Over the weekend I got a question in the "Hey, Bill" section, which was:
In re Wins and Losses, as a Mets fan we always pointed to Steve Trachsel's 15-8 and 16-10 years with us, the last record coming with a 4.96 ERA as he led the league in run support. What comes to mind as the most egregious in recent years?
Well, let’s see; that’s a fun question. How can we figure that?
I created a "Steve Trachsel Award", which is Not Actually Awarded annually based on the following conditions:
1) To be eligible for the Steve Trachsel Award, a pitcher much meet three conditions:
a) 15 or more starts,
b) a winning record, and
c) an ERA higher than the league ERA.
2) Among those eligible for the award, the winner will be selected based on the following formula:
5 times wins,
minus 3 times losses,
times ERA divided by league ERA, squared.
The most "egregious" in recent years was Shawn Estes in 2004, 15-8 with a 5.84 ERA.
Steve Trachsel never actually won the Steve Trachsel Award, although he was close a couple of times, losing out to Randy Johnson and Kevin Tapani. I had another question in the "Hey, Bill" section, which I didn’t answer, about players that I confuse. . .are there any players I can’t keep straight? I’m an old guy; there are a bunch of them. I’m too confused to answer the question. I always mixed up Steve Trachsel with Kevin Tapani. Nobody ever mixed up Steve Trachsel with Randy Johnson.
Steve Trachsel in 2005 had 15 wins, 8 losses, which is 75 minus 24, or 51 points. His ERA was 10.8% higher than the league norm (4.97 vs. 4.49), so we square that (1.108). 1.108 squared is 1.228, times 51 is 62.6, so Steve Trachsel’s "Steve Trachsel Score", in 2005, was 62.6.
That’s an award-winning type figure, but it doesn’t happen to lead the majors that year. The Steve Trachsel Award winner for 2005 was Randy Johnson, 17-11 with a 5.00 ERA. That also scores at 62.6, but it’s a higher 62.6. Trachsel also came in at 56.3 in 1998, but Kevin Tapani waltzed in at 89.0 (19-9 with a 4.85 ERA). I was going to call it the Kevin Tapani Award, but then I wanted to say something about the TSA controversy, so, you know. . .TSA, STA. I couldn’t resist.
These are the Steve Trachsel Award winners for the last eleven years:
Year
|
First
|
Last
|
Team
|
W
|
L
|
ERA
|
Steve Trachsel Score
|
2000
|
Scott
|
Elarton
|
Houston Astros
|
17
|
7
|
4.81
|
68.8
|
2001
|
Ryan
|
Dempster
|
Florida Marlins
|
15
|
12
|
4.94
|
50.1
|
2002
|
Jason
|
Jennings
|
Colorado Rockies
|
16
|
8
|
4.52
|
67.7
|
2003
|
Jeriome
|
Robertson
|
Houston Astros
|
15
|
9
|
5.10
|
67.8
|
2004
|
Shawn
|
Estes
|
Colorado Rockies
|
15
|
8
|
5.84
|
93.6
|
2005
|
Chan Ho
|
Park
|
Texas-San Diego
|
12
|
8
|
5.74
|
62.4
|
2006
|
Randy
|
Johnson
|
New York Yankees
|
17
|
11
|
5.00
|
62.6
|
2007
|
Tim
|
Wakefield
|
Boston Red Sox
|
17
|
12
|
4.76
|
54.8
|
2008
|
Livan
|
Hernandez
|
Rockies
|
13
|
11
|
6.05
|
63.7
|
2009
|
Braden
|
Looper
|
Brewers
|
14
|
7
|
5.22
|
76.2
|
2010
|
Phil
|
Hughes
|
New York Yankees
|
18
|
8
|
4.19
|
67.5
|
And these are the highest figures of each decade since 1900:
Year
|
First
|
Last
|
Team
|
W
|
L
|
ERA
|
League ERA
|
Steve Trachsel Score
|
1905
|
Mike
|
Lynch
|
Pittsburgh Pirates
|
17
|
8
|
3.80
|
2.99
|
98.5
|
1911
|
Jack
|
Coombs
|
Philadelphia Athletics
|
28
|
12
|
3.53
|
3.34
|
116.2
|
1926
|
Lee
|
Meadows
|
Pittsburgh Pirates
|
20
|
9
|
3.96
|
3.82
|
78.4
|
1937
|
Roxie
|
Lawson
|
Detroit Tigers
|
18
|
7
|
5.27
|
4.62
|
89.8
|
1948
|
Jack
|
Kramer
|
Boston Red Sox
|
18
|
5
|
4.35
|
4.28
|
77.5
|
1956
|
Brooks
|
Lawrence
|
Cincinnati Reds
|
19
|
10
|
3.99
|
3.77
|
72.8
|
1965
|
Sammy
|
Ellis
|
Cincinnati Reds
|
22
|
10
|
3.78
|
3.54
|
91.2
|
