The Great #6org Discussion – Part 4
Okay, wrapping things up.
So what I’m getting at is that the only way to have a satisfying conversation about this sort of thing is to develop some objective standards and quantifiable measurements for these rankings.
This was one of the big complaints about the series from many people – too much opinion, not enough quantification. So, next year, we’ll do things differently. We’ll be far more clear about the respective ratings for each area and the weights that are given to those strengths and weaknesses. There will always be subjectivity in the rankings, of course, since we’re dealing with perceptions of things, but I agree that we can do a better job of explaining things. We’ll try to make them more transparent next year.
You show no acknowledgement for your ranking, if anything you seem more entrenched in your view, when tons of reasonable people have i think made some decisive points in your direction.
That was not at all the intention of this little project. If that’s how it has come across, I’m sorry. I hoped that we could actually have a conversation about the thoughts that went into the ranking, getting beyond basic assumptions of bias and discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of the logic that I tried to employ. Based on the responses, it looks like it wasn’t all that successful. That’s somewhat disappointing, but understandable I guess.
But, it seems like most people aren’t really interested in talking about the sausage making process. They just want an apology or an admission of error. So, this is for all of you who fall into that category.
You were right. I was wrong. The Mariners have had a bad year. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have ranked them as highly.
There you go. Tomorrow – back to baseball.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I enjoy about learning how the sausage is made. I hope I’m in the majority and that the minority is merely very vocal.
I agree, Double06.
Dave, this was a very nice and thoughtful series of posts. It strikes me as very, very mature, and I really liked it.
Thank you very much. I never wanted your head on a pike, and I, at least, am very impressed by your willingness to engage your critics.
Really? These posts are rife with faux-sincerity. Even in his admission of guilt… reread it again:
“You were right. I was wrong.”
Childish and patronizing. He took all of the comments and focused on the unconstructive ones. He attempted to address the issues people had with his line of reasoning, but he never really engaged them fully.
“The Mariners have had a bad year. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have ranked them as highly.”
Predicting a good or bad year was nowhere near the point of the original exercise. He knows that and we (the intelligent reader) know that. We know the Ms had a better than decent chance to go deep into the playoffs this year considering how they were built, and a “bad year” is expected some of the time. He admitted no guilt, no wrongdoing. He acted as if he was talking to a child during the entire exercise because of a few vocal posters who were acting childish.
In the end, Dave truly does have difficulty defending himself in a public forum. It’s too bad because he is a smart and talented guy. Even in the daily chats he shows hints of disrespect when it’s far from necessary.
Hopefully he loses the chip on his shoulder sooner rather than later, because this site is only getting bigger.