I wouldn't say that I do. There are two roadblocks: 1) Psychological to radical change, and 2) Practical problems with making that work. It is true that teams now carry 12 pitchers, but a lot of those back-of-the-staff guys would probably get shelled if exposed to a larger role. I will say this: that the structure and use of pitching staffs has been changing constantly for more than 100 years, and will not arrive at a stopping point until it arrives at a logical stopping point. Where we are now is certainly not a logical stopping point.

Right; that's what I was trying to say, but you said it better than I did. In last year's playoffs Golden State (67-15) played New Orleans (45-37) in the first round, and Atlanta (62-22) played Brooklyn (38-44). Well, a 67-15 team is going to beat a 45-37 team 79% of the time, and a 62-22 team is going to beat a 38-44 team 76% of the time. That is nothing at all like a baseball playoff, which normally involves relatively evenly matched teams, and literally never involves mismatches on that level. In baseball it is unusual for a playoff game to be 55% predictable, let alone 75%. So you can't make any inferences about BASEBALL seven-game playoffs based on data from BASKETBALL seven-game playoffs, because it just not mathematically similar.

Well, no, they're not; they're still attempting to bully those who don't see the world the way they do into silence, and they can't win the argument until they give up on that and engage in more honest debate. But I think it is time to retire the canard about the "40 years ago (these people) said we were on the verge of a new ice age." It IS true that when Al Gore started talking about climate change, he was initially certain that we were headed into a new ice age, and he transitioned from that alarmist position to the opposite one without ever acknowledging that he had done so. But the science in this area is SO far beyond the science of 40 years ago that it's like criticizing modern computers based on your experiences with a 1978 Apple. It's just not relevant anymore.

1) The Yankees are a standard by which other teams are measured in exactly the same way that the Republican Party is a standard of morality. 2) It isn't that people THINK OF the Mets as an expansion team; most people DON"T think of the Mets as an expansion team. The Mets ARE an expansion team, even though most people no longer think of them that way.

Yes, when I read Helter Skelter, I also thought that Bugliosi had "invented" the idea of Helter Skelter to provide an explanation for what was essentially inexplicable. . . .not that Bugliosi had LITERALLY invented it out of whole cloth, but that he had exaggerated that element of the story because he thought the jury would need to see an identifiable motive. But reading Jeff Guinn's book about Manson, which contains ten times more inside-the-circle information about Manson than Helter Skelter does, it is clear that that's not true. Manson was confused about what he was doing, but he clearly WAS trying to start a race war, and he clearly did believe, in his twisted and bizarre way, that this was going to happen. Manson's story was that when the race war started he was going to lead his followers into a hole in the desert floor, where they would hide out in a magical underground land until the race war was over. When you hear that, you think, "Well, Manson surely didn't BELIEVE that; that was just something he told his drug-addled followers to hold their attention." But Manson personally spent weeks and weeks in the miserable desert heat in death valley, trying to find that hole in the desert floor, usually just him and one other guy driving around in a Dune Buggy, asking random strangers what they knew about any holes in the desert floor. So if he didn't believe in it, what was he doing? It is true that the Manson family also killed about 15 other people, other than the Tate-LaBianca murders, but most of those were related in some way to the same cause.

I thought you already had.

Oh, I thought you had made the original post. Somebody in another e-mail, right next to yours in my queue, credited the original e-mail to you. Sorry.

I'll confuse you again later.

No.

Thanks. But don't you think the Nationals and Mariners should have been listed, just as a courtesy?

Well. . .you're welcome to try to prove that it is. Again, I haven't seen this Bullpen WAR stat, and I'm speculating about in isolation. I would be wary of any tool which tends to tell us that a manager who has one good reliever is using his bullpen more effectively than a manager who has four good relievers.

Small sample size? The Game One starters pitch again in Game Four? Could be, or it could be defeatism. Down 3-0, some teams no doubt lose the confidence that they can overcome.

Well, they clearly weren't hippies. One could make an argument that some OTHER difference between them and the violent radicals should place them somewhere than as a violent radical group. But reading Bryan Burroughs' book about the radicals and then Jeff Guinn's excellent book about Manson, I really was surprised at how much Manson had in common with the others. Many of the violent radical groups were actually led by ex-cons.

It's a very question. I don't know that I have ever seen data related to it.

Right. . I did mis-read the post and respond to it inappropriately. But, responding to it more appropriately. . .your original post should never have been published, because the data is not relevant to the discussion. We were talking about BASEBALL, and thus talking about games which are essentially random or near-random because the games are functionally random. Basketball is NOT functionally random; one team in an NBA series is obviously going to beat the other one 80% of the time. It's not anything LIKE baseball in the relevant characteristic. My mistake was. . .well (a) I didn't read the post as carefully as I should have, and (b) I assumed that you were posting relevant data, when in reality you were posting irrelevant data. Stuff that happens in the NBA doesn't have anything to do with this discussion. When you talked about 320 series seven-game series, I just (without realizing it) assumed that there COULDN'T be 320 series that stated 3-0 one way, because that's way more 7-game series than have ever been played in baseball, and football doesn't have seven-game series. I didn't realize that you were dragging in hundreds of non-relevant examples. I read your post too quickly, didn't process it properly, and made a mess of the discussion.