Archive for 2005
Server Problems
I just want to apologize to everyone for the sporadic state of the site. The server I use is in the process of being shut down, which often causes this site to screw up. And, because I am moving the site to a new server very soon, I’m not going to ask the administrator to work on fixing the interruption. Please, be patient, and the site will have a new home shortly.
Moneybass
Sowbelly: The Obsessive Quest for the World Record Largemouth Bass
by Monte Burke
I have a set of drinking glasses I inherited from my great-grandmother, and each glass is painted with a picture and stats of a world record freshwater fish. One glass has always sat at the front of my collection: the largemouth bass. Along with a rather generic picture of a black bass eating a mayfly (certainly a strange artistic choice of a meal for the T-rex of American freshwater) the glass reads:
LARGE-MOUTH BASS
WORLD RECORD CATCH.
JUNE 22, 1932.
MONTGOMERY LAKE, GA.
WEIGHT — 22 LBS. 4 OZ.
LENGTH — 32 1/2 IN.
ANGLER — GEO. W. PERRY
It’s the record of all fishing records in the US. I’ve been aware of the record for some time, but it’s never quite captivated me more than a fishing story that has morphed into a legend. I mean, that’s a big bass, who could forget it? I guess the fact that I’m normally happy enough to catch fish 20 pounds lighter that I’ve never had the opportunity to experience what the subjects of Monte’s Burke’s Sowbelly feel. All the men and women who have come close to the record seem to have been captured by the legend of George Washington Perry’s largemouth bass.
On a rainy morning in 1932, George Perry decided to go fishing with a buddy —Jack Page, whose existence is harder to verify than Perry’s fish—in Telfair County, Georgia. He ended up catching the world record largemouth bass, and didn’t even seem to care. After weighing his fish on a grocery store scale, he and his family ate his catch. And if he hadn’t bothered to mail in the weight and measurements to Field & Stream, we’d never know it had happened…that is, if it did happen at all. This story is at the center of the universe of all of the people Burke chronicles in his book.
The story begins in California, with the modern day big-bass legend Bob Crupi. Crupi is a L.A. motorcycle cop, the kind that could kick your ass but chooses not to because he’s got better things to do. What he prefers to do is catch a Florida strain of largemouth bass that have grown to the size of watermelons on a diet of rainbow trout. No one has come closer to breaking Perry’s record, legitimately, than Crupi, who landed a 22 pound fish in 1991. The obsessive quest that Crupi undertakes puts a strain on everything in his life, a familiar theme in the book.
The most serious contenders for breaking the record, now that Crupi has given up on the chase (or has he?) are two groups of men in San Diego. We have an old school group using fancy equipment and are the darlings of the big-bass universe. But these men have been challenged by a three-man team of young casino workers who started the chase to win a now defunct $8 million bounty on the world record. As you might expect the groups don’t get along and probably refer to each other as punks and has-beens. It’s a classic human quest for status, and the battle became personal long ago.
We also learn the history of Perry’s record. Many people think George Washington Perry’s fish is like his namesake’s cherry tree, a perpetuated myth that people just believe to be fact. It’s true that the circumstances of Perry’s record are a bit odd. No one knows who his fishing buddy was, there is no picture of the fish, and no fish near that size has ever come out of Georgia. As Burke points out, there is no way Perry’s fish would qualify for the record today. But, the arguments against Perry appear to just be speculation as well, as Bill Baab—the self-appointed protector of Perry’s record—likes to point out. A lot of people saw the fish, it was weighed on the best available scale, and Perry certainly didn’t seem to seek fame or fortune (beyond some fishing equipment he won). After reading Burke’s account, I believe that whatever Perry’s fish weighed, it was recorded to the best of the abilities of the parties involved. And like many things in life, we must make important judgments based on little information. Maybe I should say I have faith in the record.
Burke also chronicles some different methods to get the record. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is trying to grow the record through selective breeding. It’s a long shot, but something the nation of Texas wants. Texas is big, and the biggest largemouth bass should come out its “tanks.” We also meet a solitary man in Mississippi who’s squandered an inheritance and family in his quest to grow the bass in his own ponds. There are the men who make the lures designed purely for big bass. These hand-made rainbow trout imitations are quite life-like, expensive (up to $300 a piece), and big enough that a trout fisherman would be happy to butterfly a living trout of the same size. And of course, there are those who’ve caught big fish under mysterious circumstances. The world is full of “bassholes” who’d be happy enough to steal the record. Weighted fish, bribing witnesses, and uncertified scales are alternative tackle in the war on the record.
