Films you've seen recently and would unreservedly recommend:
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- beware the dog killer club sword attack craner's got herpes damn well 'urts! don't be so basic eye-watering dick nailage gay cowboy death squad greek dudes herzog i went to oxford italo jamaican voodoo gang from marked for death jamaican voodoo gang from predator 2 opium smoking independent business owners roger spooner i'm the manager rolling sultry voodoo sweat sex chicken stuff the 'novels' of jack kerouac the piccadilly circus rampage versioncore u know the score vicarious yyaldrin what's the frequency kenneth?
luka
Well-known member
mojave is supposed to be high quality desert was recently knocking about with a science boy that did field work there
IdleRich
IdleRich
I will take the positive point from this.... I never knew that you considered me a connoisseur of anything until now.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I am enjoying Moneyball right now. I saw the start of it a while back but I had to go out and it was one of those ones where I was trying to tear myself from the screen as I got later and later for wherever it was i was going to. So it's on again and I'm watching it. Most of it I like - except for the bits about baseball obviously, those I'm not so keen on.
OK, I'm joking to some extent, but what I just said is not quite as stupid as it sounds, the film isn't about baseball really, it's more about stats and economics and stuff and that's why I like it. But there are a couple of things I don't understand cos i don't know the rules of the game properly so can someone explain a few things to me.
This is how I understand it, each team has a load of players (how many actually, I dunno?) and when they are in bat one guy goes up and then another and so on and when three(?) are out they stop batting and start fielding and then the other team puts up players to bat in the same way. And each team has nine innings to make as many runs as possible and at the end of it all, the team with the most runs wins.
But what I want to understand is... when the team is fielding do they have to use all of the players that they had available to bat? In other words, it is set up so that everyone has to be able to manage the basics of fielding, even if you're the greatest bastman of all time you will have to do some fielding and so you need to be able to do a job there. I guess that there are probably some fielding positions that are more important than others and so if you have a guy who is good with the bat but can't throw or catch or run, there is a place you can put him to field which is least important and so his ineptitude will do the least damage. Also, do the pitcher and the catcher have to bat as well? Cos that's how it is in cricket really, you got eleven players (but you need two in to bat cos there has to be one at each end) and so the team is done when ten wickets have been taken. And each team has one wicket keeper (which is the catcher) and then they spread the other ten between specialist batters (who will also have to field) and specialist bowlers (who will probably have to bat) and, if you're lucky, a few who are good at both.
The reason I'm asking is cos there is a big part of the film where Brad PItt and Jonah Hill are interested in this guy they reckon is decent as a batter but he used to be a catcher and is now injured in such a way that he can't be a catcher any more. Cos his catching days are done nobody wants him but our moneyballing geeks have this idea (I think I got this right) to retrain him so that he can be the fielder on the first base and that way they can play him and thus get the advantage of his batting for cheap. But the team coach or whoever he is (Philip Seymour Hoffman) kicks up a fuss cos he has this guy Pena who is good on first base - in fact I think he is recognised as one of the few genuinely good players they have - and he wants to play him instead of this bloke who is just learning.
The set up here is that Hoffman represents the crusty old world of conservative old-fashioned baseball and he doesn't understand the new-fangled methods our heroes are trying to introduce, and as a result there is a huge battle of wills between Bradley and PSH with BP insisting that they play this guy at first base cos they reckon that ultimately he will come good and his runs will be worth the short term pain, whereas PSH just wants to play the guy who is good there. OK, that makes sense as far as it goes, but what I don't understand is they don't just retrain the former catcher to field in a different position? I get they want his batting and I get that he needs to be re-trained, but if the guy they have on first right now is decent then why don't they re-train him to take any of the other positions seeing as they are starting from scratch anyway?
Help me out baseballers, I am probably missing something obvious.
OK, I'm joking to some extent, but what I just said is not quite as stupid as it sounds, the film isn't about baseball really, it's more about stats and economics and stuff and that's why I like it. But there are a couple of things I don't understand cos i don't know the rules of the game properly so can someone explain a few things to me.
