Wins Above Replacement - Is it taken too seriously?

For some sportswriters, the statistic known as Wins Above Replacement, or WAR for short, is viewed as the end-all, be-all of evaluating baseball players.  The basic idea is this: using the information from a large number of different hitting statistics (or including fielding statistics in the full version), determine the "number of wins" that a player contributes to a team, compared to an average player, over the course of a 162-game season. For a fuller explanation, see, for example, this description at FanGraphs.

The high-level formula is this:

WAR = (Batting Runs + Base Running Runs +Fielding Runs + Positional Adjustment + League Adjustment +Replacement Runs) / (Runs Per Win)

This statistic is very favorable to players like Mike Trout.  Now Trout is an excellent player - let there be no doubt about that.  He's one of the best hitters in the league, is an excellent fielder, and a strong baserunner who can steal bases.  I just wonder if everything is calibrated properly.

Here's a snapshot from ESPN.com, showing the top 10 hitters in the American League, sorted by batting average.  (Aside: batting average has largely been replaced by on-base percentage in the thinking of modern sabremetricians, but it still is used as a default stat for sorting.)

What interests me here is the disparity in WAR between Trout, Betts, and Altuve versus other hitters who seem to also be having good seasons, like Pedroia and Ortiz.  I should make it clear that the WAR listed above is the total over hitting, baserunning, and fielding.   But curiously, very little of Trout's WAR is from fielding.  His OWAR ius 9.36, compared to Betts' 5.96 and Ortiz's 4.89.  Betts gets a lot of WAR from his fielding - 3.1-3.2, depending on what the round-off error is.  Trout has .6-.5, while Ortiz might get as little as .06 defensive WAR - an unsurprising fact since he only plays defense on the rare occasion that the Red Sox are playing on the road in a National League park  (and even then he takes some games off.) 

I simply don't believe that, as an offensive player, Mike Trout is worth twice as much in terms of WAR as David Ortiz.  Trout has a slightly higher OBP, but a lower slugging percentage.  He has 39 more runs scored, but 27 fewer RBIs, and is much lower in most power categories - fewer doubles and home runs.  Many more walks, but also many more strikeouts.  Trout has the advantage with stolen bases, but still, that's only 26 SBs - one per roughly every six games.  I view stolen bases as analogous to walks - just extra bases to be added to the total base sum.  

So - where does the huge number come from?  I don't know.  There are many explantions like the one above that indicate what WAR is supposed to mean, but I cannot find a closed formula for it that letss me plug in numbers.  I  have found a "Simple WAR calculator" at wahoosonfirst.com, but it doesn't produce the numbers I see above.  

The Dreadful primary season

This is really shaping up to be the worst election year in memory.  The Republicans are falling apart as a political organization.  They've been cultivating anti-government sentiment for so long they now are controlled by a majority that both thinks that they have some divine right to rule the country and that they should try to do their best to keep the government from doing anything.  Well, that's a bit oversimplistic, but the point remains that they've adopted a scorched Earth attitude towards the debt ceiling, towards foreign relations, towards keeping the government open, and, most recently, towards the process of keeping SCOTUS nominations going forward.

Last-minute Review of 2015 in Movies

I've actually seen six of the eight Oscar nominees for Best Picture this year, having missed Brooklyn and Room.  The Revenant is the favorite, according to whatever logic works is ruling the day in Hollywood.  IMO, both The Big Short and Spotlight are clearly better, as are The Martian and even Mad Max: Fury Road, a surprising entry into the category.  Other good films have been neglected, because apparently they are not in genres (comedy, horror) that can be considered.

So I've decided to review my movie-watching of the year, sorted according to various categories.

We'll start with Spy Movies, of which there were many:

Spy Movies

Kingsman:the Secret Service - a very enjoyable romp starring Colin Firth as a member of a British Spy Service fighting international terror in the form of Samuel L. Jackon's lisping villain.  Really good action sequences and a clever plot.  The Freebird/church fight is incredibly gruesome/hilarious.

Spy - Melissa McCarthy plays the lead in this spy comedy. Funny movie with decent plot to it - one of her better works.  Plot is actually pretty pretty well constructed.  

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - hey, Tom Cruise has done another Mission Impossible movie!  The basic plot hasn't changed over the course of the series.  But the action sequences here are pretty good.  

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  - a spy movie set in the 1960s based on the concept of the old Robert Vaughn TV show.  Stars Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer as the American and the Russian, along with Alicia Vikander as a German woman who works with them.  Love the period fashion of 1960s Italy.  Probably the best plot of this bunch.

SPECTRE - the latest Daniel Craig 007 movie.  Acting is really good, but the plot is pretty much non-existent.  It's all about how Christoph Waltz is the new Blofeld, the man behind all of Bond's torments.  I guess the idea is that he just shows up and is the Bad Guy, because, you know, he's Blofeld.  And Christoph Waltz.  A bit of a disappointment.

