wrote:
Agree, RC, it’s pretty laughable that overproccessed breakfast cereals make whole grain health claims on their boxes
I miss Aramis.
@ Rice Cube:
I know he had to go etc etc but he’s still good at baseball and I miss that.
@ Rice Cube:
Cubs’ third basemen: .205/.283/.343. Not counting today’s 0-3.
good points by ac and rtr. given the echo-chamber nature of sports coverage, a week’s worth of coverage is going to be systematically biased in favor of the current news. seven random days would be better. and to rtr’s point, a bill james style pairwise comparison of groups of similar players based on stats, height, salary, etc… paired with a lexis-nexis search would be a better way to go about this sort of thing. i would be specifically interested in some sort of english-fluency variable, as well.
@ Rice Cube:
numbers gatherer
@ GW:
Someone did the lexus-nexus search a few years back. The results from that made the announcers look even worse.
@ mb21:
the key would be to make it pairwise like bj always does, or large scale combined with a regression, controlling for the various confounding factors.
@ mb21:
And he is lazy. On that HR he hit he didn’t even work the count.
@ GW:
I think a more exhaustive study would be nice, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I didn’t even think what these guys did was necessary. Humans are racially biased and unless we believe that announcers are somehow immune to this then we can safely say they are also racially biased. This is especially true when you consider the average education level of the announcer (former ballplayer, little to no college education). The more interesting thing to me anyway would be to see how their bias is different from the population and I don’t think that can be done because it’s not like we have a racially biased measurement.
If I was going to say anything about the study being talked about, it’s that it’s going to miss a lot of instances of racial bias. A white guy is often a scrappy guy while the foreign player is more of an athlete. Both were considered good terms in that study, but the terms aren’t equal. The foreign player is an athlete because he can’t possibly be David Eckstein scrappy.
@ mb21:
i don’t have any beef with intuitive arguments like yours. i do have one with bad science.
Jacked.
I like BJax.
Brett Jackson is on fire.
BJax OPS —> more than .800
@ GW:
That’s fair. I didnt think much about it, but you guys are probably right. The research just confirmed what I already knew. Actually, it didn’t make it sound as bad as I think it really is, but it’s possible with the declining number of blacks that the bias is less than what it once was. I don’t know.
@ mb21:
declining number of blacks IN BASEBALL
Brett Jackson has a 112 wRC+. (dying laughing)
@ Rice Cube:
.219/.333/.484. I wonder if Adam Dunn will start sending him fan mail now.
@ mb21:
And I think this feeds into the stuff we get about Soriano, for instance. He doesn’t have to work hard because he’s so talented. He just does whatever he wants and it’s easy for him, where a guy like Sandberg has to work for everything he gets. So when the guy who is working hard fails, it’s sad, but when the guy who can do whatever he wants fails, it’s a moral failure because the guy is so talented he doesn’t have to fail…or at elast that’s the way the narrative seems to run. You see that same thing with black QBs and white QBs in the NFL. Nevermind that no-one coasts to that level on mere talent and that most if not all of these guys work insanely hard just to maintain, let alone the massive amount of work it takes to improve!
Oy, Vitters…
Jackson OPS’ing over .900 over the last two weeks. Turning the corner?
@ Rizzo the Rat:
He’ll be getting fan mail from Drew Stubbs first. Baby steps
Mercurial Outfielder wrote:
(dying laughing), if I wasn’t so lazy I’d see where Stubbs ranks all time in some sort of most HRs with a crappy SLG combined stat
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
That’s the whole issue I have with the laziness remarks. If someone wants to say that Soriano takes the ocasional play off, fine, say it. It would be true. If they want to say it about Ramirez, go for it. But the idea that anybody gives 100% effort all the time is laughable. Nobody does. Not you, not me, not anyone. It’s ridiculous to call any of these guys lazy. Are they lazy on an individual play sometimes? Sure, they all are, but that doesn’t make them lazy. Nobody focuses on the times that Ryan Theriot didn’t bust ass out of the box, but god damn, if Soriano does it’s front page news for a week.
