A-Rod opts out of contract

[craig]

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QFT!!!

I've wondered this same exact thing for the last 3 years as the Yanks exited in the first round.

Oh and didn't 4 of those seasons end in a World Series Championship? How did they ever manage?!?!

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They don't even make the playoffs in 07 without him.

craig

[vhawk01]

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Saying that someone may be end up the greatest baseball player off all time, but that isn't much else, when being the greatest player of all time is enough imo is that point.


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Being the greatest baseball player of all time does not equal being a World Series champion, DUCY?

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LOL. Its called EV dude. Seriously. Having aces does not equal winning the pot either.

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The probability of all past events is 1.0. EV has nothing to do with it.

The greatest player is the one who has achieved the greatest performances. The only quibble is what the definition of greatest performance is, whether it involves having won a championship. A player who hits 250 homeruns in a season but doesn't win a championship can not go back and argue that his 250 homeruns is more likely to have won his team a championship, unless he has a time machine.

If you ask me what hand I want tomorrow, it will be aces. If you ask me what hand I wanted yesterday, it may not be aces.

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This is very wrong. If I were to ask you what hand you wanted yesterday in anything but the most INCREDIBLY trivial sense, I would be asking you something more like "assuming we ran it again and things were random, what hand would you have preferred to have." In the sense you are talking about here, any discussion of who was the greatest is a useless recitation of facts. There can be no argument. ANY sports argument worth having is essentially predictive. We argue about who was better, Mays or Ruth, but what are we REALLY arguing about? Certainly not about their past results. We USE their past results to speculate and THAT is what we are arguing about. So, when I say Ruth was better than Mays, what I'm really arguing is that, in a hypothetical world in which Ruth got to play on the same teams Mays did against the same players, he would have performed better.

Thats why its about EV. What is the EXPECTED value of being Ruth, put into the opportunities and environment of Mays? What is the EXPECTED value of being David Eckstein in the environment that Arod has played in for the last 13 years.

Being results oriented is so boring.

[Franchise 60]

I am starting to think he is going to end up in SF.

[vhawk01]

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A player who hits 250 homeruns in a season but doesn't win a championship can not go back and argue that his 250 homeruns is more likely to have won his team a championship, unless he has a time machine.

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Sure he can. It should be rather obvious that hitting 250 home runs is more likely to win a championship than striking out every time.

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The probability of past events is 1.0. You can't say someone is more likely to have won a championship when he didn't win a championship. The probability of him not having won a championship is 100%. Is this point really over people's heads?

Many people who discuss "greatest" are not trying to predict the future. They are trying to predict the past.

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Exactly. Trying to PREDICT the past. Not merely describe it. Thus, EV. Using the limited data that we have from the past, predict what would happen in, say, 100 iterations of the past. IOW, what is the EV of each decision/player. Exactly the opposite of all the things you just said.

But yes, if all we are doing is describing the past, EV has nothing to do with it. And its also mind-numbingly boring and no one would ever spend time talking about it. HOWEVER, this is usually the refuge that dumb people hide in whenever they realize their arguments dont make sense. "Yeah well WHO'S GOT THE RINGS BAYBEEEEEE" and they pretend like they were having a descriptive, and not predictive, conversation all along.

[onlinebeginner]

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I am starting to think he is going to end up in SF.

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I hope he does to make listening to mike and the mad dog this coming summer VERY entertaining

[disjunction]

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Exactly. Trying to PREDICT the past. Not merely describe it. Thus, EV. Using the limited data that we have from the past, predict what would happen in, say, 100 iterations of the past. IOW, what is the EV of each decision/player. Exactly the opposite of all the things you just said.


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This phrase has no meaning to me, "100 iterations of the past". It is not well-defined. The past happened once. If we iterated it 100 times we would get the same outcome 100 times.

Anyway, I think you kind of get my point, you just disagree. My only goal here is to point out that it's a weird thing we do, pretend we can go back in time and re-roll some dice of our choosing, but not others.

[disjunction]

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When I am ruler of the world, and get to decide who goes to stupid jail, I think I'm going to start with this thread.

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When I am ruler of the meta-world, and get to post about who posts about the ruler of the world, and whether I think they should get to post about people posting about people going to posting about posting jail, I am going to start with Dids.

[lastchance]

ARod = Good at baseball.

ARod = should be paid a lot.

ARod = worth more than Josh Beckett or David Eckstein as of this year (not considering contract).

ARod = His contract may make him a bad deal.

[MikeyPatriot]

Nate Silver's "A-Rod survivor"

Here's the top 10:

1. Angels
2. Dodgers
3. Giants
4. Phillies
5. Mets
6. Astros
7. White Sox
8. Tigers
9. Cardinals
10. Nationals

[Joe Morgan, HOFc]

Post deleted by MEbenhoe