Thanks. 

 

Two questions to myself:  (1) can we quantify the degree to which a short series is dramatic, exciting, or "good", and 

 

(2)  is there any point to doing that, if we can do it?

 

 

As to whether we can do it; well, yes, obviously we can do it.  You place values on things like close games, swings in the chance to win, unusual or unprecedented occurences, and special occurrences which add interest, ie the emergence of a new superstar, a dramatic last hurrah for an old superstar (ie, Clemente in 1971), outside events feeding into the narrative (ie, the earthquake in 1989 in the very city where both teams played, or the 9-11 attacks in 2001 not long before the series in which New York played.   If you make an organized and intelligent evaluation of these things, of course you can quantify the degree to which a World Series in special.   

 

As to whether there is any point in doing that, there are very good reasons for doing it.  I remember when I was working on the first Historical Abstract, early 1980s, I wsa looking for the best World Series on the 1950s.    Reading through play-by-play of the 1953 World Series in some old book, I was absolutely astonished to discover what a great World Series in the 1953 series was.   It has no real impact on discussions; people don't talk about it like the 1955 series (Podres and the Dodgers win) or the 1956 series (Larson's perfect game), but it was just FULL of dramatic events.   

 

Or the 1985 series; not long after that series ended, I read a note from a national reporter saying that the series had lacked drama.  But I attended 4 games of that series, and it was PACKED with dramatic moments, chock full of them.  Even the game 7 blowout was anything by routine; the Cardinals imploded, and Saberhagen pitched one of the Greatest Game 7s of all time.  

 

Baseball does a fantastic job of saving its history.  Baseball does a better job of saving its history than almost anything else you can name.  It does this by film, by legend, and by literature--but it starts with documentation.   People still know Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax because we KNOW how great they were, because we documented it at the time.  Bob Gibson, Tim McCarver, Steve Carlton, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Harry Caray, Mickey Lolich, Denny McLain, Carl Yastrzemski, Rico Petrocelli, Frank Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Casey Stengel, Ed Kranepool. . .I could spin off the names of 75 baseball players or managers or coaches from the 1960s who still have vivid, multi-dimensional images known to a very large community of baseball fans.   Let's see somebody name 75 scientists of the 1960s, or 75 educators, or 75 politicians, or 75 military leaders, or 75 architects or artists or engineers or economists or humanitarians.   

 

Baseball does a fantastic job of saving its history, and that starts with documenting, documenting what is great, what is good, what is interesting, and then filling in with the relationship to greatness of what is less interesting (Art Shamsky, Greg Goosen, Marv Throneberry, Ed Charles, Russ Snyder.)  So documenting, and evaluating as your are documenting, is a valuable and vital part of doing this job. 

 Well, it is certainly true that the playoffs that year were fantastic.   The ALCS I think was regarded by many as one of the two most exciting playoff series ever at that time, with the Houston/Philadelphia playoff in 1980. 

 Yes, I would agree with most or all of that.  

It would make a lot bigger difference if you had to pitch Ned Beatty.   

 

Yeah, but here's the reason those things don't work the way you think they will.   There isn't ONE variable operating in a real-life test; there are hundreds and hundreds of random variables that are also operating.  ONE change in a context of hundreds of random variables becomes almost impossible to detect.   Guidry DID pitch in that series; he pithed the fourth game, and won the game 2-1.  If he had pitched the first game, he wouldn't have been able to pitch the fourth.  The effect Guidry isn't Guidry pitching or not pitching; it is Guidry pitching one game as opposed to a different one.  Yeah, it is conceivable that Guidry could have made a second start in the playoff, but that's a crap shoot; that kind of thing very rarely happens.  

 

I rode in an elevator with Ned Beatty one time.  It was a hot day, a nice hotel in Chicago.  I don't remember why I was there or exactly when it was, maybe 1990 or 2000; no idea.  It was a hot day and Beatty was carrying was wearing a suit and carrying his own luggage.  He was sweating very profusely and his face had turned beet red.  He saw from my reaction that I had recognized him and nodded politely and said "Hello".   I knew he was short, but I didn't realize he was THAT short.   Wikipedia lists him at 5-8, but he looked much shorter.  

 Yes, it certainly matters. 

The speed of the pitch at the moment it exits the pitcher's hand is a fixed point.   It's speed some distance from the hand is a constantly changing variable.    It's speed if measured HERE is different from its speed if measured 10 feet from here.   That is obviously not as desirable.  

