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And there's no punishment for him doing it. And that's that. Neither you nor I can envision how he would get disciplined for it, so I'm having trouble seeing what the problem is. Besides, didn’t you say on the page before this that tampering isn't something that's done by GMs and agents? Isn’t that how this whole sidebar started?

I guess you had to be there. 😏😉

In your example, a GM gets fired, he's bitter, Boras makes millions per year, and ... then what? That's where your hypothetical ends.

What I am talking about is not simply the ability to play the position. It's about the value the player is producing on the field with their actual defense. I get the concept of positional adjustment for a CF over a 1B, that the value of a CF's defense is higher than 1B, because the average CF provides more value than an average 1B, and that a typical CF does more with his defense to win games over a season than a typical 1B does with his defense. That reflects value accrued on the field during games. Understood. I also get that when a team is constructing a roster, a CF who provides better defense provides more value to winning to the team with his hitting that's the same as the 1B's and his position-average defense, than a 1B does to the team with his hitting that's the same as the CF's and his position-average defense. IOW, hitting being equal, the difference reflects that estimated value between the two based solely on each player's defense at their respective positions for the purpose of roster construction. Also understood. What I don't get is the idea of looking back at a DH's defensive contribution, as reported on his card by defensive WAR, as being a negative number, because DHs do not contribute to defense at all during games. Since DHs provide zero defense, the numbers for defense on a DH's card should be zero, or blank, or n/a—take your pick. My understanding of the difference is one of measuring actual defensive performance for the purpose of providing an accounting looking back at the games played, which is what I am talking about, versus the estimation of potential defensive performance for the purpose of constructing a roster looking forward before the games are played, which is what you are talking about. Therefore, I am advocating separating the measurement of defensive runs accrued on the field as a result of actual defense performed, as a backward-looking metric, from defensive runs estimated when constructing a roster, as a forward-looking metric. Does that work for you?

If a stat says a DH is -1.7 wins in his defense, I think there's something wrong with the stat. Maybe I'm just too stupid to see the logic of how it accurately measures defensive performance after all, but I'm not the only one.

"Who are you, and what have you done with Marjorie Taylor Greene?"

"My problem" is the DH with the -1.7 defensive WAR, suggesting he's losing 1.7 games for his team with his defense without even picking up a glove. I've explained why over and over, so if you don't understand what I mean by now, you never will, so please let's drop that part of the discussion. I agree that WAA is no more the perfect stat than WAR is. Neither stat is the end all be all for all circumstances at all times. WAR is good for economics and roster construction. WAA is good for comparing player performances on the field, especially among those with a lot of trigger time under their belts. But even if it's a better measure with more playing time, I don't think the idea that a guy with 50 PA could have a better WAA than a guy with 600 is anything like a problem. That kind of thing already happens with WAR right now. There are lots of guys during just the wild card era with 600+ PAs who've had negative WAR, and lots of guys with right around 50 PAs during the same period who've had better than that. All that said, I will not stop using WAR. I just think there might be something out there that better reflects value in areas where WAR is deficient, such as in characterizing a guy who never picks up a glove all season as being -1.7 wins below replacement, as if a freely-available replacement DH would be +1.7 wins better with the glove.

Trump is a living, breathing Get Rich Quick scheme. There’s a certain type of person attracted to working for him, and it’s not a person willing to put in the work to establish a long and respected career in Washington. At least not anymore. I have long been convinced the main reason people glom onto him—including people like Lindsey and Mario who, despite whatever jokes you care to come up, inarguably had respected careers already established in Washington—is that they are making a bet on him winning in the end, propped up by his army of red-hatted flying monkeys, after which their loyalty will result in them getting showered with riches. Trump has made it clear that the only choice for anybody who wants any success in any field, even beyond governing, is either abject loyalty to him, or certain career death (at minimum). What people are going to find out that the only shower they are going to end up with is a Trump golden shower.

Right, and beyond that, you can’t just disengage from him and live your normal quiet life. That would be like disengaging from the Mob/the Outfit and trying to live your normal life.

I don’t recognize this—what’s it from?

How would backchannel discussions of the type we’re speculating on lose Boras every player under contract or future free agent contracts? Meaning, how would that work in practice? Can you help me understand by providing a hypothetical to explain your hypothesis? Boras uses back channel to talk to team about signing player already under contract elsewhere, someone finds out … then what?

Wins Above Retina.