What gets me most about this category is that the two established franchises pretty much mailed in their screenplays.

Superhero Movies

Avengers: Age of Ultron - a good movie, but a big overstacked with characters by now.  Didn't have the impact of the first Avengers movie.  

AntMan - pretty generic origin story.  Well done but these are formulaic by now.  

Deadpool is better than either.

Space Opera

I don't like the practice of calling movies like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy "Sci-Fi" even when there's no science in them at all.  They are more properly understood as Space Opera - extended adventure stories that just happen to be set in space.  I'd say we had two this year:

Jupiter Ascending - I enjoyed this movie, though a lot of that is due to Mila Kunis.  Eddie Redmayne plays one of her homicidal family members and is great.  Sean Bean plays a solider who, bizarrely, doesn't die.  Chaning Tatum plays the love interest who has no chemistry with Mila.  Movie kind of bombed.

Star Wars: the Force Awakens - much better than the prequels.  Bringing back Lawrence Kasdan to write the screenplay instead of letting George Lucas do so was a great idea.  Harrison Ford is great.  The newcomes (Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac) are great.  People have complained that the plot was a mirror image of Episode 4, but that's only true if you only watched the last fifteen minutes, and even then it's not true.  Yes, it has common themes and plot devices.  Duh.

True Stories

Spotlight - the story of the investigative reporting of the Boston Globe's Spotlight division on the pederasty scandal of the Catholic Chuch.  A well-crafted and well-written movie.  Acting is very good, esp. Mark Ruffalo.  

The Big Short - a compelling recounting of how a small number of investors decided the real estate market was bubbling in 2007-2008 and decided to sell them short.  Really devastating critique of the industry.  And nothing has changed on Wall Street.  So we've got that to enjoy.

Bridge of Spies - enjoyable period piece with Tom Hanks as the man negotiating the release of captured U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.  Kind of the movie we expect these days from Spielberg and Hanks - enjoyable, doesn't really take any risks.  Mark Rylance is deservedly getting a lot of praise for his portrayal of the Russian spy Rudoph Abel who was traded.  Writing is good, as well as the acting, but as I said, the movie doesn't really take any risks.

Black Mass - Johnny Depp plays Whitey Bolger in this story about how he manipulated his police handlers to help him eliminate his competition in the organized crime business of 1970s Boston.

Between Black Mass and Spotlight I wonder how I ever got through Boston of the 1970s neither molested nor murdered. 

Everest - an IMAX feature (well, it was available on other screens, but really, what's the point?) about the tragic disaster in 1996 when a couple tourist groups got stuck in a storm on Mount Everest.  A gripping and sad story.  

Very strong year for this category.  I would not want to be required to pick between Spotlight and The Big Short.  Either would be a worthy Best Picture winner.

Sci-Fi

The Martian - I hope I don't have to explain why this is science fiction and Jupiter Ascending isn't.  The science of The Martian is exceptionally good, at least in how it treats the problems of how to survive on a foreign planet with no atmosphere and not enough food when the nearest transport is speeding off in the wrong direction.  Not only the best sci-fi of the year, but one of the best sci-fi pictures of many years.

Ex Machina - also a really, really good movie.  I only saw this on video because the marketing did not really capture how good this movie is.  It's another "genesis of a soul in AI" story.  Oscar Isaac is brilliant, again, this time as the high tech software genius, as is Alicia Vikander as the budding AI/robot.  BTW, Vikander is the breakout star of the year, and I only saw two of her three movies, when the third (The Danish Girl) is the one she just won an Oscar for.

Everdeen/Everdenes 

Mockingjay: Part two.  Not really anybody's fault here, but Mockingjay just isn't enough of a story to make a great movie, esp. not when compared to The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.  The story is realistic, but it's just too anti-climactic.  But of course J-Law rocks.  I mean, duh.

Far from the Madding Crowd - Carey Mulligan makes a credible Bathsheba Everdeen in the first major movie version of this story since Julie Christie played the role in a classic performance.  The '60s version had a more bombastic cast compared to last year's understated version.  I think I prefer the newer version.  

Period Stories

The Revenant - this is supposedly based on a "true story" but I think the key there is "story" as my research of the tale of Hugh Glass is that it's a great fronteir story but it's authenticity has been called into doubt.  Those fronteirsmen were known to exaggerate a bit.  Certainly the real Hugh Glass could not have survived everything that happened to him in the movie.  Anyway, the acting here is great, though I find the themes a bit heavy-handed and the plotting a bit silly at points.  Worth watching for the landscapes.