The story ends in Cuba, where there will be very little financial rewards if the record is broken there. But, as we’ve seen the quest is not about money. Even the Americans whose sole reason for joining the chase was money can’t stop their efforts even though the official $8 million prize is no longer offered. As Burke makes clear, it’s his education as a Religion major, not just as a fisherman, that makes him such a good storyteller of these events. The quest interesting and so human.
Like Moneyball, Sowbelly can be enjoyed by those who have no direct interest in fishing (baseball), which is just the backdrop of the story. This is an old story, about an emptiness—or is it a thirst?—that all humans feel. 22-4 isn’t a number to some, but a reason to live life they way they do. Burke eloquently states this in a personal conversation with a potentially record fish that swam several feet below.
You had a profound effect on the lives of a few passionate men and women. You filled them with overpowering desire, an impulse as mysterious as your urge to spawn a few years ago, or to swim here today. You made people do strange thing, like neglect both family and work, lie and cheat. But you also gave them hope, provided their life with meaning and direction. This quest for you helped them whittle this big, distracting world down to a manageable size, even as you stayed, as you are now, just beyond their grasp.
If you can’t tell by now, I really like this book. Burke is an excellent writer, and I hope this is just the first of many books he will write because I didn’t want this one to end. I read a lot of books, and I rarely post reviews here, but this one was just too good to keep to myself.
Plugging the THT Annual
In Dave Studeman’s THT article this morning, he provides a taste of what you can find in The Hardball Times Annual 2006.
There are several sections of the Annual, including a review of the 2005 season (divisions and postseason play), commentary on the 2005 season (such as Rob Neyer’s list of the biggest management mistakes of the year and Brian Gunn’s “GM in a Box” view of Walt Jocketty), a few articles dealing with the history of baseball (including two articles by Bill James, one of which focuses on Bert Blyleven’s record) and a rather large analytic section that includes many in-depth studies of the batted ball data we receive from Baseball Info Solutions, among other things.
In the article, Dave goes on to use batted ball data that many of the authors examine in the book to make a batted ball leaderboard. If you like what Dave does, and you should, then you may enjoy these other articles in the Annual.
To prepare for the Annual, we ordered a special data set from BIS. Specifically, we asked for all types of batted balls (outfield fly, ground ball, infield fly, line drive and bunt) hit by every single batter and allowed by every single pitcher over the last four years. In addition, the data set includes the outcome of every one of those batted balls (such as outs, singles, doubles, triples and the like). There was so much data, we hardly knew where to begin, but we managed to pack a lot of info into the book you just ordered. There are five articles that review the batted ball data…
- “What’s a Batted Ball Worth?” which calculates the relative value of each type of batted ball.
- “They Play in Parks,” an analysis of the difference that each ballpark makes on batted balls, with some very interesting findings.
- “Batted Ball Fielding Stats,” which combines the batted ball data to assess the fielding prowess of each team in 2005, laying the groundwork for David Gassko’s Range stats, which are listed in the statistics section.
- “Do Players Control Batted Balls?” a joint effort by J.C. Bradbury and David Gassko, which may be the definitive study so far of how much impact individual batters and pitchers have on the outcomes of batted balls.
- “Giving Players their PrOPS,” a year-end review of J.C. Bradbury’s PrOPS, including the leading over- and under-performers of the year.
I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to work with this unique data, which is amazing. I hope to unveil my new PrOPS-based projection system soon. I’ll also do another round SSPS when the next round of the Lahman Archive is released.
Order your copy today! This is just the beginning of the good stuff to come from THT.
FYI: I do not receive any royalties from the sale of the book, and I have no direct financial incentive to push the book. I would buy a copy even if I had not contributed to the project, just as I purchased last year’s annual and the THT Bullpen Book (review).
Quantifying Player Value
Vince Gennaro is writing a three-part series of articles in which he develops a model for valuing player contributions to teams. Part I and Part II are up at The Hardball Times. I like what I’m seeing so far.
I’ve Got a Feeling
Every so often an idea pops into my head and won’t leave. I don’t have any proof, just one of those feelings, but here it is.
I think the Braves are going to trade Marcus Giles and use Betemit at second. Here are my reasons:
—Marcus is up for a big raise this year, while Betemit is cheap.
—The Braves are shopping hard for a shortstop replacement for Furcal, when Betemit would be no worse than Jeff Blauser on defense and much better at the plate.
—I am now convinced that Marcus’s 2003 power was a fluke. He is still an excellent offensive second baseman, but he’s not going to be the superstar offensive player that many thought. I would not be surprised if the Braves agree.
—Giles is often rumored to be “on the table.”
