nrockway

Great. I hope he’s throwing a sinker.

I know. I like Vaughn actually. Benny seems like a good dude, a decent player, but overpaid. I think both guys can rebuild their value and help us win games. Rooting for both. However I was memeing about the “three true outcomes” or whatever it’s called and I think it’s funny that Gallo of all players is on the Sox. How the mighty have fallen in a way. I think it would be a neat storyline if he made the team. DH is up in the air. Give it to a kid, but also give it to gallo. Hell yeah.

Wonderful. Need a guy like that. I was doing a bit but in reality I bet he would out-OPS Vaughnie and be probably the only league average hitter on the team. Vaughn is not a good baseball player, which is too bad, because he seems like a nice dude.

that guy rocks, that's all there is to say about it. "we have juan soto at home" sorta vibes.

So did Joey gallo make the team yet? I never realized how much I dislike watching Vaughn at 1b until Joey buckets entered the system. I think that’s a guy you could build around.

oh, dang, too bad. guess we'll have to wait until opening day. actually forgot Neto was hurt, TA could make the team.

Tim hit a homer yesterday. Let’s see if he gets a chance to face off against Justin Anderson, maybe hit two more. speaking of Justin Anderson, I was watching an interview with garfien/katz when pitchers and catchers reported. Chuck asks him “do you think Justin Anderson could be the closer?” and Katz pretty much glared at him and changed the subject. Very funny.

Sosa or Ramos but not both.

I would be more confident in a new owner moving the team, frankly. Trust the devil you know? Not exactly. I just can't get behind "hoping" for any owner, who knows what their motives are. I think it's more likely they're motivated to make money than they are to win. Phoenix spent some money, it's a fair point (although on bad players), but I'd wonder how much revenue the Suns bring in vs what their luxury tax bill was. KD probably sold a lot of jerseys. I assume the logic is different with the White Sox in a sport where you're not compelled to spend within a particular window, where there generally isn't as much money as there is in basketball. I think of Prokhorov with the Nets who spent big, failed, then sold the team rather than spend money again. I recently learned about the Bundesliga's ownership structure where in order to qualify to compete, a club must be majority-owned by the fans. (Why did German sport leagues develop differently than America's? It seems like a better sporting culture, frankly.) A critique of this system is that the clubs have less money than, say, the EPL and so the best players are probably going to switch leagues or play for Bayern Munich -- but does that argument exist in baseball? Are players going to start flocking to Japan and Mexico? It seems like less of a culture shock to move from Germany to France than Sarasota to Gwangju. I just think when it comes to talking about a new owner, I'd think about being more like the Packers than hoping the new guy is gonna do what Cohen did. I also sort of think Cohen is trying to spend as much money as he can before the SEC seizes all of his assets...maybe that's what you need out of an owner.

“This guy is so rich, he’s gonna spend so much money on great players” no he won’t

Wishful thinking with no basis in reality. “Plz save us billionaire overlord!!”

Was excited to watch this replay when I get home…maybe now not as much. Anything worth watching? I guess only 2 to 3 pitchers exploded.

wait, you get mlb.tv through t-mobile? news to me

look how well that's working out for the suns. mortgage dude, right? he's a moron. check out dan gilbert. you don't want him as an owner. you want the state of illinois as the owner, you should vote for it.

you guys could've been drinking with rednecks in Wisconsin, that's all I'm saying. miley says "and a Britney song was on" but actually, it was a lot of Eminem. I've never heard that much Eminem in my life. I didn't know people still liked him.

It’s 8 dollar Amtrak corona time for some of us! I’m not going to be too critical of TaylorSt because, although I think it’s a weird hill to die on, I also live off Taylor street these days and he has historically made some pretty good posts.

This thread is wild. I like the burns particularly because we’re all looking at soxtalk on a Friday night. It’s also dinner time. It’s like a self burn, the joke is on all of us.

He clearly knew better. You don’t get “tricked” into that. I’m not going to harp the point especially considering my point is about the toxic reputation and not the alleged criminal act. Chill out.