1977
|
Larry
|
Christenson
|
Philadelphia Phillies
|
19
|
6
|
4.06
|
3.91
|
83.0
|
1989
|
Storm
|
Davis
|
Oakland A's
|
19
|
7
|
4.36
|
3.89
|
93.0
|
1992
|
Jack
|
Morris
|
Toronto Blue Jays
|
21
|
6
|
4.04
|
3.95
|
91.0
|
2004
|
Shawn
|
Estes
|
Colorado Rockies
|
15
|
8
|
5.84
|
4.31
|
93.6
|
Four men have won the Award in back-to-back years—Sam Weaver in 1882 and 1883, Fred Klobedanz in 1897 and 1898, Guy Bush in 1930 and 1931, and Jim Merritt in 1969 and 1970.
TSA
For the Harry Potter novels, J. K. Rowling invented a sport, Quidditch, which is played by magical peoples. But in inventing the sport she made an obvious mistake. She placed a very high value—150 points—on catching the golden snitch. What is obvious to a sports fan is that this would, in effect, make the game unplayable; the too-high value for the snitch would crush all of the other objectives of the sport, making the entire game revolve around capturing the snitch. In practice, every player would be basically committed to spotting the snitch, rather than just the Seeker, so that the game would not in fact play out the way that Rowling assumes that it would.
We are in the middle of a controversy about the Transportation Security Administration, having to do with unnecessary delays in flying and unnecessary invasions of privacy. I had something I wanted to say about this which seems so obvious to me that I am almost embarrassed to say it, but then none of them real smart talkin’ heads says it, either, and I kind of think they’ve overlooked the obvious, so I’ll go ahead.
Virtues are always in conflict with one another. Any two virtues that you can conceive of will at some point collide. If one seeks to be both honest and modest, you will find at some point—particularly if you’re a really cool person like me—that you cannot be both honest and modest; you have to choose. If you attempt to be both fair and tolerant, if you attempt to be both generous and thrifty, if you attempt to be both open and cautious, if you attempt to be both clean and punctual or any combination of these, you will find that at some point these goals will collide, and you must choose one or the other.
If, in the collision of virtues, you declare that the value of one virtue is infinite, then that virtue must always prevail. This means that it will crush whatever other virtue it collides with. In real life this frequently has terrible consequences.
In the 1960s the Warren Court acted on the unstated assumption that a fair trial, free of certain flaws, was an infinite value—that whenever and wherever there was a taint upon a trial, the trial must be re-done. The ultimate consequence of this assumption was that tens of thousands of Americans became the victims of totally unnecessary violent crimes by ruthless criminals whose convictions and incarceration did not accord with the court’s lofty standards. The courts acted as if a fair trial was an infinite value—and thus allowed the pursuit of better trials, free of certain abuses, to crush any competing values with which it collided. Over the period of fifteen years it collided with the practical needs of law enforcement in a hundred different ways, and on every occasion the needs of law enforcement were crushed, since an infinite value always crushes whatever it collides with. Gradually, in a series of decisions beginning with California v. Chapman (1967) and culminating in Arizona v. Fulminante (1991), the high court placed limits on the infinite value of a fair trial, which allowed law enforcement to function rationally, which helped to bring the scourge of violent crime—unleashed by the Warren Court about 1963--under control.