The Hateful Eight - Tarantino's latest film.  And as was said, you can only compare Hitori Hanso swords to other Hitori Hanso swords, and you can really only compare Tarantino films to his other films.  The Hateful Eight is very enjoyable in a closed-room mystery kind of way.  The scope isn't as large as his prior two movies (Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchanged) but it's still a good movie worth seeing.  

Serena - a story about an industrialist woman played by J-Law.  One of her weaker films, though of course not her fault.  She needs to stop doing movies with Bradley Cooper.  I'm going to have to talk to her about this.

Mr. Holmes - Ian McKellan plays a 90-something retired Sherlock Holmes in this enjoyable mini-myestery.  A good story.

Animated Movies

Shaun the Sheep - an animated feature from Aardman studio that gave us Wallace and Gromit as well as Chicken Run.  Really great animated film  as we've come to expect from Aardman.  No dialogue! But the story doesn't suffer from the absence.

Inside Out - Pixar's offering this year, about how each of us is controlled by a quartet of personified emotions inside a bridge-like control room in our brains.  Pixar keeps putting out great movies, and this is as good as we've come to expect.  A movie about growing up and how we have to leave childish things behind.  And how we need not only joy, anger, and disgust, but how even sadness plays an important role.  

Minions - not much to say here, except that it was a great idea to give the Minions of Despicable Me their own movie.  

Saw three animated movies last year and they were all great.

Dystopian

Mad Max: Fury Road - really much better than I had hoped it would be.  Definitely the action movie of the year and it was great to watch on a big screen.  Tom  Hardy got top billing as Max but Charlize Theron really stole the movie as Furiosa.  BTW, it's winning a lot of secondary awards so far tonight.

Horror

It Follows - a low budget movie based on a very simple idea.  The risks of teenage sex include not only disease and emotional turmoil, but real existential danger in a monster that tracks down whoever the latest person on its victim list is.  Apparently its target list works like a computer science "stack" - when the person at the top of the stack has sex with a new person, the new person moves to the front of the line for the stalking monster's target list.  And if that person is killed, the stack moves up.  Great horror movies often have this kind of simple plot device - I was reminded of The Ring and The Grudge here.  When it comes to making horror movies, often having a small budget is a benefit.  With a cast of unknowns, the movie isn't constrained by star-centered plot expectations (you cannot kill off Janet Leigh less than halfway through the movie!  OK, bad example.  Certainly you're not going to kill off Drew Barrymore before the opening credits!  Another bad example.  But Psycho and Scream are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

Police/Action Dramas

Furious 7 - lots of stunts with cars.  RIP Paul Walker

Sicario - a really good police drama starring Emily Blunt as a DEA office, Josh Brolin as an enforcement "cowboy" and Benicio Del Toro as the guy who does "what is necessary" to fight the Drug War.  Really a though-provoking movie.  

With this category division in mind, my Best Film nomineees would be

It Follows

Mad Max - Fury Road

Spotlight

The Big Short

The Martian 

Sicario

maybe The Revenant

Best of Bond, Part VI

The Pierce Brosnan Years

While Timothy Dalton gave the franchise depth and emotional darkness, the returns at the box office were poor.  After two films the franchise went into a hiatus for several years, to return with Pierce Brosnan as the new Bond.  Brosnan had been the first choice to replace Roger Moore, and he was a natural for the part of Bond.  With more charm and elan than Dalton, he helped re-popularize the franchise.

And the Brosnan years started well.  Goldeneye is widely recognized as a great Bond film.  But each of the following films was weak in some way.  By the end of the Brosnan run, the films were sinking into the same trap that ruined the Moore movies: an excess of silly gadgetry, too many recycled plots, and a few really awful casting choices.  But even the otherwise awful Die Another Day features great supporting work by Halle Berry - all of the films have some redeeming qualities.

Let's recall the criteria in this series of evaluations again:

• Bond – who the actor is, how good he is, and what he brings to the role
• the Villain- Mr. Big, Scaramanga, etc.  I judge the films on how compelling the villain is.
• the Bond Women – some films have few, some have many, but I’m pretty sure all have at least one. The quality ranges from Denise Richards’s absurd nuclear physicist to, of course, Mrs. Bond herself, not to mention Pussy Galore
• the Good Guys – M, Q, Moneypenny, Felix Leiter in his many incarnations and other sidekicks
• the Henchmen on the other side like Jaws, Oddjob, and Nick-Nack.
• the gadgets – not just judging how neat the gadgets are, but whether they were unwisely allowed to take over the film (as often happened with the later Roger Moore filims)
• whatever else I happen to think of