By the way, one thing I always thought was kind of funny was that the word with (dying laughing) is that nobody worked harder. NOBODY. He got the ballpark first, left last, worked harder than anyone and rarely took a play off. What’s interesting to me is that his game was much the same as an Eckstein or a Theriot, but who was given more praise for being a winner, scrappy or whatever other intangible term you can think of? It wasn’t Pierre.
@ Berselius:
And I have been PWNED, by my own hand.
Not an out, but damn that’s nice SS play from Castro.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
(dying laughing), seriously though, I think he’s looked a little more comfortable at the plate too.
@ Berselius:
1st. I have confidence you can find some combination in which he’d be first
Barney is ridiculous with the glove.
The Cubs middle infield can look really good at times.
Barney made that look easy. So did Castro.
That’s one hell of a double play.
@ mb21:
Good point about Pierre. More of a grinder than Theriot ever was. Same for Lance Johnson. But those guys are regarded as simply mediocre-bad ballplayers.
Barney and Castro make for a nice DP combo
Who is this drunken disaster?
@ Berselius:
K:BB is coming back into something realistic, too.
I think you guys are selling the Pierre hype a little short. He’s not getting the late career scrapster reputation that Eckstein did, but I remember the billion mentions of Pierre’s basepaths intangibles back when the Cubs got him in 2006. Of course, I guess I’m just proving the point anyway since all of that stemmed from his speed (athleticism!) than his will to disrupt pitchers.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Buddy Guy?
@ Berselius:
They talked endlessly about it, but they do that for any speed guy (Campana).
Pierre on the basepaths was even the Cubs representative in some MLB/Pepsi (I think..) commercial back in 06
@ mb21:
Yeah, it’s Buddy Guy, but it was awful.
@ Berselius:
That was filmed while he was still a Marlin and they just put the Cubs uniform on him in the editing room. (dying laughing)
I like the part where Castro walked.
@ Berselius:
@ mb21:
It was never intangible talk with Pierre. He wasn’t “energizing” he was “exciting.” He wasn’t a leader, he was a leadoff guy.
K-Jack
@ mb21:
All that stands between Jackkson and stardom is that one issue.
You guys think he can develop enough power to become a 3TO kind of player?
@ Rice Cube:
Fairly certain that that’s likely the player he’ll be one way or the other.
@ Jed Jam Band:
MO’s previous Mike Cameron prediction would make me happy.
Looks like Brett Jackson isn’t the only one having K-issues.
I’m trying to be patient with Vitters but… damn.
@ Jed Jam Band:
No. I think his ceiling is Mike Cameron, and I’m perfectly happy with that, TBTHWY.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Ugly, ugly, ugly at the dish. Even when he makes contact, it’s not the sort of quality contact you might expect from a nice compact stroke like he has. I’m beginning to think he’s just not very good, but he’s started every level slow like this, so maybe he can get this thing righted.
@ Rice Cube:
Yeah, that would be a damn good player to have. I hope BJackks can be that kind of player.
Lloyd Braun is good at hitting baseballs. Odious human being in all other respects.
Aramis is destroying the Cubs. (dying laughing)
Batting practice!
Back-to-back-to-back. (dying laughing)
Hinshaw has to be tipping somehow. Those were too quick and too easy.
Point is, I think Jackson will be productive. Not a superstar, but, he doesn’t need to be.
I saw Buddy Guy once live. He bragged about how he does most of his shows piss drunk. He got drunker and drunker as the night went on.
Hinshaw’s line is hilarious. 4 hits, 5 runs, 1 walk, and 3 homers in 0.0 IP.
@ Jed Jam Band:
I hope more fans adopt this stance, because it’s the healthiest stance. Jackson is an incredibly talented player, but he has a serious, almost debilitating, flaw to his game.
