Everett and Kent Leading Vote-Getters at Their Respective Positions

Rock covers paper.

 

Hammer -- where have i chastised you??? RM95 came in and said, "nice restraint, Max" at one point in this thread. you're the one throwing out the personal jabs. not me.

stats are great...stats serve a real purpose. but they also make you see the game in a vacuum. again...comparing biggio's numbers as a leadoff hitter and giambi's numbers over the past few years is, to me, nearly a worthless exercise. it's like comparing numbers from a center and a guard in basketball...except maybe even more pronounced. every player in a batting lineup serves a purpose...and those purposes are different for each position. i don't care if my 4 hitter can move a run over as much as i care if my 2 hitter can. and on and on.

i'm not saying that batting average is necessarily the best barometer for a player. i'm saying there is no clear "this is it" barometer that tells you the real value of a player to a team. the closest i've seen to anything like that is the stats regarding Astros wins when Biggio scores back in the mid- and late- 90's. And Bill James seized on that big time, by the way.

I'm not convinced that you can put a bunch of stat geeks in a boardroom and build a champion. I think the game is far too intricate for that...I realize that's damaging to fantasy owners' egos around the nation, this morning. But them's the breaks.

 

i can't stand Joe Morgan. where are you getting this????

 

I wasn't referring to him specifically, he was just the person who popped into my head as representing ESPN's former player broadcasting lineup.

Again, I apologize if I went too far in discussing a simple baseball thread. I will bow out of this discussion since my attitude seems to have gotten the better of me.

 

Oh, and for the record, I am a huge fan of Biggio's career. I frequent a baseball discussion board, and I am a member of the minority that feels that Biggio is a Hall of Famer. It's nothing personal towards him. He's one of the good guys in the game.

 

So where would be the grave injustice if he is selected to play in in the All Star Game in Houston, sort of a reward for a brilliant career here? Do you think Abreu, Burnitz, Giles, Finley, Cabrera, or Drew would be publicly upset if Biggio took their spot? Doubtful

 

Do you think Biggio would want to take a spot away from a player that earned it, knowing that he was there out of sympathy and not because he deserved it?

 

I don't believe the ego of any professional athlete would allow him to think he was selected out of sympathy. Biggio will feel he earned it.