Quick hit on the Republicans

• Ted Cruz: vile, arrogant bastard.  Very dangerous person.  Sociopath.
• Bobby Jindal: man without moral center, willing to stoop to any level to pander to stupid
• Scott Walker: Kochs' favorite candidate, dangerous because people underestimate him.  I'm convinced he's a criminal and has been cheating for years in  Wisconsin.
• Jeb Bush: less evil than some of his compatriots, but still stuck in the party he's in.  
• Donald Trump: joke candidate.
• Mike Huckabee: old school Southern huckster.  
• Ben Carson: just awful
• Carly Fiorina: you don't see HP rallying behind her, do you?
• Lindsey Graham: not stupid, but sold out a long time ago
• Rand Paul: lives in fantasy land, but I like that at least one person is anti-state surveillance
• Marco Rubio: in way over his head
• Rick Perry: dumb as a box of rocks
• George Pataki: hopeless candidate
• Chris Christie: just a rotten bully

It's a lineup that will get any Democrat to vote for Hillary Clinton.  

Reading the Wells report - Air Pressures

As I noted in my previous post, I think the disinformation campaign waged by the league implies that they feel that the actual data doesn't support their argument very well.

First, it appears that this analysis is based on the assumption that the Colts' footballs were gauged right after the Patriots' footballs.  I refer to PDF page 162 (p.2 of the Exponent report)

According to information provided by Paul, Weiss, during the halftime period, three events pertaining to the footballs are known to have occurred:
1. The air pressure measurements of 11 Patriots footballs were taken and recorded.
2. The air pressure measurements of four Colts footballs were taken and recorded.
3. The reinflation and regauging of 11 Patriots footballs to a level within the 12.5–13.5 psig range was performed.
According to information provided by Paul, Weiss, it is clear that of the three events listed above, the measuring of the Patriots balls occurred first. Although there remains some uncertainty about the exact order and timing of the other two events, it appears likely the reinflation and regauging occurred last. According to security footage, the footballs were taken back to the field for the second half at approximately 8:42:30 pm, meaning that they were inside the Officials Locker Room for no more than 13 minutes and 30 seconds. Therefore, all three of the above listed events must have taken no longer than 13.5 minutes to complete.

I'm very suspicious of this need to make an assumption.  Here are things we know. 1. The Patriots' balls were tested first.  2. The stated excuse for only testing four Colts' balls is "we ran out of time", 3. Between the two sets of tests, Prioleau and Blakeman switched gauges.

I would argue that it's much more likely that they switched gauges if the reinflation and regauging of the Patriots' footballs took place before the Colts' balls were tested.  In this scenario, the gauges are put down and the pumps are taken out to reinflate the balls that are all arrayed around the room.  The officials have emptied a bag of footballs, it seems more likely that they'd want to fill that bag again before emptying the other bag - for a good number of reasons.  I'm very hard-pressed to imagine the opposite scenario, the one that Exponent claims is more likely: With 11 balls lying around the room, how likely is it that somebody looks at his watch and says "It will take an indeterminate amount of time to reinflate and gauge these balls.  But I'm pretty sure we only have time to gauge four of them.  Let's start that process, abort it 1/3 of the way through, and then return to the Patriots' footballs."  It's a nonsensical scene.

I would also argue that if this point were important, and it were true that the Colts' balls were done in the middle, that it would be easily confirmed.  I am not buying into "there remains some uncertainty about the order of events."  You had a room full of people and none of them can remember if the Colts' balls were tested before or after the Patriots' balls were reinflated?  Given that the excuse for not doing all the Colts' footballs was "We ran out of time," I think we already have solid information that this part of the halftime procedure was last.  But like Walt Anderson's recollection about which gauge was used before the game started, a recollection that supports the Patriots' case is discarded.

So, let's look at what the air pressures actually were. At some point I might address the rest of the Exponent report, but let's just say that they do a whole lot of simulations, apparently with the theory that if you don't have actual data, you should replace it with simulations. Huzzah!

Poisoning the well of public opinion against the Patriots

On January 21, Chris Mortensen published a story at ESPN.com that claimed, among other things, that

The NFL has found that 11 of the New England Patriots' 12 game balls were inflated significantly below the NFL's requirements, league sources involved and familiar with the investigation of Sunday's AFC Championship Game told ESPN.The investigation found the footballs were inflated 2 pounds per square inch below what's required by NFL regulations during the Pats' 45-7 victoryover theIndianapolis Colts, according to sources.

This claim wasn't true.

On January 19, league official David Gardi sent a letter to the Patriots claiming “In fact, one of the game balls was inflated to 10.1 psi, far below the requirement of 12-1/2 to 13-1⁄2 psi. In contrast, each of the Colts’ game balls that was inspected met the requirements set forth above.”

Two more claims, neither of which is true.  First that the Patriots had a ball that was 2.4 psi low.  Also the claim that none of the Colts' were low.