At this point, speaking of fulminations, 30% of my audience will gasp in horror and attempt to instruct me on the "real" causes of the explosion in crime rates of the early 1960s. . .the baby boom, etc. To believe that demographic changes in the population caused the crime rate to explode is more ignorant than believing that Storm Davis was an outstanding pitcher when he went 19-7 in 1989. That’s a political position, masquerading as a data analysis. It is—like the confidence of the Kansas City Royals in the value of a "winning" pitcher like Storm Davis--something that people choose to believe rather than facing the real facts and acknowledging the obvious conclusion.
Here (in the TSA controversy) we have a similar situation, with similarly disastrous consequences to which the Transportation Security Administration has chosen to blind itself. The TSA has placed an infinite value on the safety of each flight. In fact, the FAA since its founding in 1958 has placed an infinite value on the safety of each flight. What has been accomplished by this pursuit of perfection is stunning. The frequency of flight crashes has been reduced, and reduced, and reduced, and reduced, until an astonishing level of safety has been achieved. There hasn’t been an airplane crash in the United States on a major carrier (knock wood) in more than nine years, since November, 2001. The policy of zero tolerance for risks of any kind, for the FAA, has been phenomenally successful, and, for whatever reason, has not clashed with any other values in a notable or harmful way.
The Transportation Security Administration also uses a zero-tolerance policy, but this unfortunately has collided with other values. The TSA places an infinite value on the safety of the airplanes, which means, unfortunately, that they place zero value on your time and your privacy—zero value, relative to the value placed on the prevention of a terrorist event. Let us suppose that the value of each human life was put at $100 million, and let us suppose that 150 lives would be lost if there were a crash. The cost of an event, then could be placed at $15 billion; let’s throw in another $5 billion for the cost of the airplane and the collateral damage on the ground, and make it $20 billion.
Well, what is the chance that Mrs. Esther Pugh, aged 93, flying from Ft. Lauderdale to Cleveland with her son Herbert, 61, is secretly a terrorist agent who will cause a plane crash if she is not thoroughly searched and humiliated before being allowed to the gate area? Let’s say it is .000 000 000 001; in reality it is much less than that, but let’s say. The cost of allowing her to proceed to the gate without any kind of security operation, then, could be estimated at $20,000,000,000 ($20 billion) times .000 000 000 001, or 2 cents. The cost of searching her—not the cost in terms of delays to others or the cost in terms of the value of privacy, but merely the cost in terms of hiring TSA workers to rummage through Esther’s private possessions and feel up Esther’s privates, plus the costs of their machinery and equipment—would probably be more like a dollar. Cost, $1.00. Benefit, 2 cents.
The only way this makes sense, then, is if we place an infinite value on the prevention of a terrorist act. If we place an infinite value on the prevention of a terrorist act, then the benefit is always greater than the cost, no matter what the cost might be.
Well, but what is the cost? The cost—as was the cost of the disastrous clumsiness of the Warren Court—is many human lives. American airline carriers carry about 800 million passengers a year. Let us estimate that the security apparatus wastes 10 minutes of each passenger’s time per flight. . .the loss of 10 minutes of life for each flying customer, those 10 minutes being both unproductive and unpleasant. That is a gross loss of 8 billion minutes.
And how many minutes are a lifetime? Assuming that the average traveler would live another 40 years and not counting the time spent sleeping, we could say that each 14 million minutes would be a lifetime. The TSA is, in effect, killing about 570 people a year, ten minutes at a time. It’s a conservative estimate; it doesn’t include the time invested by the TSA employees themselves or, for example, the time that people lose by the need to be at the airport early to allow for the worst-case scenarios caused by airport security delays, or the time that is lost by taxpayers in earning the money that goes to pay the TSA to force us through time-consuming delays and humiliating searches.
The 570 lives is a conservative estimate, but the number is not the real point; the real point is that lifetimes are being lost while lives are being saved—therefore, that a rational accounting might be helpful. We have gotten into this pickle for a simple reason: that we have placed an infinite value on one virtue—the safety of flights. All virtues collide at some point, and, when an infinite value collides with any other value, it is as if the other value did not exist, since it does not matter what the other value might be.
