Military Spending

Any government spending can serve as an economic stimulus.  Where the spending is directed impacts various segments of the economy differently.  The government spends to subsidize many different industries which impact the overall economy, from energy to agriculture, and social spending to military spending.  One of the more recent and largest examples is the joint Bush/Obama state intervention in the financial industry.  This sort of deregulation of markets, combined with subsidies and state intervention, has had a stark impact on the economy.  It provides investors the incentive to take risks knowing hefty returns will be privatized and losses, even to the extent of an economic collapse, will be socialized.  With the increase in spending, mostly through state intervention to save the industry, we have seen an improvement in the overall economy.  However, when pressed, even President Obama acknowledges that the overwhelming majority of the economic recovery has gone to the top half of 1%, with some minor spill over to high-level professionals.  By large, via studies from 'The State of Working America', working families are worse off today than they were in the early 90s, and even worse yet than the same class of working families in the 1970s.  They conclude, "High profitability, higher return on capital, and higher CEO pay, may be the only payoff or concrete sign of accomplishment from 16 years of transition to a more deregulated economy."  The President concedes this as if it's an unfortunate and somewhat puzzling outcome, but it's very much by design.  This example is neoliberalism in a nutshell.  By definition: a policy model that transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector.

There was a major lesson learned during WWII: Capitalism is not a viable economic system.  During the war, the US adopted a semi-command economy, state control and allocation of resources, which was extremely successful and efficient, and pulled the US out of the depression.  It was discovered there is a way to maintain something remotely like a capitalistic system, mainly with massive state subsidy, direction, and control.  That's why those often most vocally in favor of free market principles are also most in favor of subsidies to advanced industry, including via the military.  It's seemingly a contradiction, but there's an underlying theme.  The miracles of the free market must only apply to the poor.  Wealth and profit must be closely managed and protected by state intervention.

You've probably heard me say it bunch of times, but again, military spending is largely a subsidy to high tech industry.  Risk, research, and development are all socialized, then usable technology is passed to advanced industry through huge acts of privatization.  The telecommunications industry, among innumerable illustrations, is a prime example of state intervention which contributed heavily towards the creation of the industry and has sustained it with a vast transfer of public resources to private profit.  The internet, satellites, fiber optics, etc. are all straight from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).  The best illustration within telecommunications is the semiconductor industry, which was saved from collapse in the 1980s by massive Reaganite intervention, all while his administration was claiming a passion for the miracles of the free market, as a lesson in personal responsibility to the poor.  There's bipartisan agreement on these policies, too.  In the 90s, Bill Clinton stood in a Boeing terminal and preached "the gospel of free markets" as described by the NY Times, offering his "grand vision of a free market future" at an APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting in Seattle.  He gave Boeing as the prime example of "the gospel of the free markets".  What he neglected to mention, of course, is that Boeing was the beneficiary of large scale state intervention and would not have existed without massive direct and indirect subsidy by way of crucial technology borrowed from the state sector.  Meanwhile, the Clinton administration gutted welfare spending using the "welfare queen" trope popularized by Reagan.

This isn't to say that state intervention and subsidies to high tech industry through military spending are an altogether bad thing.  In fact, these policies have given the US a commanding lead in the development of many new technologies the industry enjoys, both in hardware and software.  That's an enormous success considering it's been openly stated by the business press that high tech industry could not have survived an unsubsidized, competitive, free market enterprise economy.  The true damage occurs when this spending becomes excessive and is combined with tax cuts to the rich and drastic cuts to social spending.  At these extremes, slashing funding to everything which does not contribute directly to profit making, the use of intervention and subsidies becomes a method for direct redistribution of wealth from public resources to private profit, sharply widening inequality.  Redistribution of wealth in the other direction, as in social spending, also helps the economy, but it works to aid people in becoming consumers who's only contribution to profit-making is by providing their cheap labor, meaning the economic advantages only filter to corporations indirectly.  This type of wealth redistribution also has a democratizing effect, where people become more involved in policy discussion when they're seeing actual benefits to their contribution, which is dangerous to private power.  Military spending has none of these defects.  It's a direct gift to corporations.  That's why it's necessary to use "security" to define the purpose of military spending and not "subsidy".  You limit democratic participation when the population can't feel their contributions and aren't aware that they're largely responsible for the success of the economy, reliant on both their labor and through state intervention, otherwise they might start demanding something in return.  Like, you know, a movement towards a greater commitment to social spending.  So, instead, you create foreign devils to fear, and preach the need to direct those funds towards "defense" which is an easy sell compared to "subsidy".

