The top 4 teams in each league make the playoffs with the 4 seed playing the 1 seed and 2 seed plays the 3 seed.A balanced schedule,every team plays the same number of games against every team. This way we’ll never have a case where the Dodgers in 2008 make the playoffs with 84 wins and the Mets go home with 89 wins and get punished for being in the tougher division.

No divisions gaurantees the best 4 records make the playoffs every year.It seems to happen every couple of years where we have a weak division and a team winning the division has less wins than a 3rd place team in a tough division.

If not for the work stoppage in 1994 the Rangers would have won the AL West 11 games under 500.The Cardinals wouldn’t have made the post season in 2006 let alone win it all.I hope when they make 2 15 team leagues that they one day get rid of divisionall play alltogether.If Houston goes to the AL ther will be at least one interleague game every day.

An HBP and BB has nothing to do with hittting a ball!

Saying it relevant is just bull!

Not relevent to judging hitters at all!

I don’t accept it because I know the variables contained in OBP and they include things the Pitcher does not the batter!

Therefore USELESS in judging a batter!

Does getting hit by a pitch mean you a good Hitter Martin?

YOU SAY YES!

Which is why no one buys your OBP!

Becuase it is useless to judge BATTING!

Even Jessup says SLG is better and when combined with BA in the same way OBP is to create OPS it gives you a FULL accounting of EARNED OB and Hitter ability!

Your problem is your beholden to a book who could not use that because high BA/SLG guys actually get paid a lot!

Without you that mention of Sabers never appears!

There are people on these boards who would prefer their GM to IGNORE any advanced stats/data.

You realize that people here who find value in sabermetrics are not the ones saying it’s the only data of value right? The only people who say that are the ones arguing with guys like Donal etc.

However, there ARE people who feel sabermetric statistics SHOULD NOT be a part of a GM’s workload, and that is my point. My point is when you blend concepts together and gather as much data as you can get, it increases your chances of making good decisions.

When you ignore sabermetrics and refuse to acknowledge they have any value, then you’re ignoring valuable data.

“Yawn…you get a cut for every mention of Sabermetrics don’t you?. If you had read what he said you would have understood that he is using equations that INCORPORATE much more than Stats and Sabers!”

I will give you $100 if you show me where in my writings I mentioned sabermetrics?

Please quote. Thanks.

Look I was just busting your balls but you have to admit you brought this up when it barely makes a case FOR sabers just good hard nosed evaluations that MAY use Sabers, May use new and proprietary Metrics and scouting all rolled into a new equation…

I’m not telling you what you think YOU are telling everyone what you think by picking the content you do!

I take Cash or Money Orders…NO CHECKS!

Advanced statistical analysis analyzes STATISTICS not just Sabers, but also traditionals and other metrics that have nothing to do with Sabers or have any relation to sabers at all!

You can try and paint them out to be sabers but they are not!

They are something NEW!
a saber guy adopting them does not make them Sabers!

One thing about the Cards 2004 draft though, they didn’t get anyone. Other years weren’t necessarily that much better.

2005 Colby Rasmus (supp pick for Renteria) a HS kid and Jaime Garcia (22nd rnd HS)

2006 Chris Perez (Supp pick for Matt Morris), John Jay and Allen Craig.

2007 Daniel Descalso

2008 Brett Wallace and Lance Lynn (supp pick for Percivel)

2009 Shelby Miller HS kid.

I’m not for or against sabermetrics but I just don’t see the application of them as to how they relate to drafting. The college environment is so totally different than even a short season league and the best players, the one’s who get up at the earliest ages and have the longer and better careers come to professional baseball straight from HS and that would be completely impossible to find any relevance to numbers.

College players cost less to draft and get to the Majors at a better percentage than HS kids but they don’t (overall) produce as much or for as long as HS kids who make it.

The two best picks the Cards have made since 2004 from a talent standpoint are definitely Rasmus and Miller. Both out of HS and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone other than Pujols and Molina (their two best everyday players, one HS, one a year removed) who came from the farm and that was back in ’99 and ’00. Perhaps McClennon (22nd 2002), Mott (19th 2003) and Lynn (supp rnd Perceival 2008) but that could be as much Duncan as anything else and it certainly is a HUGE help to produce part of your pen yourself but still…

Carpenter was DFA’d by Toronto, Rhodes by Texas when they traded for Adams. Lohse a type B (or worse), Berkman a type B, Freeze, Furcal, Theriot, Westbrook, Jackson and Dotel trades. Wainwright was a trade as well.

I’d say the Cardinals success really has a lot more to do with Dave Duncan developing or re establishing pitchers, trades that worked out well, relying on type B free agents instead of roster clogging retreads on big multi year deals and having the best player in the Majors and one of the best catchers in baseball and that goes all the way back to good work done under Jockety more than 10 years ago and even at that their entire season left them just the thinest margin of error.

That and the fact that they only had one type A free agent, not a whole slew of them.