—Giles could bring in a solid relief pitcher in a trade. At worst, he frees up $9-10 million over the next two seasons.
Anyway, it’s just a feeling.
Bill James of Basketball
Freakonomics pointed me to a very nice article about Dean Oliver of the Seattle SuperSonics in Wired. Dean is considered by some to the “the Bill James of Basketball.” Indeed, Dean has written an excellent book on performance analysis in basketball called Basketball on Paper. Now, I’m not as huge a fan of basketball as a once was, but Dean is certainly a really interesting guy. I had the good fortune to meet Dean over the summer at the Western Economic Association meeting in San Francisco. Though I was aware of his book, I had not read it, yet Dean was willing to entertain my silly questions about APBRmetrics. And the great thing about basketball is that there is a lot more room for stat-heads to add something. The science is still young, even though much of the thinking originally came from another famous Dean, Dean Smith. Here is one idea Oliver uses in his analysis.
Oliver thinks possession efficiency is basketball’s version of on-base percentage. “Teams that score a lot of points don’t necessarily win games, and teams that prevent opponents from scoring a lot of points don’t necessarily win, either,” he explains. “But if you convert a greater percentage of possessions into points than your opponent does, you win games.” By tracking a team’s per-possession efficiency whenever a given player is on the court, Oliver thinks he has the truest measure of a player’s value. By comparison, metrics like points per game, rebounds, or assists reveal little.
Check out Dean’s site (www.basketballonpaper.com) for some excellent info on performance analysis in basketball. With George Shinn totally ruining the Hornets (that lemon hair dye he used must have been absorbed by his brain) I haven’t had an NBA team to cheer for. So, I’ll keep an eye on the SuperSonics this year.
The Politics of Replacing Leo
The hiring of Roger McDowell as the Braves hitting pitching coach seems a bit odd. What a coincidence that the “second spitter” from Seinfeld seems to be the Bizarro-world pitching coach choice for the Braves. Not only did he not come from within the Braves organization, he’s pitched for the Mets, Phillies, and Dodgers—three teams that have not been overly friendly with the Braves—and he doesn’t have much of a track record as a coach. I don’t think anyone saw this coming. But, I think the choice tells us quite a bit about the Braves pitching situation.
It’s no secret that Leo was not the most popular guy in the organization. Some internal source has been feeding “Mazzone sucks” propaganda for the past few months. It even spilled over into the normally even-handed reporting of Mark Bowman last week from “anonymous sources.” Bowman stated that at least one veteran pitcher thought Mazzone should go. It’s funny that for 15 years we hear nothing but praise, Leo leaves and then we start hearing how he was always the problem. Apparently the Braves farm is a lot like Animal Farm. Even John Smoltz had something to say, stating that Leo’s departure did not leave a “huge void.” However, Smoltz’s comments seem to be indicative of a pep-talk to the Braves fans that the team pitching staff will be alright, and not a slam at Leo. After all, Smotlz has gone out of his way to praise Leo in the past.
Here is what I think happened. Leo is a good pitching coach, and the Braves did like and appreciate what he brought to the team. Forget any of the studies that myself and others have done that quantify the importance of Mazzone’s influence. For one, no one can prove it’s just Leo, since he, Cox, and Schuerholz have been together all of this time. But, it’s clear that the front office had high confidence in Mazzone, which is why it kept him on the big league bench for 15 years. Additionally, nearly all of his former pitchers have nothing but nice things to say about him. Leo’s a foul-mouthed hot-head, which he admits, yet the players and management do nothing but praise him. Guys like that don’t last long unless they are good at what they do.
Leo’s autobiography is insightful. I’ve owned it for a while, but only sat down to read it a few weeks ago. His method is much more than down and away and extra throwing. It’s a system that involves treating each pitcher differently, physically and psychologically, and watching for necessary adjustments. It also means getting out of the way when things are going right. The last thing Leo ever wanted to do was to screw up a good thing. He’d yell at guys but let them yell back. He’d take ideas from pitchers, ask them how they feel, and he gives tons of credit to the talent that always existed in his students. Another interesting facet of his program is to “team up” on younger guys. Leo would teach along with the veterans. As long as everyone was on the same page, players could help each other out. If you’re a pitcher new to the Braves and Leo says, “you’re curve balls stinks, don’t throw it,” you’re going to be a little more receptive when Tom Glavine leans over and whispers the same thing in your ear.