To deal with the resulting overflow of the superfluous population, not contributing to profit making, who are seen as a drain on a society that refuses to aid them in any way, you just build prisons. In 1994, Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the largest crime bill in history, which allocated $10 billion for prison construction, expanded the death penalty, and eliminated federal funding for inmate education. The act intensified police surveillance and racial profiling, and locked up millions for nonviolent offenses, such as drug possession. It helped usher in the era of mass incarceration that devastated communities of color.  All of which was really a step up from the already severely damaging Reagan/Bush "War on Drugs" political agenda.  In a system where you're trying to limit public participation and any cost to society that isn't a direct handout to private profit, you tend to treat the public as a threat, as an enemy.  They need to be divided, atomized, or altogether gotten rid of, whether that's locked in prison, sat in front of the tv, sent as an occupying force to protect foreign investments, arguing with one another over religious objections, it doesn't matter.  As the democratic theorist Walter Lippmann wrote, "the public must be put in their place."  You need to protect profit from "the roar and trampling of the bewildered herd."

Donald Trump claiming the military is in shambles and the US needs a re-commitment to military spending is a blatant lie.  The US dwarfs the rest of the world in military spending, marking 34% of the world's total military spending, allotting more than the next 7 nations combined.  If you ask troops, and I would recommend you read Winter Soldier, Iraq and Afghanistan; it can be a nightmare for troops trying to receive the proper equipment to fight wars many of the troops don't agree with or believe in.  Once they're home, often facing both mental and physical trauma, they can't even find proper health care through the VA.  So, it's great if you support the military, and specifically the troops, but the majority of the spending isn't going to troops.  It's going to R&D for new technology and it comes at the cost of diminished social spending.  When Trump makes the claim that we need to expand our nuclear capacity, at a cost of $1 trillion over the decade, it's essentially just a call for a greater transfer of wealth from the public resources to private profit.  It's right in line with tax policy that places a greater burden for sustaining the society on the lower and middle classes by reducing tax rates for the wealthy.  He's just using the military as cover for an increased subsidy to advanced industry.  In essence, discipline for the defenseless poor, but a powerful nanny state for the rich and privileged.  Just another method of: a policy model that transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector.  Neoliberalism.

Baseball Q & A

My cousin, Nathan Perry, sent me this Q & A (unaltered in italics)... I received his permission to submit my response here, for all to see. Nathan is one of my favorite people. You may know him as a former Thanksgiving Day Football MVP, or his more recent work, playing a key supporting role in bringing a human life into this world. It's also possible you don't know Nathan, in which case, it's safe to forget about Nathan, as one picture of his young daughter Cora far surpasses the sum of Nathan's work as measured by today's currency, Faves and Likes. I figure, for those who know you, you're like our own personal Cubs expert... so, this is my feeble attempt to interview you with questions I actually want to know your opinion on:

Q: Who is the most valuable player on the Cubs team? To further clarify, if the Cubs could only keep one player who would it be? The definition of 'value' as it relates to players has been argued endlessly, most often in debating MVP candidates. There's an argument that the spirit of celebrating 'value' is in recognizing the most outstanding player. By that argument, the most valuable Cubs player is Kris Bryant. Judged on performance, as well as handsomeness, he's easily the most irreplaceable player on the roster. The other camp asserts a more literal definition of 'value' demands that salary, and in this case, the entirety of the player's contract status be considered equally in determining the player's value to the team. In this case, Anthony Rizzo is at least in the mix. Bryant and Rizzo are both under team control through 2021. Rizzo signed an extension with the Cubs in 2013 to buy out all of his years of team control, plus two team options (2020 and 2021). Bryant has not signed and extension and will enter arbitration as a Super Two qualifier (top 22% in service time for players between 2-3 years of Major League service) next off-season. Rizzo's value is easier to calculate, so we'll start there. Anthony projects to average of 4.5 WAR per season over the next 5 years, for a total of 22.5 WAR. Over that time he'll make $54.86 million. That's about $2.44 million per win. With Bryant, I'm going to have to estimate how much he'll earn through arbitration, but he appears to be a lock at this point to smash arbitration records. He'll earn around $800,000 this upcoming season, his last standard raise under team contract renewal. I'll estimate $5 million for his first year of arbitration, $12 million his second year, $18 million in his third, and $23 million in his final year of arbitration. That's a total of $58.8 million over five years. Bryant projects better than Rizzo, with a 5.9 WAR average, or a total of 29.5 WAR. That's $1.99 million per win. The average amount paid per win in free agency is around $8 million. So, in the next five years, Rizzo's net value to the Cubs is about $125,000,000. Bryant's net value is even greater, at around $177,000,000. So, the answer is Bryant, by both measures, but both are tremendously valuable. Easily both in the top 10 of most valuable players.

Q: Although they are important in different ways, Who would be the greater loss to the Cubs: Joe Maddon or Theo Epstein? What a manager provides is not as easily quantifiable as a GM or, in Theo's case, President of Baseball Operations. My simple answer is Theo. I believe Maddon is one the better managers in baseball. Unfortunately, I can't really back that up with much data. I think he's around average as an in-game tactician, though seemingly both creative and flexible. From all accounts, he's among the best at managing a clubhouse. It's impossible to prove it's true or how much that's worth, but I tend to believe it, nonetheless. Where Theo excels, there's data to back up his performance. He's one of the best handful of baseball executives, and just received a pay raise to reflect that. In fact, even at $10 million per year over five years, I think he's underpaid. I'm not convinced baseball is correctly valuing it's executives. Surely an elite front office executive provides more value than say, Ian Kennedy, a back of the rotation starting pitcher who signed last off-season with the Royals for $70 million over 5 years. Kennedy might provide the Royals 10 WAR over those five years. Just one good trade, signing, or draft pick by an elite GM can be worth that to an organization, valued on the open market by Kansas City as worth $70 million. I think it's fair to estimate that Theo's been worth hundreds of million of dollars to the Cubs, and baseball owners seem to be sluggish to recognize that an investment in the baseball operations department likely has several times more value per dollar than a free-agent signing at this point. The argument against Epstein is, perhaps everything that he has to offer as an executive was put in place over the course of his first contract, and even if he were to leave, there'd be enough of a residual effect from his presence that any drop off in front performance would be minimal. To me, it's worth $10 million per year to keep him around. Ten million dollars is nothing to a Major League organization. If the price were to double, though, I think it would be worth considering letting him go, as he's worth less to you at that point, having already established a top-to-bottom process that can be replicated without his leadership, than he is to another organization looking to rebuild it's front office.

Q: Inevitably, Cubs will lose players like Fowler to Free Agency, choose not to extend offers to guys like Hammel and some will retire such as Ross. Who are some players in the next two, three, five, etc years that will be heartbreaking for the Cubs to cut ties with, but it will eventually be inevitable to do so? The Cubs are in a pretty great situation right now. They're really not at risk to lose anyone they can't replace, and don't want to let go. Their core of position players are all under contract through at least 2021. I imagine they'll probably lock up most of those guys to extensions in the coming years. Bryant is likely to be the most expensive, and most difficult to sign, as he's represented by super-agent Scott Boras who regularly advises his clients to test the open market. In the short-term, Jake Arrieta is the one guy they're going to have to make a tough decision on. He's a free agent next off-season and he's likely to get a large contract. I really can't say with any confidence one way or another if the Cubs will re-sign him. Personally, I'd be hesitant to go beyond 5 years and $120 million with Arrieta. This could all certainly change between now and the end of next season, but at this point, there's very little chance Arrieta will get less than 5 years and $120 million.

