LastPommerFan

Beyond the Iron Man Streak, He's the best shortstop to play the game in last 100 years. Rushmore.

But can you really point to luck when guys do it over and over for a decade? The gambling analogy is perfect. Poker involves a fair amount of luck, but it's not the same 12 guys at the final table of the WSOP events because they are simply more lucky. They're there because they make choices to set up their own luck.

I'm not the only one!!!!

Are you saying they got lucky drafting from Eastern Europe for a decade? They had misses too, but they set themselves up for the hits by scouting where no one else really was. They made their own "luck". That those three guys happened to be the guys may be random, but some of them were going to come over, and they were going to have a huge advantage because their "throwaway" picks suddenly had value.

What are the odds that essentially all of the eastern block great players for a decade went to one team is luck? They were late round because there was risk. That they were good and the team with the foresight to put great scouts in Russia has very little to do with luck. They made their own luck. Random variation had little to do with it.

A little luck, I'm not gonna go back upthread, but I think TBPhD described it as "huge" luck. No one delivers that many playoff victories over that length of time with luck, the sample size is just too large for random variations like luck to be a "huge" factor. Saying this team might be good is absolutely the contrarian position right now.

Absolutely, but I feel like the main questions with Samson (like Toews) are physical. At least at North Dakota, Toews was playing against some fully grown men with speed and size that he had to adjust to. In the WHL Samson will be playing against 16 year old boys who he can dance circles around without ever needing to adjust anything speed or strength wise. The CHL may be more talented, but if the prospect needs to develop physically it's just absolutely the wrong venue.

The difference between 16-20 year old males and 18-24 year old males is huge. Most of the players in the NCAA have at least gone through puberty.

College, Toews went back to college, where at least he was competing against adults.

Mostly my crusade is a preemptive strike declaring that Jeter is Not Cal Ripken, Jr. He was not the Offensive Player Cal was, he was not even close to the Defensive Player Cal was, he is on par as a person and ambassador for the game. Jeter is a first ballot hall of famer and was sorely needed to be the face of the franchise that was the face of the sport at a time when its image was absolutely crumbling. An awesome "right guy, right place, right time" situation. But Baseball is a sport of history and comparison, and Jeter is going to be compared to the great shortstops of all time. He's not even close to the greatest shortstop to play the game in the last 25 years. That's what makes baseball special: history. Derek Jeter is a hugely important part of that history, but he doesn't get on Rushmore.

First time I've heard Boston and Detroit's ability to get value in the middle rounds described as a huge luck component. ######, they should just make you GM and head to Vegas. :)

Winning the cup, yes, luck. Perennial winning playoff series, like Detroit, Boston, Pittsburgh, etc. Not luck. Too big a sample size to be luck.

So, do we start bombing Oklahoma now? http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/26/us/oklahoma-beheading/index.html

We have an opportunity to select both. A very real low probability opportunity to select both. #InGarthWeTrust

Hopefully we'll get a race-to-McEichel chart.

29 teams are not going to get McEichel #InGarthWeTrust

A single to right field is a "Derek Jeter Homerun"

I think the scariest thing for fans of the other teams in the AL East is that next season the Yankees might be able to get a hit out of the #2 slot and field a grounder that goes 3' left of second base. That said, super classy last night for the Yank's letting the O's tie it up and the O's tossing him a fat one.

I know they do in Brighton. Probably most of NYC and Long Island.

Even before I had real parenting issues of my own, and mine are trivial compared to many others, I had a very short fuse for parents who bitch about being parents all the time. About sleep, or discipline, or cleaning, or money or.... I must have missed the story about how becoming a parent was going to result in a clean house, lazy Sunday mornings and a stuffed bank account. I mean, did you not know what you were getting into? It's easily the fastest way to get me to remove your words from my daily information uptake.

This is not a train, it's a boat, and it's currently collecting passengers on the north shore of the River Styx.

I'm surprised by the difference in general tone between the assessments of the 18-year-old Reinhart and the 24-year-old Manuel. I'm talking about the assessment of Samson's potential, not the people who are saying he's just not there yet. Maybe it's all different posters, this forum sometimes appears to my brain as a singular, schizophrenic collective voice, but I think there are probably some individuals on the "too soon to judge EJ" train on a collision course with the "Samson is not who we thought" train.

Right, my position is that this is a tool, best to have it in the truck, but you still gotta make sure you have a great contractor who knows a good mason/carpenter/painter when he sees one. I just don't want Burke's General Contracting to start winning our jobs because they have a fancystat about roofing that we dismissed out of hand. {Also, Ghost, can we just talk in metaphor and analogy from now on? this is fun}

You realize that there are a lot of "people" in Erie County, right?

Your punting on third and long example. That is one element of what advanced stats can provide. Showing that the odds are heavily against making the first down and that the 15-20 yd field position shift is a way to leverage that probable disadvantage into an advantage. Obviously that advantage loses strength over time as defenses adjust, but that's when you start looking for the next advantage. But...