Did Mather really pitch? (dying laughing)
josh wrote:
I went to the old Checkerboard Lounge after a family wedding in the mid-80′s. A friend who was also at the wedding hung out there occasionally and knew the guys in Buddy’s band who were playing there that night. We somehow ended up in the bathroom with the band smoking a joint and Buddy came in and (kind of) good-naturedly told the guys that it was show-time and to get their asses out on stage. So, it’s me and my buddy and Buddy and I’m thinking this can’t be good. Buddy pulls out a pint bottle and another joint out of his pocket and laughs as he lights it up and passes the bottle around. We could hear the band starting up with a jam and after a couple hits, Buddy gives us a shit-eating grin and says “I gotta go. Enjoy the show.” It was cool as hell.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Shawn Boskie approves.
@ cwolf:
I remember that he came out after the band was already going. I can’t believe that dude is still alive.
My much less amazing story is that my wife and I were tired and left early, and while we were outside, Buddy actually came outside and played. So for like one second, it was me and him and my wife. Then he ran down the side of the building and went in a different door.
@ cwolf:
Best. Story. Ever.
josh wrote:
Yeah, the band was just kicking out a great intro-style blues jam. After Buddy blasted through the bathroom door, I looked at my buddy who just said something like “That’s Buddy” and we headed out and watched him stroll / strut through the crowd to the stage and pick up his guitar and PUT ON A SHOW.
This was fun:
http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=24272093&c_id=mlb&topic_id=vtp_klondike
Not for the Cubs, though.
@ Rice Cube:
Shit. I missed a fun-bad game. Little lefty, throwing a couple of soft looping curves and a rising fastball into some beefy right handers wheelhouse. That’s gold. And Mather pitched? The photo at the Trib makes him look like a first year little league kid trying to make a “T” with his arms, like coach taught him. Point your glove at the target… But it looks like he was throwing a knuckler. Was Mather throwing garbage? Aw, man, I wish I saw that.
Oh, my mistake. Couple of fastballs and a looping curve. Still fun to watch.
MLB has a video of Aramis labeled “Must C Clutch!” of the b2b2b homers in the 9th. Is it really “Clutch” if you hit 3 homeruns in a game that is already a blowout?
@ josh:
What word beginning with “C” would you use to describe it?
deleted
@ Rice Cube:
It seems the contest got a little out of hand behind the scenes…
@ Rizzo the Rat:
“Crushed”
I don’t know.
In light of our conversation yesterday:
@ josh:
Does anyone remember “The Three C’s”?
I think that was from 2010.
Are there any Android users here who can check something out for me? If so, send me an email at ov [at] obstructedview [dot] net. I’m going to need you to send me a screen cap.
@ Suburban kid:
That was last year.
Late entry to the contest: “2013 Chicago Cubs: Because There’s a Small Chance B-Jax Might Not Suck”
@ Suburban kid:
It’s not ringing a bell.
@ josh:
I had completely forgotten about it until I saw this headline the other day.
http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/14724495-573/two-thirds-of-cubs-three-cs-in-2010-toiling-elsewhere.html
@ Suburban kid:
The Three C’s was a thing? I don’t remember that one.
Len and Bob are asking for favorite highlights of this season for Vineline. I vote for the game that got rained out.
Just a total raincheck, actually. The highlight of this season is November, when we can go back to thinking about how the Cubs could possibly get better in the off-season.
josh wrote:
(dying laughing)
It’s funny that two guys who have seen every single game have to ask fans (who only watch a portion of games) for highlights.
@ Berselius:
I think it was a very brief marketing thing before Cashner turned it into Two C’s.
For me, this season’s highlight is Rizzo.
Since the 3C’s have been converted to C-R, I’m happy to do a Carriage Return on the season and move on to next year. By next year, I mean 2014.
Eric Bedard—-unconditional waiver.
We should sign him. He can give us 2 good months to start the season.
(dying laughing)
@ SVB:
Rizzo has been okay. His strikeout rate is only 15.6%. Maybe he can maintain that? He hasn’t exactly been a superstar, but maybe he’ll be one of those guys who gets better consistently for a few years before he hits 30..
@ josh:
Like a Derrek Lee-type? I would take that and never look back.
new shit up