Q: Which NL teams are not being talked about that should be feared? The Colorado Rockies would head that list for me. I think they're ready to take a step forward in 2017 and compete. Their outfield is strong and deep (Blackmon, CarGo, David Dahl, Gerardo Parra, and Raimel Tapia). I think their best bet is to trade either Carlos Gonzalez or Charlie Blackmon, and play Tapia, the best defender of the group, in Center Field. Dahl and whoever is left of Cargo/Blackmon would play in the corners. Arenado is an MVP candidate at Third Base. Trevor Story, Shortstop, and D.J. LeMahieu, Second Base, are both above average starters. They could use some help at Catcher and First Base. They have solid depth at Cather, with three legitimate options, though none of them are better than average. Given the Rockies limited resources, I'd imagine they'll just stick with what the have there and invest in First Base. As of today, the Rockies listed First Baseman is Gerardo Parra. They can't open the season with that. They could either try to get a First Baseman in trade, or dip into free agency and try to sign one of Mike Napoli, Mitch Moreland, or Adam Lind. None of those three strike me as very exciting, but all are better than Gerardo Parra. Even as is, Colorado has one of the better sets of position players in the NL. That alone could carry them to 80+ wins. Jon Gray is their Ace, and he's really good, but behind him there's still some unanswered questions. With Chad Bettis, Tyler Chatwood, Tyler Anderson, and Jeff Hoffman, there's better back-end depth than past Rockies rotations, but they still lack middle of the rotation depth. I don't expect the Rockies to make a major splash in free agency, so if they're going to compete next year, they're either going to have to gamble on low-cost, medium upside free agent, add pitching via trade (likely Blackmon or CarGo), or just hope that someone takes a major step forward in development. The bullpen is a bit soft too, but that's an easier fix. That can be patched together. Another dark horse would be the Phillies. They have a good pitching staff, but lack the offensive punch of Colorado.

Q: Cubs have now had their glory, which AL team and which NL team do you want to see pull home World Series Titles other than your obvious preference of the Cubs? I actually have a few. In the AL, I want to see Cleveland get one, and I think they're in the best position of the teams I'm going to mention. I've been partial to the Indians for a couple years. I think Cleveland is a very well run organization, I have a good friend living in the city, and after this past season's heartbreaking finish, I'd be happy to see them get one. Honorable mention to the Houston Astros, Tampa Bay Rays, and Oakland A's. In the NL, I'd have to say Pittsburgh. Again, like all the AL teams I mentioned, they're a very efficiently run small market team that hasn't seen a World Series Champion in over 25 years. That seems to be my criteria.

Q: How much more (if any) does winning a World Series allow Ownership to spend on players/ coaches? Well, this is difficult to answer as there aren't exactly figures for this, but there are several years of estimates. First off, all playoff revenue is divided between the Commissioner's office, the teams, and a player pool. The Cubs organization likely collected between $20-30 million in revenue. The Cubs players receive 36% of the player pool, likely in the $25-30 million range, to divide among themselves, projected in the $350,000 - $450,000 range for per share. I couldn't find anything on what the coaching staff receives, but I assume most coaches probably have a bonus system attached to their contracts to account for postseason and World Series appearances and victories. Forbes has estimated that the Cubs World Series victory has added $300 million to the overall value of the franchise. It's impossible to say how much of that will be re-invested directly into the team. It's certainly a larger boost to smaller market teams than Chicago, but with the Ricketts and minority investors funding all of the renovations, probably nearing a billion dollars, both in and around Wrigley Field, any additional value to the franchise could be applied to help covering the cost of the renovations. Without going off on a tangent, I just want to add that in this age of billionaire sports franchise owners using strong arm tactics to hold a city's beloved team hostage in demanding the local populations approve tax-payer funded stadium deals, the Cubs ownership should be commended for funding their own renovations.