Wasn’t it posted about on this board that Clev is buds with one of the failson minority owners? That’s the only logic I can see as to why he constantly has a job with this org. Something changed with ownership specifically in the recent past, it used to be “high character guys” to a fault for both the Bulls and Sox. Clevinger and Giddey would not be on these teams a decade ago I feel. Maybe neither one of those guys did what they’re accused of, but there’s clearly something there, and they have a reputation that other teams refuse to deal with. It’s like, the Reinsdorf teams are garbage anyway, and then they acquire guys you really don’t want to root for who don’t even begin to move the needle. What’s the point? To piss us off? They didn’t want south side hit man posting on soxtalk anymore? it’s sort of like that Deshaun Watson signing blowing up in Cleveland’s face. It’s funny it didn’t work, karmic perhaps, but then he’s still getting paid like a hundred million dollars. Sox are entering Browns territory, maybe they’ve already been there and I’m just a naive homer.

fucking hell. remember when all that stuff came out and the Sox were like "oops, we totally didn't know, we wouldn't have signed him" then they sign him like 8 more times

Chinese innovation…I won’t touch on that but they seem to be doing good work. Still, I don’t think the Sox are buying a supercomputer. Wouldn’t need it for baseball, it probably wouldn’t actually be computationally challenging, I could’ve left that out. NVIDIA is screwed because all they focus on is video games. Apple is improving in this field, I don’t know how their stock reacted to the nvidia drop. Interesting post, I think you might’ve combined two.

Go look at the staff directories on mlb.com and check the “data analysis” roles and look at their backgrounds. I only did it for two teams I think have good analytics staff. They don’t have quant backgrounds. They’re dudes like us, frankly. If they’re doing “big data” analysis, I wouldn’t necessarily trust the results. They do it in geography, the field of my interest, and I wouldn’t totally trust the results. I’m interested in the applications, but I think hiring a staff poet might have more impacts on winning baseball games.

That’s just regular ol analytics. The topic was “big data” and it drew my interest. I’m not saying nobody understands it. I’m saying “big data” doesn’t exist in sports. It could, it might be interesting.

That isn’t close to what I said. First of all, they’re not creating the data, the players create the data. They’re analyzing it. And data analysis is hard, expensive, and computationally challenging. And the analysis might be wrong. Most people refer to a giant body of academic literature when deciding which statistical model to use. There’s no such body of work in baseball, it’s uncharted territory. Which I think is really cool but no one is gonna spend money on it. People might work on it for free but they’re not gonna buy the data, if they can even access it. They’ll spend it on finance and real estate, things that are clearly profitable and you need an edge and the statistical edge is quantitatively proven. no one is “stupid” but the models I’m thinking of haven’t been applied to baseball, it will spit out a result, you can interpret it, but will it be truth and will your interpretation be accurate? I want to see the sport applications but nobody will invest in it because winning isn’t that important or profitable. It might not work. And scouting is probably just a better investment, it’s tried and true and it works.

My thinking is that the sort of math and programming background required to do anything interesting with "big data" specifically is outside the budget and scope of any professional sports team. Like, if you have that skillset, some quantitative trading firm is paying you a lot more than even the Dodgers will. And you probably aren't making slideshows and giving presentations except to other nerds. You would have to hire an entire department of well-paid employees to see any kind of result in a timely manner. at least two phd statisticians, a sql developer, and a fourth person who knows how to talk to people and probably has a minor in physical education. You invest all that and will it even help? The proof is sort of in the pudding when it comes to finance, there's a track record, there's a body of literature, but that doesn't exist for professional sports that I am aware of. It could be groundbreaking. Also I'm looking at the Dodgers and Rays staff directory of people who work on data analysis, and they're just some dudes. I'm trying to make the point that data analysis and big data analysis are different. The costs are certainly different. You get no argument from me if the Sox just hire some dude to do regular ol data analysis and cook up some hotspot maps. But all that really is is having an enterprise subscription to Statcast and having some person who can, like you say, turn it into a pdf and email it out lol. Boring to me. it's not being a Luddite, it's a question of "does it even matter if no one can interpret it". or what's the point of a theory with no practical value? lots, I think, just maybe not in this context. or maybe it is.