“What about me?” A self-serving piece of writing from Derek Carty that’s barely worth his own time in reading
July 28th, 2010 by Derek Carty in Standings Analysis, Whining or BraggingI felt very left out when Eric failed to include me in his post on the remaining contenders yesterday. Granted, I'm in 8th place right now, but I'm not going to make excuses.No, I refuse to complain about my absurd rash of injuries. I mean, everyone has to deal with their second most expensive hitter playing just three-and-a-half games before going down for the season. And their most expensive hitter missing a month-plus. No, I'm not going to cry about the cruel irony of Travis Snider's injury, which was described by Yahoo!'s Brad Evans as "healing at a Brian Roberts-like rate" – and that was more than a month ago! Or the $70+ auction dollars that toiled away on my bench for months.
No, I won't be making any excuses today. I certainly won't complain about getting a combined 65 IP of 5.68 ERA ball from Rich Harden and Eric Bedard. Or Scott Baker's 1.25 ERA/xFIP disparity. Nope, I refuse. I won't complain about Frank Francisco losing his job after a two-week sample of bad luck. I mean, removing him was completely justified. He clearly isn't very good. Something was clearly wrong with him. It's not like he's been the fifth-most-valuable reliever or anything like that this season – including that two week stretch. I won't say that it was preposterous. I simply won't do it. Nope, no excuses for me. I'm above that. Try to bait me into making them by pointing out how Texas gave Chris Davis the Frank Francisco-treatment too, but I won't bite. Won't do it. Ask me how I feel about Ozzie Guillen continuing to play Mark Kotsay over Dayan Viciedo. You won't get an opinion out of me. Guillen is a bona-fide big league manager who unquestionably knows what he's doing. You can't question it – that's what "unquestionably" means, dummy. I'll defer to his judgment. No sir, no excuses for me.
Rather than make excuses, I've decided to spend the entirety of my post today tooting my own horn. Expect nothing of any substance going forward. To start, here's a side-by-side comparison of my lineup from Period 5 with my lineup from our current period, Period 9.
| J. Buck C | J. Buck C |
| G. Laird C | M. Napoli C |
| R. Branyan 1B | C. Pena 1B |
| R. Santiago 2B | B. Roberts 2B |
| B. Inge 3B | D. Viciedo 3B |
| Y. Betancourt SS | Y. Escobar SS |
| C. Izturis MI | M. Tejada MI |
| N. Punto CI | C. Davis CI |
| N. Cruz OF | N. Cruz OF |
| D. DeJesus OF | C. Crisp OF |
| J. Pierre OF | J. Pierre OF |
| A. Lind OF | T. Snider OF |
| J. Borbon OF | J. Borbon OF |
| D. Ortiz DH | D. Ortiz DH |
I think I've overhauled this roster quite nicely, going from a team half-full of Puntos and Santiagos to a team that's pretty well-set at every position, save maybe 3B where I lost Brandon Inge this week (not that I'm complaining, though). This roster has been almost completely turned over, holding over just five of the players from Period 5.
I've turned Laird into Napoli, Branyan into Pena, Betancourt into Escobar, Izturis into Tejada, and DeJesus into Crisp – all at the expense of swapping a disappointing Adam Lind for Travis Snider (and a couple even-ish pitcher swaps in Lewis/Scherzer and Braden/Masterson). Oh, and did I mention that I received two almost-closers in Mike Gonzalez and Chris Perez for my effort? And I don't even think I made many (or any) lopsided trades. I think I gave away quality pieces, and pieces that fit other teams' needs well – I just made a lot of trades (seven) with an eye on improving the overall quality of my team and thinking a few steps ahead. Maybe taking a step back in one trade if it set me up to take two steps ahead in another.
Maybe I'm out of the hunt for first place, and maybe I'm too narcissistic and delusional, but I wouldn't be counting my chickens yet if I were Eric Kesselman. I have a feeling this team is about to shoot up the standings.
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Nice job sticking Eric with DeJesus. I will take issue with one premise though that I think is not entirely true – when your players play worse or better than they have historically that is not bad luck. Unforeseeable Injuries (Roberts and Bedard do not qualify), unpredictable trades to the NL (Pods doesn't qualify), a catcher suddenly going insane – that's bad luck. But to claim Harden's implosion in Texas as bad luck pretty much makes this merely a game of squeezing the most value out of *yesterday's* player pool for the money. But this isn't stratomatic (or All Star baseball) where everyone's reduced to a probability card – it's a game of humans who change erratically, and I think there's some skill in saying whether Harden's going to be the guy he was in 2008 or 2010. Most of what you cite is bad luck, but I wanted to make that point because in some previous comments, it seems like people are alleging that buying a breakout player is dumb luck. It's not. Maybe you couldn't predict the extent to which he'd break out, but for example, as loathsome as it is for me to give Eric any credit, he deserves it for rostering Josh Hamilton. And he's entitled to whatever massive numbers Hamilton puts up even if he didn't specifically foresee them because that was part of the bargain he made when he bought him – that possibility. The only alternative is to assume that any deviation from three-year averages, park and age-adjusted is variance like BABIP, and the whole game is to roster the best expected returns given expected career arcs based on some historical average for every player even though we know that individual player career arcs vary immensely and rarely conform to the overall average.
Dejesus died so the rest of my team can smash you. It was the ultimate sacrifice. Y'know, like Obi Wan Kanobi.
I agree with Chris, there is definitely skill in finding these guys. However, when they ALL break good for you a la Romero, Nieman, Cecil (maybe even Liriano) that's pretty lucky. Fortunately you've been unlucky in a few spots elsewhere at this point, and also decided to spend $84 on Arod.