 

On the Red Sox, probably Rafael Devers throws as hard as many of our pitchers do, or almost as hard.  Certainly Hunter Renfro does.  But if you measure the velocity of Devers throws when they reach first base and the speed of the pitcher's throws when they cross home plate, they would be different.   Two guys throwing the same speed, it is better to measure them as throwing the same speed rather than to measure them as throwing different speeds.

 

It's not really a matter of "accuracy" as much as it is of consistency.  If you compare Goose Gossage' radar readings to Aroldis Chapman, you need to be comparing the same thing, rather than using Gossage's reading as the ball crossed the plate and Chapman's when the ball came out of his hand.  

 

Even setting that aside, the speed when the ball crosses the plate is obviously NOT the most relevant instant.  The batter doesnt swing when the pitch gets to home plate.  If a batter could swing when the pitch gets to home plate, the league batting average would be.700.   The batter has to make the relevant decisions about whether to swing and where to swing when the ball is 30-40 feet in front of the plate, or more.  Unless you're Gary Sheffield and or Andrew McCutchen and can generate bat speed in some fantastically short period of time.  

 OK. 

 I fall back on:  it's a sport.  Lots of pennants have been determined by one game.  The 1964 Phillies and also the 1964 Cincinnati Reds lost the pennant by one game to the 1964 Cardinals.  It's a sport; those are the rules.   Were the Phillies somehow ENTITLED to a three-game playoff against the Reds so that they could then have a 5-game playoff against the Cardinals, because they only lost by one game?   Would that have been only fair?  In 1967 Detroit and Minnesota won only one game less than Boston.   So what?  Them's the rules.   You win or you lose.   If you lose a game 7-6, you're not entitled to a 10th inning because you only lost by one run.  

 

The notion that the second-place team in that division is somehow entitled to a longer playoff series, because they won 100 games. . ..so what?  Doesn't have anything to do with anything.   Imbalance, inequity, bad breaks, a lack of opportunity.  .these are a part of every sport.   That's what MAKES it a sport.  You cannot pound all of the inequity out of it, and still HAVE a sport.   When you try to do that, you make the season longer, you make the games longer, and eventually you're going to wind up before a judge, with lawyers arguing about who actually won the series.  

 I don't believe in the whole theory.  It seems like nonsense to me.  Perhaps my thinking was unduly shaped by the 1978 Bucky Dent game.  I was a Royals fan at the time; the KC media was ecstatic when the Yankees lost on the last day of the regular season, which meant that they had have a one-game playoff against the Red Sox, which meant that Guidry would have to pitch that game, which meant that Guidry would not be available early in the ALCS, even if the Yankees beat Boston.   It was like the Royals had already won the ALCS, because Guidry was out. 

 

But it didn't make any difference.   It seems to me that it NEVER makes any difference that you could measure.   I did a study of a related issue one time; I am sure it is posted here somewhere.   The issue was, how much do teams lose when they have to play a long series of games without a day off.   THe answer was:  NOTHING.    You can compute each team's chances of winning a game based on their season's won-lost record and which is the home team, so I figured that and set that as the baseline.   How much do teams drop off the baseline if they play on six consecutive days, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. . . .

 

The answer is, THEY DON'T.   It doesn't make any measurable difference if one team is rested and the other is not.   Unless you have some different way to measure it which shows something different.  

 I have no memory of writing that, and no understanding whatsover of why I would have said that.   I'm sure I must have believed it at the time. 

 Right; I have not seen the documentary you refer to, but i wanted to make the same point in answering the original question, but I had something else I had to do, so I rushed through it.  

 

I don't know that I would go so far as to assert that Ryan threw 110; that seems to me to be pushing the evidence to Ryan's advantage.  If he threw 101 on the radar guns available at that time, that was probably one pitch, you know?  Next pitch might have been 98. 

 

This is my understanding of it. ..and those who made the documentary you refer to probably had a tighter grip on some of this than I do, and I encourage you to watch it if you are interested in the subject.   

