--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > The key is how the "adjusted for era" is made. Here > is where subjective judgement mascarades as > objective fact. > _______________________________________________ > http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Bob, the whole purpose of sabermetric analysis is to prevent that from happening. The numbers are the numbers. No one makes these calculations with the purpose of demonstrating that Pedro put the best pitching season in modern history together a couple of years ago - it just worked out that way. But the numbers are only wrong if pitching as a whole is inferior now to that in the 1960s. If that were true, then pitching is the only athletic endeavor in the entire world where that is the case. Which is more likely - that Pedro Martinez is more dominant than Sandy Koufax, or that throwing a baseball 60'6" is completely unlike every other athletic event on the planet? Why, for example, do you think it's subjective? The mound was lowered (IIRC) after the 1968 season. Scoring went up immediately, league-wide. By a lot. Why is it impossible to, say, average scoring over the five years _after_ the mound was lowered, compare it to the scoring average of the five years _before_ the mound was lowered, and (since there were no other significant changes) say, see, lowering the mound inflated scoring by 10%? (I have no idea what the real number is, I'm just pulling 10% out of a hat). Where's the subjectivity in that? Another way to pose this question is - what could convince you that Koufax _wasn't_ the best pitcher ever? I can tell you exactly what would convince me that he was better than Pedro. If we found out that the defense for the Dodgers was significantly inferior to that of the Red Sox - and we are heading in the direction of being able to answer that question fairly soon - then that evidence would go a long way towards falsifying my belief. What evidence would convince you? If Koufax's own personal testimony doesn't, what would? ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