(This article grew out of a conversation with my son, Isaac. Isaac objects that in fact the FAA’s zero tolerance policy for risk has had very high costs in its collision with other virtues. We should now be able to fly from San Francisco to Paris, he argues, in an hour or so, by having airplanes that rocketed into space. We are unable to do so because the FAA’s insistence on zero risk has inhibited innovation, forcing us to fly around on 20-year-old airplanes because those are the only airplanes that the FAA is certain are 100% safe. Objection noted.)
Chemicals
How many chemical compounds do you use in the process of getting yourself cleaned up and ready for the day? I use nine to eleven, which seems like an awful lot, but I would bet that it’s below the American average. I would assume that most everybody uses soap, shampoo, toothpaste, mouthwash and deodorant; that’s five. I use soap for parts of my body which shall remain nameless and body wash for things like arms and chestal areas, so that’s six. I spray my toes with an anti-fungal agent (seven), and put a little talcum powder in my shorts to keep me dry; that’s eight. If I neglect my heels they will dry out and crack, literally rendering me almost unable to walk or walking in blood, so the stuff I put on my heels is nine; actually I vary that among several different products—petroleum jelly, heel cream and a product called Heel-tastic, but I only use one at a time, so I’ll only count one. I know two people who actually use Crisco on their heels, and I have once or twice become so desperate while travelling that I smeared margarine on my heels. Believe me, letting it go is not an option. You’ll understand when you get old.
I store my contact lenses in some sort of solution, but that’s not really a part of the cleaning-up process, so I’m not going to count that. I don’t normally use hair conditioner. . ..occasionally I will, but not as long as my hair behaves itself, so that’s a partial. Sometimes, after gargling with mouthwash, I will also gargle with hydrogen peroxide (USP), so that’s another partial, and I’ll count myself at nine to eleven.
I don’t shave, so I don’t normally use shaving lotion or after-shave, but many people do. I’m under the impression that some shavers now use a third product, but I don’t really know. I don’t use any kind of hair spray or hair gel or anything like that, but obviously a lot of people do. I don’t use hand lotion or skin lotion of any kind, but hotels have four products they provide—soap, shampoo, conditioner and hand lotion—so presumably a large number of people must use that. My wife must have fifteen or twenty other products that she uses. . .bath oils, and hair sprays and hair treatments and hand lotions and Oil of Olay type stuff and face creams, and of course perfumes or other smelly stuff that she uses sometimes. People who have dentures have to use a denture paste, but my artificial teeth are bolted into my head, so I don’t have to do that. I probably should have used a dentist for that, but you know, I got the nail gun for Christmas. Presumably people who use hearing aids have to use something to keep those from chafing, I don’t know. I don’t use any kind of eye wash or eye moistener, but I’m sure a lot of people do. Many people use chapstick or something every day and several times a day to keep their lips from cracking, although I’ve been fortunate enough not to need that. People who have acne or bad skin patches use powders to cover them up. Some people use a moustache wax, but I don’t think that’s very common, and anyway I’m not sure if that should count.
I’m not talking about medicines, or even about stuff like acne creams, and I’m not talking about the pills and vitamins and whatnot that old people have to take. I’m not even talking about stuff like lipstick and fingernail polish. I’m just talking about the OCC, the Optional Cleaning Chemicals. How many chemicals do you use to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet? How many does an average person use? Obviously this number is increasing—150 years ago nobody used toothpaste--but how fast is it increasing? How high will it go? Do young people use more products, because they are more concerned about their appearance, or old people, because we are more concerned with not falling apart in the middle of the afternoon? Do people in prison get something to put on their heels? They can’t let them walk around in blood, right? I’m pretty sure that would be illegal, so there must be some provision for that. How about deodorant? Do prisoners use deodorant? Anybody know?
Felix
I’m doing some research about voting patterns in the Cy Young Award vote over time, but that’s taking longer than expected. I should have that up by early next week.