Applying positional adjustment for defense is totally valid, to the degree they can demonstrate, for example, that the average shortstop gains x runs per season and the average first baseman loses y runs per season, just by the nature of how the positions relate to one another during the course of play. But I believe that should apply only to evaluation of play on the field, and not to the economic question of player replacement. After all, if I am studying the performance of Hall of Famers, their level above freely available major leaguers is far less relevant.

Yes, they need to decouple advanced defensive statistical evaluation from the economic-oriented metric that is Wins Above Replacement and create a separate metric that has a baseline of average. I think Wins Above Average (WAA) was supposed to accomplish that, but I don’t know how its calculations comport to WAR, of which I have a basic understanding, and I also don;t know whether or how it includes defense.

This guy was from another planet.

She apparently has an even smaller understanding of the fear and pressure Democratic lawmakers like Melissa Hortman and Josh Shapiro, who are victims of violent rhetoric common in certain Republican circles, must feel.

I learned early on that the closer I followed them when they do that, the more likely one guy will slow down to the slower guy’s pace, and occasionally, they would both slow down to the 45 minimum, just for jollies, I assume.

He probably had no concept of what you readily thought of. I am constantly astounded by how other people seem to have no clue about effective and efficient driving techniques that are like second nature to me. Here’s one: People who constantly dive into parking lot spots on angles. Then they have to pull out a little, then pull in a little, then pull out a little more and pull back in, going back and forth in and out of the spot until they are perfectly lined up so they can fit all the way in. They have no clue about the concept of swinging wide into the parking spot so you pull into it straight and have an acceptable if not perfect landing the first time.

You have a basic misunderstand of what James Brown is trying to get across with this lyric. He is not saying black people are too lazy or too entitled to open up the door themselves —because, I guess, it’s a stupid door, how easy is it to just open one, for cry eye?—and so they refuse to try to better themselves because they insist white people open up the door and formally invite them to participate in American society. What he is getting across is that nearly four centuries of obstacles had made it practically impossible for black people to simply do the same things white people do to succeed. White people think it’s just hard work and gumption that makes them successful—black people know there have strong institutional advantages built into the societal system that prevent them on balance from basic levels of success since America’s time immemorial. It was a lot more explicit when James wrote the song fifty-plus years ago, but it is still strongly implicit today. You might be inclined here to point to affirmative action policies as leveling the playing field between black and white people. But benefiting from AA has always been akin to hitting the lottery. It was designed to be a quota type system rather than universal policy, apparently intended less to lift up an entire people than it was to assuage racial guilt over the historical oppression of that people by the people who literally put themselves in charge of them. It’s not that white people are obliged to literally open a door and formally invite black people to be basic citizens. It’s that the institutions need to continue to remove the obstacles that are still in the way of black people (and other people of color, particularly those indigenous to the Americas) that prevent them from being accepted as true equals by the white people still firmly in control of society.

I have questions. Why are we cheering her saying she still defends Trump against the Epstein charges? Since when did iOS start hyphenating running text? Who’s Natalie?

The scaling part of it makes sense. That part is inside the question’s room. I’m having trouble getting through the question’s door.

That’s incredible considering how much better pitchers generally were 20 years after he started playing. Age 38, 233 OPS+ … talk about locked in.

Which basically tells us that the rate of success of getting away with it is super high, because even with the potential cost of getting caught, they all do it anyway, since they all deem the risk to be worth it. High rate of success multiplied by the benefit of succeeding usually explains behavior other people find inexplicable or even impossible due to the draconian penalties attached to it.

Dǐck Stuart is one of those guys who played within my lifetime (technically) who almost never registers with me as I think about players from his era. Talk about Dr Strangeglove: he had over 200 home runs and still couldn’t clear 8 WAR for his career. Amazingly, there are five other 200-home-run hitters who had even fewer wins even having hit 200+ homers, like Dante Bichette and Jose Guillen and Mark Reynolds.

My question is, how can the dWAR for DHs be anything but zero? How does a DH lose 1.7 games for his team without picking up a glove? The only way any of this comes close to making any sense for me is if 1Bs generally have negative dWARs and SS generally have positive dWARs because the average 1B loses runs for his team and the average SS gains runs for his team, taken against the average of all eight positions, solely by the nature of positional relativity. That would help explain the difference in dWAR between players at those two positions—but that still wouldn’t explain DH dWAR for me. I’m just trying to make the concept click for me mathematically to help me understand how individual players at positions contribute defensively to runs and wins on the field during games, versus accepting it as a purely economic concept applied primarily to roster management. We can just go ahead and drop it here since our going round and round like this is no fun for anyone, not even me. I can pursue the question on my own in my spare time.