Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

If the MLB insists on having the DH in the National League permanently, which will in effect kill real baseball, then I must demand that they fire all of the human managers and hire chimpanzees instead. Why waste millions paying for human managers. I mean a chimp can manage a DH team and you can have him fill out a lineup card by pointing to pictures of the players. And he's done. No pinch hitting, no substitutions, no decisions to be made just sit back and wait for homers, walks, strikeouts and ground outs into the shift. You don't even need a pitching coach as the pitchers can be replaced automatically when their pitch count is reached even if they are one out away from throwing a perfect game. Sorry but you reached you pitch count....gotta go. And since a full grown chimp is four times as strong as a human it will make for some interesting arguments with the umpires. Maybe the umps wont be so quick to throw someone out of the game if they will get an arm ripped off. I'm not totally against the DH. I think we need it in the American League to show how not to play baseball. The next time I join an ATG DH league I'm going to fire my long time manager Johnny Yuma and hire a chimp. In fact I'll get the chimp from the Beverly Hillbillies. Remember Ellie Mae's chimp? And you know what his name is Skipper so it fits.

Actually there is a very good argument that the DH increases strategy. Bill James covered it in his baseball abstracts and this pretty much sums it up.

https://hatedyankees.wordpress.com/2010 ... al-league/

gamiam wrote:

Actually there is a very good argument that the DH increases strategy. Bill James covered it in his baseball abstracts and this pretty much sums it up.

https://hatedyankees.wordpress.com/2010 ... al-league/

Thanks for posting. Very thought provoking.

I agree with Bill James. Much prefer the DH.

Love the reference to Ellie May's chimp! Choosing him to manage might also get your squad the inside track on signing Jethro to pitch ( the Dodgers couldn't do it) and you'd have a built-in mascot ready, too - the Possum Queen of Beverly Hills!

The cardboard cutouts sitting behind home plate don't seem to mind the new DH. Nor do the team commentators sitting at home in their basements. I like your idea about the chimpanzee -- because they're certainly making monkeys out of you and me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXpR9CMo0zs

gamiam wrote:Actually there is a very good argument that the DH increases strategy. Bill James covered it in his baseball abstracts and this pretty much sums it up.

https://hatedyankees.wordpress.com/2010 ... al-league/

Definitely an interesting read. But as with anyone who is trying to make a point, there are assumptions made a priori...some overt and some not so.

1. What is not plainly stated but is assumed, is that the list of common strategies and the shorter list of unique-to-pitcher hitting strategies, is that each of these strategy items are generally of equal weight. Not sure that is the case. The mere fact of a pitcher hitting somewhere in a lineup of 9, is a huge delta from a lineup of 9 that replaces that pitcher with a triple crown candidate. Not even is the same game anymore. This is at least evidenced in the macro view by the run scoring differentials for DH vs non DH play.

2. The run differential of each game has an effect on each game's strategy--it is a self-consistency issue, which means what happens in the game affects the game. There is no way to state the importance of one strategy over another without knowing the score--it is contextually important. The score is typically higher and run differentials tend to be higher with more scoring--which narrows the list of viable strategies in games where this occurs. Note--I don't necessarily mean in the aggregate--but we have bigger tails to the distribution. A bunt or HnR when it is 1-0 is not the same decision when it is 4-1. In fact, an argument could be made that a DH game late at 9-7 is not the same strategy envelope as a non-DH game that is 2-0 late with the pitcher coming up.

3. Last point--it does remove an element of tradition where each player on the field receives from the opposing pitcher. It is one thing to be courageously claiming your plate with inside pitches...except not if you don't have to hit against the other guy. That's like an online nasty anonymous rant . Nothing courageous about it.

These are just a few of the items not mentioned and while I realize the blog was not a distillation of Bill James' thoughts on it, my problem with James in general is that I don't believe everything can be objectively quantized. There are some things that cannot be reliably measured, and it leads to big errors in conclusions when all those little uncertainties are put together.

And I am not convinced when we look at something after the fact and find a stat that fits the outcome--because then when we use it predictively it doesn't work well. So we create another stat....and another...

Great blog though and good point to it!

On that note of not everything can be quantized--we have a friend of the family, Marty Kutyna, you can find him on Baseball reference which is where this is drawn from--he told various renditions of these types of stories of how there was a distinct pecking order (leaving race out of it for now). But how do statistics capture this human behavior? Well, a formula makes an assumption about Williams' skill based on his stats...when in fact, it was his persona:

"Marty talked about his major league debut: "I came into a game in Fenway Park and the first batter I faced was Ted Williams. I threw him what I thought were four straight strikes that were called balls by home plate umpire Eddie Hurley, who told me 'welcome to the big leagues.' Williams walked to first base and yelled over to me 'nice pitching, kid. They were all strikes.'" "

20 years or more ago when starters were pitching into the 7th ,8th,9th innings then you might have had some strategy about whether to leave a pitcher in or PH for them but not in today's game. I am all for DH in both leagues who wants to watch pitchers hit