Cuba beat Canada 8-5. Down 2-3 in the Eighth inning, Cuba exploded for 6 runs to snatch back the Gold medal play-off berth. If Canada had another arm who could beguile the Cuban hitters, there was a distinct probablity of an All-Upset Gold medal play-off. They were a mere 6 outs away from that very possibility. Oh well, the Universe righted itself in favour of the favourites just in the nick of time as the Cubans stormed into the Grand Final in fantastic style. The Canadian staff struck out 5, walked 3, and conceded 8 runs on 13 hits. The Cubans struck out 8 but walked 6, conceding 5 runs on 9 hits. The only homerun of the game belonged to Ryan Radmanovich of Canada.
Cuba now face the Aussies in the Gold medal play off, while Canada faces Japan in the Bronze medal play-off. To re-cap the results from the preliminaries, Cuba beat Australia 4-1; Japan beat Canada 9-1. However let's not forget that Japan beat Cuba 5-3, Canada thumped Australia 11-0, so there's no reason to believe any of the last 4 are not in the same, tight league and the eventual winner of the Gold Medal is nothing more than the beneficaries of luck. .
Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane, who was featured strongly in 'Moneyball' famously lamented in the book, "The play-offs are a crapshoot. My shit doesn't work in the play-offs". This remark of course has sparked a furious round of debate as to whether the play-offs (or for that matter the Olympic Games' final rounds) are nothing but a crapshoot. The reasoning for that discourse goes like this:
1. Statistics only functions sensibly on a large sample size, like a full MLB season of 162 games. Play-off games are such small sample sizes that there are not any real conclusions about performances that can be drawn from the result but the win-loss results only. If a team is constructed around statistical analysis, there is no indication whether a player or team will perform to their statistical norms or better in a small sample-sized event - ergo It's a crapshoot.
2. Statistics as a 'Knowledge of Result' feedback system tends to shed light on the mean expected level of performance. This takes in the caveat of variance and clustering. Meanwhile scouts and the scouting process tends to present a picture of the upper limit of a player's peak performance. It is a 'Knowledge of Performance' feedback system. There are many things that go into a peak performance to take place at the right time at the right place. These are not things that can be relied upon; are deeply psychological (i.e. 'make-up of the player'); and so, a team in a play-off spot really cannot be predicted one way or another to do something well or not.
Nor do the results tell us about how good/bad the team is/was.
3. Yet, the people who object to Billy Beane's assertion say, "But look at the results! Your team lost. Therefore you must be doing something wrong. Billy, your teams are not built to win the post-season". Or they might point to the Yankees and their run of three consecutive World Series wins in the late 1990s and say, "Look, Derek Jeter!"
Well, I really dig 'my mate' Jetes, but it's not a coherent arguement as there is only one Derek Jeter and it's not like you can build a team of Derek Jeters (even with cloning). The man has a knack for finding his peak performances in crucial games and has demonstrated that capacity time and time again; and even then it's not a good argument for the cause of not using statistical analysis nor is he the point from which you can draw universals about any competition or performances or results (sad, but true).
The argument goes deep and fractiously out at certain places on the net where they discuss baseball ALL DAY, however I think I've got the nutshell of it down. What I'm trying to get at is in essence a shortfall of the Olympics Finals format. I'm not asking for a 7 game series or even a 5 game series. but unless they start playing the final rounds as a 3 game series, they're really not going to get close to giving the best team a Gold Medal. Not that this sort of thing would interest the corrupt little munchkins in the IBF or the IOC.
Since I mentioned Derek AGAIN...
Here's an entry by 'TVerik' who is a regular contributor at the Baseball Think Factory, who penned this entry at The Hardball Times staff writer Larry Mahnken's blog:
So people are trying to figure out this conundrum of result vs. performance. I'm not saying a system that sees the favourite lose a chance at the Gold Medal in a single 1-run game is bad; I'm saying it doesn't prove anything about the baseball teams that do win the Gold Medal.On-field performance vs. entertainment by TVerik
The true sabermetric types who read this blog may not like to hear it, but I suspect that Jeter fans will. Conventional Wisdom, exemplified by Tim McCarver and Michael Kay, seems to hold that Derek Jeter’s intangibles are very valuable to his team and that this cannot be measured statistically.Some of our sabermetric brethren seem to delight in reducing Jeter to the sum total of his measurable numbers. They insist that his intangibles are way overvalued by the public at large.
This may be true; as a matter of fact, I’m reasonably sure that it’s true. But they define “value” in a narrow, baseball-related way. The object of an offense is to
score runs, and scoring runs results directly in wins.I submit that we fans really enjoy some parts of baseball that are not overly valuable in a wins vs. losses kind of way. In tonight’s game, Jeter covered third base, making Vladimir Guerrero out at third trying to advance on a single. Does Derek deserve the Nobel Prize for this contribution? No. Did it help the Yankees win the game? Babe Ruth resurrected wouldn’t have helped them tonight. Was it a play that all shortstops should make? I don’t really know, but I doubt it.
Derek Jeter, the ballplayer, did something small to help his team. It didn’t really help. But Derek Jeter, the entertainer, gave millions of fans a certain sense of satisfaction.
The Mariners are going through a horrendous year. But their fans still watch (although their numbers are reduced). They won’t be winning a pennant. So why do people pay attention? Because they’re entertained; the results of the game are secondary in some cases.
I don’t even know if one argument supports another here. Is DJ generally overrated? Is Derek valuable to his team? He certainly is. Does Jeter make the games somewhat more interesting for viewers? I could point to a hundred good examples of this.
But please weigh in on this issue. It’s just my opinion.
ADDENDUM: People have said it's as if I'm not giving the Australian team any credit for beating Japan twice. Well, yes I do give full credit to *our* team for beating Japan twice. They did very well to go toe-to-toe with Japan and beat them twice; I just wanted to point out how there was also a large chunk of luck involved in doing so the second time. If they faced each other 19 times in a season of 162 games, I wouldn't expect the results to go 19-0 Australia's way - They aren't that good, and that being the case a 2-0 sweep isn't an indication of anything but a 2-0 result.
- Art Neuro
1 comment:
Sounds like a butterfly flapping its wings in Australia can still crap on a MLB player.
The Olympics aren't suited to team sports like Baseball. I think both presentations of athleticism outdo each other. They are different. They don't even mate.
I'd like to thank the venue, of which the average Ozzie would have greater claim to home ground advantage, having consumed more Greek food, made by mothers that care.
But the better team did not win on the day.
The Australians probably weren't even drug assisted.
Poor Canada, they beat Australia, so they face Cuba and end up playing Japan for Bronze. Meanwile the Australians face Cuba for Gold, but are ensured a cigar.
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