One more point – and we can discuss on the radio tomorrow at 11:30 ET if you want to do a segment is this: Dave Cameron had a good post about randomness in which he used the clearly random example of the NFC winning 14 straight coin tosses to illustrate that Dan Haren's .350 BABIP could in fact be dumb luck and not have any cause, e.g., bad mechanics, tipping pitches, etc. that people tend to ascribe in those situations. And that's entirely true. BUT – it's also wrong to assume that his .350 BABIP *must* be dumb luck. It might well be, and it might not be. There could be a problem with his location, mechanics, etc. that partially or entirely explains it. I think a mistake that a lot of the sabr community makes is to assume that bad pitcher BABIP is always bad luck, or bad HR/FB rate is always bad luck. Sometimes, there is something wrong. In fact, Todd Zola sent me BABIP data by count – and BABIP goes up reliably as the count gets more hitter favorably – like .315 on 3-0, and .285 on 0-2. It's .305 on the first pitch. So let's say a guy like Haren (or Aaron Harang, or Dave Bush) gets a rep as an extreme strike thrower – then batters might swing more often at the first pitcher, rather than take a pitch and get behind. So there, the pitcher's BABIP would change not bad on luck, for example. There are probably better examples out there, too – just wanted to point out that not everything that might be luck is in fact luck. The hard part is figuring out which is which.
You're like the fucking Aztecs, Eric – DeJesus, Peavy, Sheets, Justin Douchbag, etc. There's no limit to your bloodthirstiness.
Now to Derek:
I apologize for not saying something about your team in the original post. You definitely deserve a mention. I think it makes for a great league when the teams hopelessly mired at the bottom of the standings work as hard as you do. Kudos to you for still sprinting to first on the obvious double play ball.
Next off, you shouldn't have brought Mark Kotsay into this. He's very popular in the GImp clubhouse, and I'm sure what you're missing in real life is also his clubhouse value to the White Sox. I'm sure thats worth at LEAST 20 homers in value. Also I'm surprised you hate him so. He's hitting sub .230, and your model seems to add $10 in value to all guys of that type.
I agree you've been unlucky. However you drafted a number of guys more fated to doom than Charlie was on Lost.
Actually, in all seriousness, I do think your team is quite good, and well poised to have an explosive last two months. How high can you go? We shall see!
Chris, The way your offense has been performing lately, I'm kind of surprised you aren't sacrificing live chickens yourself yet.
I'd love to do a radio segment, but that's probably not a good topic for me. However, I don't think anyone would argue that there is sometimes a cause and effect relationship for numbers we observe. The point of the Cameron article was just that people tend to assume there is always (or even often) one, when randomness alone can often be the explanation. That certainly doesn't mean that all changes from the 'norm' is random, and perhaps you are right that people are too quick to write these things off as such.
I think many assume that bad BABIP and bad HR/FB for pitchers is solely explained by bad luck. Cameron wasn't arguing that – he was saying it *could* be solely bad luck. But in our circles, arguing against the idiots who don't understand the luck factor in baseball is beating a dead horse. I think there are more people who make the opposite mistake and overvalue randomness.
And my apologies, Eric, for not being clear. The invite was for Carty who was supposed to be on last week!
That makes a lot more sense.
Besides, we should save me for the end of the year victory lap segment.
Also Derek, I don't think your narcissistic.
I do. And thank you Liss for calling him out about his picking guys prone to fail. Maybe if you lose a couple more times you'll stop bragging on every page that you are only this old and yet have won this contest… thank god, at least, that you're not on wall street…
Will is clearly a quaint.
Maybe, but more just someone who just read the "Competitors" section and immediately found a clear distinction in how each presented themselves … most were generally humble and funny, and while I commented on one other, a couple just focused on how much money they made.
In your case, Eric, I did my homework and noticed that your bracelet came in a contest with a lower buy-in than 18 others during that event, and since that 300k+ profit failed to garner 25k in any of the 8 events since.
No wonder you said your biggest suggestion for improving poker was to "flatten prize payouts"…
As for B.P., you said early on the plan was to blog regularly … I'd love to hear your thoughts about how you considered "the next few months to be a great experiment where we see if I am on to something or not."
Will, I'm not sure where the animosity is coming from, but I don't feel as though I do very much bragging. I know that my age and LABR are mentioned in my THT bio, which appears at the end of each article, but it's not as if I retype that every time. I don't think I ever mention it aside from in the bio. It's also in my bio on this site because, well, why wouldn't it be? If we were told to explain who we are in the fantasy industry, that's relevant. Also, because this was a new league, I thought it was worth mentioning to help lend some credibility.
Also, I think it's very easy to say who was "prone to fail" after the fact. We wait until August and see who failed, because then we can't be wrong. I also really liked Colby Lewis and David Ortiz (had them in Tout too). But does the fact that they actually succeeded change whether or not they were any more "prone to fail" before the season? It shouldn't, the same as a guy like Borbon actually "failing" shouldn't changed whether or not he was any more "prone to fail" before the season started. The same as it shouldn't change whether or not it made sense to draft him.
I don't regret drafting Borbon. I just wish the outcome was different. He's a guy with near 80 speed, who makes good contact, and who had been hailed as the Rangers 2010 leadoff hitter as far back as the end of last season. I don't see much wrong with that analysis – it simply didn't work out perfectly. And that happens in this game.
Will, I'm sorry no one's resume seems to meet with your approval.
Derek- Another point that should be made is that 'prone to fail' is really just another way of saying 'risky,' It's not like these guys were somehow both extra prone to fail and without some serious upside.
When you're trying to win a league, you've got to take some risks. I'd have been a bit nervous spending so much on (the already injured) Roberts, but it was hardly unreasonable. He could easily have come back in April and turned in a $30 season.
You probably did buy a little more risk than other teams in the auction. Maybe with the flatter than usual prize structure you bought too much? That's probably a more interesting question.
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