Nox

I guess it depends on the definition of "only useful". If he meant, scouting is only more important than measured game events at those levels, he's right. Generally: [TABLE=class: grid, width: 500] [TR] [TD]Level[/TD] [TD]Scouting[/TD] [TD]Game Events[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]HS/College/Young Internationals[/TD] [TD]Very Useful[/TD] [TD]Not Very Useful[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Rk[/TD] [TD]Useful[/TD] [TD]Useful[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]A-/A[/TD] [TD]Kind of Useful[/TD] [TD]Useful[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]A+[/TD] [TD]Not Very Useful[/TD] [TD]Useful[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]AA[/TD] [TD]Not Very Useful[/TD] [TD]Very Useful[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]AAA[/TD] [TD]Almost Useless[/TD] [TD]Very Useful[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]MLB[/TD] [TD]Useless[/TD] [TD]Very Useful[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

o/u 59.5 points for him in the NHL next year?

Except then you're trusting scouts to do a good job of evaluating "who the person is". That's a massively complex question that A) they can't assess and even if they could asses wouldn't know how to interpret properly (though that should be done by the front office in general).

Yup. +42 in 34 games is pretty pretty pretty solid (despite the obvious limitations in goal +-).

I wouldn't look at a scouting report AA and above as a general rule.

Honestly, I stopped at the title. "Two Pitchers Underrated by ERA and FIP" Strongly indicative of someone who doesn't understand the point of either (well at least FIP). Those measures are aggregations of past raw events. They are not meant to be "ratings" or measures of true talent (despite the fact that they usually are). Normally, I would get past that and read the rest but I've seen enough of his methods (OPS for hitters, a bizarre obsession with "percentiles") to guess that I wouldn't get much from it. He's about as good at statistics as Dave Cameron is. That's not a compliment. Jeff Sullivan is my favourite writer there too though. So at least there's that.

That's the entire problem with Tony Blengino. He only uses numbers to make his stance but has very little idea how to do so appropriately. There's a good reason that he hasn't gotten back into a front office since Jack Z canned him (though, that was probably an accidental good firing). And it's not because he's raking money writing for FanGraphs.

Oh no.

There's plenty of minor league data that goes into these. Lots of information to be gleaned from AA and up. Sure, there might be more variance, but that's fairly symmetrical around the mean. Your stance is essentially saying this symmetry does not exist.

Don't worry, Ang will post a gif and/or a boner joke within the half hour and you will be placated.

McDavid: 86 points in 34 games? Is that good? He's some bizarro Patrick Kane/Nathan Mackinnon hybrid.

Was pretty tempted to stop reading after a Tony Blengino reference (someone who is openly laughed at in front offices). A) They do account for "growing pains" in young players. Not taking into account any psychological effects is a better approach than pretending you understand the field and making harmful adjustments. It does so for every team (assuming their model uses a standard-ish aging curve). I don't feel like why I should have to explain why using generalized aging curves for specific players IS the right approach. There's about 1000 articles across all sports on the net that does a decent enough job there. Or we could not judge a projection system (algorithmic or manually derived) like that at all.

Strawman. No pitcher is a safe bet. Smyly doesn't have to get better to be good. You can say that about literally every player. Why would we only focus on the top quarter of the roster? Alex has shown he has no idea how to put together an effective bottom part of the roster in years past and he's continued that trend this year. Actually, you're saying you don't think the Rays will post 77+ wins. That's a big difference. Taking the under on 83 is completely reasonable. Nope. 83 is the best luck agnostic projection we have. That means nothing more than usual has to break right for them to reach that win total. So why alter what they're telling you? You don't have access to any information they don't and you can't process all of it anywhere near as efficiently. This is like the well known cognitive psych study where experts intuition is tested against a basic model (across various domains). The model wins. The gap grows in an addendum to the study where a similar group of experts is given the model output ahead of time. Except in our case we replace industry expert with random BJMB poster.

Why are you listing Hellickson's and Escobar's departures as reasons for their demise? They're each 1 win players.

You could write a similar, negatively slanted diatribe for literally every team. Harper is an injury waiting to happen, Strasburg is losing velo, Jayson Werth has too much grey in his beard blah blah blah. Stroman is short and his delivery has alot of effort, what is Sanchez's role, Jose and Edwin are pretty old, who is the ace? Reyes on turf was always a bad idea blah blah blah You make mention of uncertainty when in reality a statistical model has a much better grasp on the concept than your intuition does. Uncertainty is the thing we humans are about the worst at estimating. Our system 2 doesn't have the machinery to do it and system 1 requires specific training to do it right. Given that you used this: "The Rays were projected for 86 wins going into 2014, and they finished with 77 wins." as some piece of evidence, I don't think you have that specific training.

That doesn't make any sense.

That's not strictly true anymore. A number of the sportsbook take non market neutral positions on purpose when they see inefficiencies.

Also like the Jays, Nats and Cubs overs. Under on the Pads. Edit: Def Cleveland over too.

Lol Rays @ 77.5 is as much of an inefficient line as you'll see in the North American betting market. Easy over.

Above average payroll with below average results is somehow ownership's problem? Ok, Matt Snyder.

Barry Melrose thinks Devin Dubnyk is the MVP. http://www.nhl.com/ice/blogpost.htm?id=37106&navid=nhl:topheads Satire?

Tanguay vs O'Reilly death match. Ladd Landeskog Wheeler O'Reilly Little Duchene Barrie Subban Hutchinson

All Jets and Avs for me tonight in my tourney entry.

You don't seem to realize that Jokinen degrades any package he's included in. It's not like the Leafs wanted him in this deal, Nashville insisted they take him to part with the other assets.

Um, probably not.