It’s a shame that Leo’s departure seems to be so political. In his autobiography, Leo tells a story of a phone confrontation with a farm director somewhere down in the minor leagues. It wasn’t a polite one. I get the feeling that Mazzone did not see eye to eye with the guys below him in the system. And why would they? For all of the accolades the Braves get for their pitching, not much of the quality stuff has come through the Braves minor league system, lately. Sure Glavine and Smoltz (not really home grown, either) are home grown, but Mazzone had a big hand in their minor league and early major league development. The only non-Leo home grown regular starter in the Braves rotation in 2005 was Horacio Ramirez, and he’s not anything to get excited about. To keep with the Seinfeld theme, the Braves get their pitching where Jerry gets his coffee: on the outside. This is where Leo has been so important; turning has-beens into ace free agents.
Now, if I’m down on the farm, I’m a little put off by this. My guys don’t do well when they get up top, and soon after they are shipped out. I complain to the GM, “he’s ruining my guys,” but what can the GM do? The pitching coach says these guys have too many bad habits. They aren’t playing well, they still have some trade value, and the current pitching coach can’t stop leading the league in ERA. But I think this all came to a tipping point this year. The Braves sent up a lot of guys a bit too early out of necessity. Dan Kolb was awful. Injuries forced Jorge Sosa—who seemed to catch some Mazzone magic (and some luck)—into the rotation, and the pen had little to offer. Tom Martin, was on the opening day roster folks, and the Braves had eat a nearly $2 million to pay him not to pitch. Leo’s had scraps in the past, in 2005 he was cracking bones to suck out the marrow. Schuerholz scrambled to add Farnsworth and Devine , but it wasn’t enough. Leo had to have felt like an artist whose patron gave him worse materials because he was so good. Finally, he just said “screw this!” With Cox ans Schuerholz about to retire or move on, this was a great time to move.
And the front office probably saw this as an opportunity. The scouts and farm coaches had to be increasing their complaints. Youngsters would soon be all of that Leo had to work with. If things didn’t go well, someone would have to be blamed. I’m sure no one really wanted that. Why not just let Leo go, and the political head-ache goes away…except, it doesn’t. What if the kids fail anyway and Leo could have helped? I think Cox and Schuerholz felt that whatever they had in place with Leo can be replicated up to a point.
This brings me back to the addition of McDowell. If there was politics involved, hiring a pitching coach from outside the organization keeps the political status quo. There won’t be a disgruntled farm coach trying to “fix the damage” he’s been complaining about. McDowell has no stake in that battle. If he wants to have a career as a coach, he’s got to win. The best way to do that is to immerse himself in a major league system that has been so successful. He’ll have Cox and the veterans there to learn from and to teach. Plus, McDowell can make a great patsy if things don’t go well.
I think hiring McDowell is a good move. He’s got no reputation to establish an ego, so there should be no clashes with the front office, coaches, or players. And going outside the organization keeps all others’ egos in check. So, while the choice may seem odd, I think it’s a good one. His minor league record may not be stellar, but success at that level over such a short period of time is hard to measure. Cox and Schuerholz clearly found someone they think will work with the plan, so that ought to be good enough for now. After all, who the hell was Leo Mazzone in 1990? And let’s not forget, he gives TBS a great Seinfeld tie-in.
Discussing ERA on the FOMC
Finally, Bush appoints a person with the qualifications I find most important.
In nominating Ben S. Bernanke to succeed Alan Greenspan as Fed chairman, President Bush selected an economist with stellar credentials and a good reputation in Congress and on Wall Street who has won widespread plaudits since being named on Monday….
Mr. Bernanke is fond of using clear metaphors – like helicopters dropping cash from the sky – rather than Mr. Greenspan’s often abstruse prose. And as a Fed governor from 2002 until this past summer, he pushed his colleagues to give investors, businesses and households a better feel for where policy was headed.
This transparency could help him if he does halt the rate increases at his first meeting. Already, the markets seem to expect such a move. “It’s still the institution making these decisions,” Mr. Mishkin, the Columbia professor, said.
Perhaps the best way to establish transparency, Mr. Bernanke has written, is to set up an easily understandable process. It is in many ways the opposite of the image that Mr. Greenspan has helped cultivate, that of an oracle.
“He will probably work toward depersonalizing monetary policy,” Mr. Gertler said.
A useful analogy is to Bill James, the baseball writer whose books Mr. Bernanke has discussed with fellow economists. Mr. James’s work, which often argues for statistical analysis over intuition, “was always a topic of conversation,” Mr. Gertler said.
He remembers Mr. Bernanke’s being especially interested in finding statistics that forecast future performance. In the same vein, he has argued that central bankers should rely as much as possible on the enormous amounts of economic data now available and less on hunches.