This is how I understand it, each team has a load of players (how many actually, I dunno?) and when they are in bat one guy goes up and then another and so on and when three(?) are out they stop batting and start fielding and then the other team puts up players to bat in the same way. And each team has nine innings to make as many runs as possible and at the end of it all, the team with the most runs wins.
But what I want to understand is... when the team is fielding do they have to use all of the players that they had available to bat? In other words, it is set up so that everyone has to be able to manage the basics of fielding, even if you're the greatest bastman of all time you will have to do some fielding and so you need to be able to do a job there. I guess that there are probably some fielding positions that are more important than others and so if you have a guy who is good with the bat but can't throw or catch or run, there is a place you can put him to field which is least important and so his ineptitude will do the least damage. Also, do the pitcher and the catcher have to bat as well? Cos that's how it is in cricket really, you got eleven players (but you need two in to bat cos there has to be one at each end) and so the team is done when ten wickets have been taken. And each team has one wicket keeper (which is the catcher) and then they spread the other ten between specialist batters (who will also have to field) and specialist bowlers (who will probably have to bat) and, if you're lucky, a few who are good at both.
The reason I'm asking is cos there is a big part of the film where Brad PItt and Jonah Hill are interested in this guy they reckon is decent as a batter but he used to be a catcher and is now injured in such a way that he can't be a catcher any more. Cos his catching days are done nobody wants him but our moneyballing geeks have this idea (I think I got this right) to retrain him so that he can be the fielder on the first base and that way they can play him and thus get the advantage of his batting for cheap. But the team coach or whoever he is (Philip Seymour Hoffman) kicks up a fuss cos he has this guy Pena who is good on first base - in fact I think he is recognised as one of the few genuinely good players they have - and he wants to play him instead of this bloke who is just learning.
The set up here is that Hoffman represents the crusty old world of conservative old-fashioned baseball and he doesn't understand the new-fangled methods our heroes are trying to introduce, and as a result there is a huge battle of wills between Bradley and PSH with BP insisting that they play this guy at first base cos they reckon that ultimately he will come good and his runs will be worth the short term pain, whereas PSH just wants to play the guy who is good there. OK, that makes sense as far as it goes, but what I don't understand is they don't just retrain the former catcher to field in a different position? I get they want his batting and I get that he needs to be re-trained, but if the guy they have on first right now is decent then why don't they re-train him to take any of the other positions seeing as they are starting from scratch anyway?
Help me out baseballers, I am probably missing something obvious.
woops
is not like other people
exactly right. i considered you a connoisseur of something. until now.
Leo
Well-known member
in general, yes, the same players who get to bat also play in the field.
there is one exception: in the American League, they passed a rule change to have a designated hitter. that player, usually an excellent hitter, bats in place of the pitcher, who is always the worst hitter (because they never practice hitting, and pitch/play only once every five or six days). the National Leagure never passed this rule change, so the nine players (including pitcher) on their teams who are on the field have to also bat.
the designated hitter only bats, he does not play out in the field.
I know it's confusing, one league has this different rule. it was done to make the game more lively, higher scoring, since the designated hitter is usually excellent hitter and the pitcher they replace are usually terrible hitters and practically an automatic out. when they play the World Series -- American League champion versus National League champion -- the designated hitter rule is in use for both teams in home games of the American League team, but not when the games are played at the National League team's home field.
IdleRich
IdleRich
OK makes sense, same in cricket the bowlers are usually bad batsmen, some of them comically so. But they have to bat if the players above them in the batting order get out. If you get one fast bowler chucking it at his opposite number's head then they can expect a retaliation in the next innings of course so there is supposed to be a slight amount of going easy on the bowlers, at least in terms of deliveries that could potentially injure or even kill them.
But my question, in the film they had this massive argument about whether to play the shit fielder guy on first base instead of the good fielder so that he could bat... but why not just put him somewhere else in the field and play them both?
But my question, in the film they had this massive argument about whether to play the shit fielder guy on first base instead of the good fielder so that he could bat... but why not just put him somewhere else in the field and play them both?
