Occupy Wall Street
If I haven't already, I'll go on record to state that I believe free markets work best at spreading and deepening wealth. Regulated markets? Of course, but there is such a thing as over regulation, and it seems funny that we've forgotten that the economic crisis we are in now began with banks making high risk loans by government mandate, in the name of "fairness." The results were more poor people without property and assets, not less. So as you can guess, you won't see me camping out at Zuccotti Park anytime soon. Do the gathered masses have a right to demonstrate? This is the good ol' US of A, so the answer is yes (that they have a right to cause a public health hazard is, of course, another issue).
But I caution those on the left who are backing the protesters, seeing them as their answer to the Tea Party. The Tea Party demonstrators came, made their noise on a few specific issues and went back home. For all the fuss, they were pretty mild affairs. The "Occupiers" are more radical, and unfocused, as left leaning protests tend to be. I was present at the Chicago immigration reform rally in 2006, and I can tell you it wasn't just about immigrants reform. All sorts of Marxist-Maoist-Name Your Flavor of Socialist-ists were hanging around the fringes complaining about greedy multinationals, the War in Iraq, and George Bush for being George Bush. The only thing that saved it from spinning into chaos was that their was this one great issue that the vast majority had gathered to support. The protesters we have here don't seem to know what they want. One observer sympathetic to their cause acknowledged the need for a specific agenda, but also made the astonishing observation that, while he didn't want to see any one killed, or anything, they need a "Kent State Moment" to galvanize the nation behind them.
We know what happened at Kent State in 1971, and if you don't, that's what Google is for. But did that tragedy lead to a liberal victory in 1972? No, Richard Nixon won re-election in a landslide. Much in the same way, the confusion and mayhem of 1968 helped earn Nixon a close victory over Hubert Humphrey to begin with. In the years that followed Americans sent Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush to the White House. One was the fulfillment of the modern Conservative revival, the other was an establishment Republican. The only liberal to get the presidency was Jimmy Carter in 1976, who won a way too close election considering the circumstances (think post Watergate, aftermath of the Vietnam War, unpopular Republicans and we still needed all night to see if he had defeated an anemic, if amiable, Gerald Ford). Carter was then defeated soundly by Reagan four years later. Americans don't like chaos. We don't like feeling that things are unravelling. I don't think we mind demonstrations as such, just not mob rule. The 60's generation was only able to lay hold to the gears of power after a couple of decades, when Bill Clinton repackaged himself as a moderate.
If the past does tell us something about the present and future, it tells me that the Occupy Wall Street movement is not the winning hand progressives think they are playing.
Moneyball
I have not seen the movie Moneyball yet, but did read the book several years ago. In it Michael Lewis, a financial journalist, chronicled the journey of Billy Bean, the small market Oakland A's general manager who used advanced statistical analysis to construct a winning ball team on a shoestring budget. Lewis' goal was to see if there were any lessons to be learned from Bean's, at that time unorthodox approach, that could be transferred to analyzing the market and putting together a profitable portfolio from undervalued stocks. In truth, I don't remember if he ever got around to that. What he did do was help champion the cause of sabermetrics and the presence of laptops and thick binders filled with spreadsheets in the dugout.
The Athletics did win an impressive 103 games in 2002, the season covered in the book, but lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Twins. In fact Bean's teams have not so much as won a pennant during his tenure, and only made it out of the division series once in five tries. Does this mean the Moneyball approach is a failure? No the reasoning goes, because the post season is a crap shoot (Bean's words) that is not an accurate measure of a team's success. The sabermetric approach needs a large sample of at bats, plate appearances and innings pitched to reach its conclusions. Anything can happen in a five or seven game series, but over the expanse of a 162 game marathon that is an MLB season players will perform in an empirically predictable way. Pick players who get on base a lot, and in this case a walk is as good s a hit, put the ball in the air, not on the ground, who extend at bats, drive up pitch counts, thus wearing out pitchers, allowing you to feast on weak bullpens, you will score a lot of runs and, ergo, win a lot of ball games. If winning games is the true measure of greatness, than the A's have been great more times than not over the last dozen years.
There are many other factors that go into this rather stat heavy philosophy, but the bottom line is that only what is observable is valid. Any subjective judgements as to whether a player is "clutch" is to be rejected. Even traditional stats like fielding percentage are dismissed because they are based on the subjective judgement of an official scorer, who is often no more qualified than a fan to make such decisions.
Baseball traditionalists tend to hate the sabermetric approach. I have mixed feelings about it, myself. There is no doubt that the system more than has merit. The Red Sox adopted many of these principles, especially their emphasis on on base percentage, in building their championship teams of the last decade. But I do reject the idea that the post season is pure luck. Hard to predict? You bet. The Phillies have made me look like an idiot two years running now. But to win a short post season series you need to have good pitching, sound fielding, and an ability to manufacture runs by way of sacrifices and stolen bases. Moneyball people reject "small ball" as being an inefficient way of producing runs, and say good fielding is a luxury, as well as being hard to quantify (I don't think anyone would argue with the need for good pitching). But what makes Moneyball work over the course of a season is what makes it fail in the short term pressure of the play-offs. During the year a hitter is going to face some pretty mediocre to bad pitchers more often than he's going to see great pitching, and feast on the ensuing mistakes, inflating stats. In the post season all you see are good pitchers who make fewer mistakes. They tend to be power pitchers who pound the zone, not giving a batter enough of a chance to work the count. To get through to the end the bullpens need to be strong. Post season games are generally lower scoring, so being able to steal, sacrifice and take the extra base becomes important and the effects of fielding errors become magnified, as is the ability to make the tough fielding play. And while any professional athlete in any sport will tell you that a little luck is also necessary to finish on top, winning it all isn't Vegas.
I'll get into this more once I see the movie, as well as make a world series report.
But to put myself on the line a bit; I'll say I personally like the Cards, but have to go with Texas in 6.
No comments:
Post a Comment