Q: There are the obvious big name Free Agents such as Bautista, Encarnacion, Chapman, Jansen, etc... but who are the free agents that people are not talking about who could be a big game changer for the teams who pick them up at good market value? It's a weak free agent class, especially for position players. I'm not sure anyone is going to hit any home-runs without shelling out some cash, but here's a few guys to keep and eye on. PITCHERS Mark Melancon, Relief Pitcher, has been just as good at run prevention over the past four years as Chapman and Jansen but will only command probably half the overall cost. I liked Charlie Morton as a cheap back-end rotation piece, but he already signed with Houston for 2 years and $14 million. I love Rich Hill, and I think he'll come at a bit of a discount because of his age and injury risk. I'd be pretty happy if the Cubs signed him for 3 years, let Arrieta walk at the end of next year, and worked on adding depth pieces between now and then. Ivan Nova is another pretty interesting back-end of the rotation guy. He only walked 1.56 batters per 9-innings last season in 162 innings, with a 3.70 xFIP. That has a lot of value, but he hasn't proven he can do it consistently, so he may only get a 2 or 3-year deal in the $10-12 million per year range. One season like he had last year is worth about $20 million, so there's room for him to exceed the value of the contract. HITTERS Justin Turner, Third Base, is the real prize in my eyes. He's only 3 years removed from being considered a light-hitting, platoon-only, reserve infielder. I think the market is going to lag behind considering him a legitimate 3.5 WAR player. I like Carlos Gomez, too. He's had a couple rough seasons, battling injuries, but I still think he's a major league average starter when he's on the field. He's probably not going to get more than 1 or 2 years and $10 million per year. He can be a really sneaky good addition for a team like Cleveland, Seattle, or Toronto that expects to compete and needs an outfielder. Q: Last question. It's game seven of the NLCS at Wrigley field and the Cubs are playing their division rivals the St. Louis Cardinals. Chapman did not get resigned with the Cubs. It's the bottom of the 9th inning with the Cubs up 1-0. Unfortunately, the bases are loaded, but there are 2 outs. Cardinals have a red hot, Matt Carpenter up to bat with an equally on fire Piscotty available to pinch-hit if a Lefty is brought in relief. You can only choose one RELIEVER from the Cubs staff (current or someone you believe the Cubs may truly sign). Who do you send in?

Off this team's current roster, given today's information projected out to next October in a hypothetical NLCS game, I'd send in Hector Rondon. Neither Rondon or Strop finished the year strong, and there's some question how effective they'll be come 2017, but I'd still project Rondon to be the best out of the returning group. Carl Edwards Jr. isn't far behind those two, and could leap frog one or both Rondon and Strop between now and late next season. I think the Cubs will likely add a late-inning bullpen arm this off-season, either through trade or free agency. For the price, I like Melancon, as I stated above. I'd use him over anyone on the current roster.

This is it (World Series Champs)

It's been asked by a fair number of sports media types, would it not actually be better if the Cubs never won?  I've always immediately rejected the idea.  I'm starting to think I never gave the idea as much consideration as it perhaps deserved.

Now, let me start by clearly stating that I don't think there's any universal experience.  I don't, or at least should not, expect a great number of people to feel the same way I do about this, or really anything else.  That being understood, I'll always err on the side of victory over defeat; fleeting joy over prolonged suffering.  I'm glad the Cubs won the World Series.

When I've heard it questioned, whether we should want the Cubs to finally win, it's always been presented as a case of shared identity.  Is the stigma of lovable losers ingrained?  We, as Cubs fans, can immediately relate to one another, even through multiple generations, with this shared experience of mediocrity and suffering that's remained remarkably constant for several decades.  If we lose that bond, that one thing that connects us all, will we also lose the intimacy that makes Cubs fandom so special?

I've been very fortunate to experience live at Wrigley Field a number of memorable moments and games.   I've also been there to experience many of the lows, when the team has been so shitty the atmosphere resembles a bar for 20-something trust fund Big-10 grads.  Where a baseball game just happens to be part of the background.  To me, there's nothing like the experience of an excited Wrigley Field.  The shared love of this one thing, a thing that I can fundamentally understand, loosens my anxieties.  Even as a cynic you can't help but be moved by 40,000 people singing together, sharing pure joy.  I've hugged complete strangers.  In the last week we've witnessed thousands of people writing the names of deceased loved ones, who never experienced this in their lifetime, in chalk on the brick walls outside Wrigley.  Five million people crowded the city to celebrate together, carrying with them the memories of mothers and fathers, and their mothers and fathers too, who all shared a love of the Chicago Cubs.  There will be no problem transitioning to a shared identity of success: a new experience of being winners.  It will be different, but I'm confident nothing will be lost.