Decent film.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I enjoyed it. I found the whole idea quite intriguing, especially those moments when you get the old school types saying stuff like "you can't reduce baseball to statistics, it's played on the field and no computer can grasp that" because to me, baseball - much like cricket - is absolutely built for statistical analysis in that you have a sort of rigid set up which is repeated again and again, each play starts with essentially the same thing of one guy throwing it at another guy who has a bat and tries to hit it. There is the guy behind him and the other fielders. And the game starts like that I guess, and you can analyse that situation again and again and again... and then you can make it more complicated by putting runners on the bases or saying there are a certain number of outs or whatever. You can analyse risk and rewards etc etc Straight away - without even properly knowing the rules - I started wondering stuff like "Is it better to have a guy who always gets to first base but never goes further - or someone who hits a home run half the time and strikes out the other half?". And all this data has been compiled for years (I know this cos i started googling and looking up various bits and bobs as a result of the film) so there is so much stuff to feed into the models... though of course it's not so simple that you can directly compare as there may have been different prevailing tactics at different times which changed the stats... not to mention different equipment and fitness levels...
So, yeah, of course stats can never tell the whole story, but in baseball or cricket they tell a fuck load more of the story than they do in football which is so much more random after the kick off. One time I saw a statistician comparing Van der Saar to another keeper and he said something like "The perception people have is that Van der Saar is better than X (I forget who it was) but actually if you look at their stats VDS conceded 10 percent of shots from inside the area whereas X only conceded 8 percent, so Alex Ferguson is making the mistake that a lot of spectators makes and picking the keeper that somehow looks better" - I remember being really angry that someone could be so dumb as to think that the saving percentage could tell you the better shot-stopper, never mind which was the better keeper... I mean even if X WAS a marginally better shot stopper from close shots but VDS was better at dealing with crosses, one on ones, marshalling the defence, distribution and long range shots then which one is the better keeper?
But that isn't the main issue, the main issue that is that shots can be so different that without knowing every shot we can't really compare their saving. Maybe one day the stats will be so finely grained that they can record every shot in terms of which square metre of the pitch it came from, how hard it was struck, whether it had curl on it, was the keeper sighted... but if it is so nicely divided that every shot is effectively unique then how can they be compiled and compared for stats? Whatever, it's fucking obvious that baseball is particularly susceptible to statistical analysis. And on the other end of the scale you have something tennis which also has the repeatable situations but really it is so simple with so little in terms of variety that there is almost nothing to study. If you are slightly more like to win a given point than your opponent then that advantage will mount up over the course of the game and you will almost certainly win. And that's it, end of story.
So, yeah, of course stats can never tell the whole story, but in baseball or cricket they tell a fuck load more of the story than they do in football which is so much more random after the kick off. One time I saw a statistician comparing Van der Saar to another keeper and he said something like "The perception people have is that Van der Saar is better than X (I forget who it was) but actually if you look at their stats VDS conceded 10 percent of shots from inside the area whereas X only conceded 8 percent, so Alex Ferguson is making the mistake that a lot of spectators makes and picking the keeper that somehow looks better" - I remember being really angry that someone could be so dumb as to think that the saving percentage could tell you the better shot-stopper, never mind which was the better keeper... I mean even if X WAS a marginally better shot stopper from close shots but VDS was better at dealing with crosses, one on ones, marshalling the defence, distribution and long range shots then which one is the better keeper?
But that isn't the main issue, the main issue that is that shots can be so different that without knowing every shot we can't really compare their saving. Maybe one day the stats will be so finely grained that they can record every shot in terms of which square metre of the pitch it came from, how hard it was struck, whether it had curl on it, was the keeper sighted... but if it is so nicely divided that every shot is effectively unique then how can they be compiled and compared for stats? Whatever, it's fucking obvious that baseball is particularly susceptible to statistical analysis. And on the other end of the scale you have something tennis which also has the repeatable situations but really it is so simple with so little in terms of variety that there is almost nothing to study. If you are slightly more like to win a given point than your opponent then that advantage will mount up over the course of the game and you will almost certainly win. And that's it, end of story.