 

But TV networks got radar guns about 1977 or 1978, and we started to see radar readings then.  Ryan (and Goose Gossage) would throw 97 and 98, sometimes 99, on those guns.  There was a key moment in the post-season, 1980 or 1981, when one of the networks was using a NEWER model of radar gun. . . .I kind of half-remember the brand names, so i won't get into that. . . but one of the networks had been provided a new radar gun which was getting faster readings, 2 or 3 MPH faster.   Jim Palmer said something about not believing the gun, which triggered backlash from the company which had provided the new guns, and they explained that it was the OLD readings that were wrong; THEIR readings werre actually the first ones that were right, because they were picking up the ball sooner, and, since it decelerates as it travels, they got higher readings.  I believe that they threatened to sue, the network had to apologize for Palmer's comment, and the newer radar guns, which got faster readings, took over the market, by 1983. 

 

BUT THIS STORY THEN REPEATED ITSELF TWO MORE TIMES.  When I joined the Red Sox in late 2002 and started sitting in the scout seats, there were two styles of guns that the scouts used, so that you would look to your right and the scout there would have a reading of 94, and then you would look to your left and the scout would have a reading of 91.   So you would look to see whether it was a JUGS gun or the other one, Pro-something.  

 

Well, the scouts unified around the faster guns within a year or so.  But ten years later, this happened AGAIN; the guns got faster again.  They got faster readings because they were picking the ball up sooner, closer to the pitcher's hand.  

 

So Ryan's 97-98, sometimes 99 in 1977 and 1978. . .what is that now?   It's AT LEAST 104, maybe 106, not sure I'm going to buy 110.  

 

But Ryan by 1978 was past 30, and he had thrown more than 2,000 major league innings, and his biggest strikeout seasons were behind him.   So is it possible he was a couple of MPH faster in 1972?  Sure.   

 

As I say, I have not seen the documentary, but I have not seen the evidence that would justify pinning Ryan's pitch at 110.   But suggesting that today's pitchers throw harder than anybody did in the 1970s.. . . .I don't see the evidence for THAT, either.   

 Oh, absolutely not.  Ryan threw MUCH harder than any active pitcher who is clocked at 100; there is NO doubt about that.   A guy like Aroldis Chapman who throws 103, 104; you can argue that he might be as fast as Ryan.  Walter probably threw about 92-95 average, topped out at 97 occasionally.  That's my guess.  

 Right; I agree with SOME of that.  But sports are inherently unfair, and the only way to make them absolutely fair is to make them not a sport.  

 Well, I am OK with two wild cards in a league AS LONG AS IT IS JUST A ONE-GAME PLAYOFF.  If it becomes a 3-game playoff, then I'm totally opposed to it.  I'm OK with it as long as the wild card teams are put at a competitive disadvantage.   

 

You. . . and I apologize for speaking "for" you when I don't have an in-depth of your personal opinion. . .but you think we need to be fair to those wild card teams, give them a fair chance in the post-season.   Well, shit, they HAD a fair chance.  It is called "Winning your division".  They're not entitled to ANOTHER full and fair opportunity.  

 

And again, sports CANNOT be fair, and be sports.   It can't be done.  Sometimes you get 15 hits and lose; sometimes you get 3 hits and win.  Is that fair?

 

It is fair, because THOSE ARE THE RULES.   And the same with the one-game wild card; it is fair because THOSE ARE THE RULES.   And I'm OK with it as long as the rules say that some second-rate pretend champion DOESN"T get a full and fair shot to win the World Series; he just gets a little crack of an opening, and if he can hit that crack of an opening hard enough, then he wins.   But he doesn't deserve anything more than that.  

 

 

 

 Wow.   Thanks.  

 

He will relapse, but with luck he will derive some permanent benefit from it.   His short-term walk rate is not representative of what will happen in the future.  He is drawing a ton of walks in the short run because people still think they can get him out by throwing crap four inches outside the zone.  Once they realize they can't do that anymore, they'll start to come in; he'll have a hot streak, but he'll fall into a slump at some point, he'll start pressing, and his instincts will take over and he'll regress back into swinging at everything.  I've seen it happen 100 times: i know that is how the story goes.

 

But that is not to say that he won't derive permanent benefits from experience, and won't be a better hitter going forward.   He might very well do that.  

 

In psychology there is something called "instinctive drift".   All animals have behaviors that cannot be trained out of them, because that's just who they are.   Some animals, for example, instinctively "wash" things by rubbing them; not just food, they just do that.  If you punish them when they do that, they'll do MORE of it, rather than less.   

 

I noted many years ago that free swingers are like that.  When they fall into a slump, they fall back on their first impulse, which is to hit the first thing they see.   But that's good information about Baez; thanks.