FanGraphs Audio: Dave Cameron on the Championship Series
Episode 495
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses the Giants and Cardinals and Royals and Orioles and Royals.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 36 min play time.)
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Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
On the Arc of MLB In-Game Strategy bending toward Sabermetrics …
What’s more likely — considerably, so much so that, if there were a market to do so, I would BET on it — before the MLB decider class (i.e. what viewer-numbers-oriented media call “managers”, “field managers”, or, most disturbingly, “field generals”] would risk even the mere PERCEPTION that they’ve given up in-game decision-making power (whether to a specialist, logarithm, a data-analysis, computer program, a calculator, a quant, a squint, a nerd, a wonk, a saberhead, or any combination hereof … tho, I could see some room for an owner’s dweeb teenage or collegiate son, or a consultant “czar”), is that somewhere in real-time coverage land, a.k.a. the blogosphere, an in-game discussion will so become widely perceived as indispensible, for being authoritative or intriguing or hip or cool or whatever reason, that it will be picked up for direct relay by the mainscreen content oligarchs & mainlined, in largely unadulterated strenght, to their audiences.
Online blog discussions are a step in that direction. JABO seems like another step in that direction. The goal, of the viewer being provided the option of having a simultaneous Tango going on in one corner of the screen provided by the content vendor, is what I foresee, as ALMOST CERTAINLY an intervening step before the Era of the GreatManManager goes down with a diplodocan thud.
And IMO were talking a few years for this, certainly before inauguration of the next two-term Democratic minority preznit after HuffinClinton.
Cocaine is a helluva drig
Yeah, I ran off at the keyboard on that. But there IS a point.
I played ‘serious’ competitive sports all thru my teens, thru h.s. & college, right into my early mid 20s, and several sports for another couple of decades thereafter. But I was also a good student, and ended up in an academic profession. What I observed, right from the start, was that athletes are, on average, notably more conservative & reactionary when it comes to culture than, well, certainly university types, and the professions (medicine, engineering, law etc), and most folks who lives in urban, even suburban & exurban, environments. Elvis do’s didn’t hit sports until Elvis was in self-parody; Beatles do’s didn’t hit sports after the appearance on Ed Sullivan’s show until Beatle mania raged for a half decade & by then we’d had Kent State & Woodstock & not even the Beatles had Beatles’ do’s.
Cameron foresees ‘the day when’ MLB field managers operate by the Book — not the Good Book, not archaically-biased received baseball “wisdom”, but the Book of Tom Tango et all, the Book that shows the costs associated with managers’ in-game strategic decisions. And I’m saying that ‘day’ comes the day AFTER American baseball audiences, especially fans media at the games, routinely deride managers for illiteracy.
I want Carson to diagram that sentence
An average of 8 to 10 dozen baseballs are used in a game, according to this.
http://www.foxsports.com/north/story/major-league-baseballs-have-a-short-shelf-life-062912
I’m less interested in the average number of balls used per game and more interested in the extremes. Theoretically the lowest number of balls used in a game is obviously one; in practice of course it’s rare for a single ball to last through 3 outs. But in the recent era — since the mid-90s strike when (IIRC) the practice of regularly tossing balls into the stands at the end of the half-innings was instituted by MLB — I wonder what is the fewest balls used in a regular 9 inning game? And what is the most? I know the umpires mud up so many dozen baseballs before a game — has there ever been a game where they started running close to the end of them?
First time listening to a fangraphs podcast and I thought Carson’s amateur hosting skills unintentionally funny.
It’s intentional funny. You just haven’t listened enough.
Cistulli has a very subtle, dry as an October leaf, sort of humorous bent. For the uninitiated, it may came across hacky or amateurish, but trust me, it’s a hosting with purposeful humorous stylings.
It’s like passive-aggressive emo, especially in the dim-down-trodden-drone/whimsically tyrannical-boss dynamic he cultivates with Cameron. I agree it’s not at all amateurish: Cistulli’s clearly thought this out & worked at it. But, “subtle”? Don’t think so, certainly not after even one listen.