IdleRich
IdleRich
In fact most American sports tend to be more describable in terms of stats and thus easier to model that way. Perhaps it's not one of the world's great paradoxes but there is a mildly amusing irony in the fact that the very thing that makes them so boring to watch is also the thing that makes them more interesting to study.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Nine slips! Unbelievable, never seen that. Are you even allowed that? I remember one time I was playing (badly no doubt) for my school and we got no-balled cos we had... too many behind square leg or not enough behind square leg or something.... a really obscure rule that seemed a little harsh to punish us for at age 13 or whatever it was..
Leo
Well-known member
yes, they could use both players. it's just that some players grew up playing only (or predominantly) one position and could be a defensive liability if you stuck them somewhere else. some positions are fairly similar (like the three outfield positions, which are sort of interchangeable), but it would be difficult for many players to be a shortstop, first basement or catcher if they've never done it before. those positions require special skills and experience.
RE: "Moneyball" (v. good film) and stats, it's led the Tampa Bay Rays to have strong winning seasons while also having one of the lowest team payrolls. Rich teams in major markets like the NY Yankees are known for just going out and paying huge contracts for proven stars, while the Rays use stats to identify undervalued players or those on the way up, who they can pay a lot less for. It's part of the reason why so many people hate the Yankees.
IdleRich
IdleRich
The point is, there is a guy who used to be catcher but can't any more cos he is injured. They want to retrain him to play first base and kick out the guy who is playing first base at the moment even though he is good. I'm asking why - if they are gonna retrain him from scratch anyway - they don't train him for a position which doesn't clash with one of their stars?
Of course, it's the same in football. More so even cos there are no controls whatsoever to stop the rich getting richer and richer and leaving poorer teams way behind. To pick on one team, consider Bayern Munich in Germany, they have won the league nine times in a row and they will win it this year. They can offer better wages than all their rivals and guarantee silverware so it's easy for them to hoover up all the best players in the league, strengthening themselves and weakening their rivals at the same time.
It may seem a little unfair for me to single out Germany when in the premiership Man City are even richer and attempt to do the same thing, the only thing that keeps the premiership competitive and comparatively interesting is the fact that there are several teams that have that kind of financial muscle and who therefore sort of balance each other out. But for me there is a problem in football at the moment with national leagues becoming less and less competitive - Germany is the worst but until last year Juventus had won the last seven or eight in Italy and PSG had done the same in France - Spain has two superclubs in Barcelona and Real and the occasional intervention by Atleti has kept things a bit more varied.
One might ask why Bayern feel compelled to take the best players from teams who finished a distant second to them last season but they would say that they want to compete in the biggest and most important club competition, the Champions League and in that their rivals are Man City and Chelsea... and also Real Madrid... and PSG who are richer than EVERYONE else. But the irony is that some suggest that dominance in the local league is not conducive to winning the Champions League... as the gulf between PSG or Bayern and the rest of their league increases, they get less and less practice at playing teams of the levels they will need to beat to win the CL. I suppose you could at least say that PSG's increasingly frenzied pursuit of the CL has been based on bringing in megastar players from other leagues so they are not decimating their rivals.
But the insane oil wealth has destabilised everything... PSG wrested Neymar from Barcelona for a transfer fee of 225m euros plus 70m in wages a year for 5 years (in other words, the deal was worth something like 0.6 billion euros) and Barcelona panicked about the possibility of losing Messi and started paying him 160m euros a year to prevent that happening. This was obviously more than they could afford and seems to have destroyed Barcelona as a major force for the foreseeable future, which is why they were so desperate for the creation of a super league which they hoped could bale them out.
Unfortunately no-one has yet come up with a way to moneyball football. For one thing, as discussed above, the stats can't describe the game in the same kind of detail, and to me that means that it is not possible to identify one precise skill that you lack in the same way, or find a player for cheap who has exactly that. Also, I just don't think that there is a way to do it... as I understand it with the moneyball thing you might find two players that together have the two skills of a star player and, cos they are used at different times, these two players could together replace him... but you can't get two players with half Messi's inspiration and put them together to create the same magic in total.