“The hope eventually is to come up with a statistical formula that processes this information and gets the best forecast,” said Jean Boivin, a Columbia economist who has done research with Mr. Bernanke. “Once you do that, the question is how much is left over for judgment.”
It’s always good to have stat-head in charge. And David Leonhardt (who contributed to the above are article as well) notes, he’s concerned about those important questions.
Bernanke and Dwight M. Jaffee, a Princeton colleague, had a regular squash game, and they spent their walks to the campus gym talking about monetary policy and baseball, Jaffee said. Bernanke was particularly bothered by E.R.A., the main yardstick of pitching. If one pitcher leaves runners on base and another pitcher allows them to score, the runs are charged to the first pitcher.
Pitchers unlucky enough to be followed by ineffective relievers, as the Yankees’ Randy Johnson was in 2005, have unfairly high E.R.A.’s. Pitchers who are bailed out by their bullpen, as Roy Oswalt of the Astros often was this season, end up with artificially low E.R.A.’s.
A better system would divide blame, depending on the base the runners were on when a pitcher departed and the number of outs, Bernanke argued.
“He was always saying, ‘We ought to come up with a solution for this,’ ” Jaffee said.
Seriously, Brenanke is a very good choice, and I’m glad Bush got this one right. And I’m not surprised to hear Bernanke is a Bill James fan. The economic way of thinking and sabermetrics have a lot in common.
Research in Fortune
My sister e-mailed me this weekend to say that my research with Doug Drinen on hit batters , is discussed in the latest issue of Fortune magazine. It’s in an article about recent Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling. Coincidently, Schelling was indirectly a big influence on me because he mentored my former professor Tyler Cowen (of Marginal Revolution fame).
The article mentions Doug and me by description only.
Besides game theory’s world-historical and business significance, it’s worth noting, especially at this time of year, that it actually does apply to games. A scholarly paper by Berkeley economist David Romer showed that NFL coaches punt too often on fourth down. Patriots coach Bill Belichick, the league’s most successful coach in recent years, read the paper and later stunned fans by running on fourth and one—successfully—in the AFC championship game two years ago. In baseball, a study by an economist and a mathematician examined why American League batters get beaned more often than National Leaguers (short answer: The designated-hitter rule leaves pitchers less afraid of retaliation). As poker has exploded in popularity, some of the new champs have been computer-savvy game theoreticians.
Leo Articles
There are a few good articles on Leo Mazzone this morning that I would like to link to. If you find others, please forward them to me.
Thomas Stinson of the AJC makes some interesting observations in Salvaging Careers Is Mazzone’s Hallmark.
Leo is modest about his success.
“What makes for a great pitching staff is great pitchers,” he once described his craft. “And what makes for a good pitching coach is not messing up great pitchers.”
“I’ve gotten a tremendous amount of credit over the years with Atlanta,” Mazzone said during a Friday conference call. “I don’t need credit. All we need is pitchers pitching good. That gives you enough credit. You don’t need someone tooting your horn.”
How Leo helped John Burkett.
“I think the best thing about Leo is, he has this sternness and his belief in what he’s doing,” said John Burkett from his home in Dallas “He’s very convincing and he has the track record to back it up.”
“When you look at some of the guys who were washed up when they came over — me being one of them, because I was done — maybe I was even starting to believe it at that time,” Burkett said. “But I remember throwing on the side one time when I first got over there and Leo told me, ‘You have the best control I’ve ever seen on the side, beside Greg Maddux.’
“And then he said, ‘And your slider sucks. When you get behind in the count, quit throwing that thing. Throw your fastball down and away.’ And I did that. I mean, there were times when I was thinking, ‘Man, I can’t throw this guy a fastball down and away. He’s going to kill it.’ And I’d throw one and he’d take it for a strike. … That went a long way for me. I kind of took off after that.”
Even Jason Marquis has nice things to say about Leo.
Before he was traded to St. Louis two years ago, Jason Marquis described his Leo experience: “I know when a young guy comes in Leo tries to be a little harder on him because he wants to instill in him the values that he did with the Madduxes and the Smoltzes and the Glavines, when they were young.
“Some guys take it the wrong way. … I tell you what, he’s helped me a lot.”
Bill Curry of ESPN.com compares Mazzone to another great coach.
During my first week with the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi sat down with me and explained every play of the vaunted Packer offense. I value Mazzone’s insights as much as I do those of coach Lombardi. In each case, Hall of Famers had spent personal moments to impart a kind of wisdom that simply does not exist elsewhere.
I won’t lie. I have some selfish motives for liking these articles—they both cite my work—but, they are excellent and worthy of reading regardless of that. But, I do appreciate it. Thanks to Thomas and Bill.
