So, because I read a variety of baseball websites, from those with a more traditional perspective to the more modern, stat based, perspective… not to mention that I played and coached baseball my entire life. But yeah, I have a shallow pool of knowledge.

And Tangotiger is a well known sabermatrician. He does a lot of good stuff with win and run expectancy. I don’t understand why you’re so hostile towards logic and math… you know, real ways of measuring something’s effectiveness. These guys sift through piles of numbers and have come up with some pretty cool thing.

And again, I’m not even saying your beloved sacrifice bunt is useless, just over used. This isn’t exactly a ground breaking discovery. Like I said, Davey Johnson HATED the sacrifice bunt. As did Earl Weaver.

“a·nal·o·gy: Logic. a form of reasoning in which one thing is inferred to be similar to another thing in a certain respect, on the basis of the known similarity between the things in other respects.”

Lastly, don’t come at me with this “And since you like to write down to us” BS. You’re the one who made a snide comment in this thread about “geniuses’ who don’t think advancing runners is a stupid way to play the game.” You then followed it up with “That was an insult to yourself comparing technology to stats.” So it was not me who started lobbing personal jabs my friend.

So VCR is to the sacrifice bunt, as DVD players are to not sacrifice bunting. The former are examples of outdated and antiquated means of accomplishing an end (playing video or theory on scoring runs in baseball) while the latter represent new advancements (in playing video/theory on scoring runs in baseball.)

The sacrifice has some use in certain situations but, on average, is a sucker’s bet.

The trick is knowing when the relatively rare situations where it is useful come up and not go around wasting outs in the situations where you’re just throwing a plate appearance out the window.

Check out this chart: http://www.tangotiger.net/RE9902.html

Notice how the run expectancy DROPS from 0.953 with man on 1st and no outs to 0.725 with a man on second and one out. Sacrificing a runner over to second decreases your odds of scoring a run.

Uh, no, it has nothing to do with fantasy baseball. Most fantasy baseball leagues don’t play with OPS or OBP as a stat because they’re not counting stats. It’s just common sense. You get 3 outs per inning. Giving up an out is just stupid. Taking a walk with a runner on first is much better than bunting that runner over. Infinitely better. And taking a walk is infinitely better than “expanding the zone” and popping out to 2B.

“or maybe it keeps getting done because its the smart way to play and because it works.”

It doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. There are millions of web sites you can visit that have run scientific experiments analyzing game data that show the sacrifice bunt is extremely overused. See the Holmes quote again. For some reason human beings loathe any kind of change. In law, in baseball, in life.

“how about your insane comparison of DVDs and VCRs to stats.”

Do you know what an analogy is? Because it’s different than a correlation. The point here was when it comes to technology we don’t just stick with something because it’s been around for a million years and works fine. If something new and improved comes along we jump all over it and the VCR goes to the scrap heap. And not DVD players will be joining VCRs now that we have Blu Ray. But for some bizarre reason, despite overwhelming statistical evidence showing otherwise, managers continue to call for the sac bunt.

If… oh, say… Reyes is on first with no outs and Castillo bunts him over to second when Reyes was about to steal second anyway, that’s the waste of an out.

If it’s the bottom of the ninth in a tie game, Beltran’s on second with no outs and Wright skies one to the right field warning track so that there’s a ton of scoring situations with the next batter, that’s a well-used out.

It varies.

Often useful but on the whole, overrated.

A) I don’t see how these two correlate.

B) Alou is a big loss for reasons stated above by The Man.

C) Advancing the runners isn’t stupid, just an overused tactic. Giving up an out is not advisable. Over the course of 162 games, you’re better off conserving outs than giving them up. This is an irrefutable fact. However, in a do or die game, if you need a run, a sacrifice is not a bad play.

But hey, they’ve been doing this forever, so who am I to question stuff that’s been going on forever?

“It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of [baseball] than that it was laid down in the time of [King Kelly.] It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes (in the brackets I substituted baseball for law and King Kelly for Henry IV, but the main idea still rings true.)

Alou is simply a very effective batter. So is Delgado. If both are not available this year we will have to play small ball and D. If we can do both well with Beltran/Wright/Reyes we have enough studs to pull us through games.

Put it in perspective. Alou is a RIGHT handed hitter who KILLS lefties. Without Alou the lineup is now

Reyes (S)
Castillo (S)
Wright®
Beltran (S)
Delgado (L)
Church (L)
Pagan (S)
Schneider (L)

Just take a look at this.. The 5-8 spots in the lineup contain 3 LEFT HANDER HITTERS, and a switch hitter who is much better from the right side. Not to mention that Carlos Beltran is a better hitter from the left side.. So as you can see this leaves the Mets with a huge weakness. They’ll be extremely vulnerable to left handed pitching.

Alou is a Huge loss

Amd this points up one of Omar’s blind spots—the inability to see how older players are a DL stint waiting to happen. He shouldn’t be surprised at all at the number of injuries the team has had given the number of players on the team who are way past their primes.

Wake up. Make your own evaluation. Hope for the best, expect the worst. Besides, with only 87 games last yr the team won 88 games. w/a poor performance from Delgado, team won 88 games, etc, etc….

There are only two things in life that are certain…...death and taxes.

70-80 games was a more realistic projection—despite what Omar says. And that’s the most I thought they’d get from him in 2008. Which is why I was dead set against them re-signing him. But now that he’s out, perhaps the bulk of those 70-80 games will come in the second half. Which could be a good thing.

I think the Mets rotation is so improved over last year, that I’m not worried about the loss of Alou.

Look at it this way. He was going to miss 2 months anyway, so instead of playing the first 6 weeks and then going down, he is just doing it in reverse order.

Plus, he now misses the nasty cold April nights, with is probably a good thing.

As long as the cast of fill ins (even if it is mix and match) holds things together offensively, it will be an upgrade with speed and D (well, at least with Pagan and Endy!), plus Alou would have been pulled for D replacements anyway.

Another reason it won’t hurt is pitching. The rotation is healthy (knock wood!), and pitching usually dominates in the early cold months. So, let the P carry the team for awhile. Alou can come back when the weather heats up, and the P might tail off a bit.

Delgado though needs to be out there, and reasonably (at least post-April 2007) productive.

They can get by without 1 of them, but not really both at the same time, unless they bring in a strong bat to cover the gap.

a.) You’re that bulky a player, aiding the injury monster.
b.) You’re a pro-athlete on the other side of your thirties.
c.) You’re multiply injured in the recent-past seasons.
d.) You’re only getting older.
e.) You’re refusing to adjust your hitting style with age.

Any two of those factors would reasonably shrink the odds of a bounce-back season to… we’ll be charitable and say under twenty percent.

Delgado has all five of those factors against him.