For me, though, the effect has been one I never anticipated.  The Cubs have always played such a huge part in my life.  I was genuinely moved by their victory in the NLCS and expected even greater emotion if they were to win the whole thing.  The Cubs have been part of my personal identity, with the team's struggles and frustrations often mirroring my own.  To me, the World Series represented some futuristic end-point: a resolution through redemption.  I spent 20 years imagining the feeling of this team winning a World Series.  I've cried at the end of baseball movies like "Major League" just imagining the emotion of this one day being the Cubs.  The emotion of this one day being my reality.  I never went so far as imagining what exactly in the world I expected would be different if the Cubs finally did win.  I mostly just allowed myself to be swept away in the dreams of a post-World Series utopia.

Well, the morning after the Cubs won the series felt a lot like every other morning.  Despite the team's achievement, every other prospective struggle remained.  In the midst of the greatest victory in my sports world, I almost felt an even heavier weight of loss.  As if an offer of hope had been exhausted.  There was absolutely a surface joy but it felt in many ways performative; there to meet an expectation as much as the genuine feeling.  This was something I wanted so deeply that I had allowed myself to subconsciously build it into an event of personal salvation.  Some time back, I joked with a close friend that I check my email multiple times per day, despite never expecting any particular message of significance.  I suggested to him the email I'm really awaiting is the one that reads, "You can stop worrying, Ryan.  Everything is taken care of, forever until the end."  I had built the Cubs reaching the pinnacle of baseball success into embodying the relief of that email.  It could never deliver on that promise.

I have enjoyed watching other people experience this and share their elation.  The pictures and the stories have been wonderful.  Personally, it's been strange, though.  At times I've felt like I was experiencing all of this behind a glass wall.  With baseball being something that's helped me feel a greater connection with people, I'd imagined this being the ultimate case.  Instead, it's almost had the opposite effect.  The combination of my own personal feelings with the physical distance between myself and many of the people I had always imagined sharing this moment with highlighted a feeling of isolation.  Where baseball had often helped make feel part of a community, in these past few days, it's left me feeling very alone.

To be clear; I wouldn't trade this World Series for anything.  These are my issues.  They may not be completely unique, but I recognize they're abnormal and shouldn't curb the celebration in any way.

 To see the amount of happiness it's brought to so many people has been really incredible.  At a time where there's so much dissension, to see anything bring tens of millions of people from all different backgrounds together is truly special.  The thought of making small talk with strangers normally makes my brain melt, but these couple weeks, seeing people light up upon recognizing the Cubs hat and shirts I've worn basically every day for decades, and asking me about the team has actually been a lot of fun despite my awkwardness.  Having people I love, who I know wouldn't otherwise give a shit about a baseball game, watch these games and share this experience with me, because they know it's something I love, has meant more to me than they'll ever know.  That's what I'm choosing to take from this.  A reminder there are people who love me, and were swept up in this more because of how they felt about me than how they felt about a baseball team.  I know I've felt the same thinking about friends and family and what this meant to them.  I know every one of the five million people who showed up to celebrate this historic moment had someone who felt that way about them and they've felt the same towards others.  That's what all of this represents.

The World Series

It's often difficult to explain how something as trivial as sports, and baseball in particular, can mean so much.  So many of my relationships, both with family and friends, have been built around sports, and none more so than with the Cubs.  It's become part of my identity, not just as others see me, but as I see myself.  It's not always been an easy road with the Cubs, though.  Before ownership hired Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and Jason McLeod to head the baseball operations department, and the organization made a firm commitment to sabermetric principles, I had reached something of a crisis of fandom.  I had already started to abandon much of the enthusiasm of my youth when it came to my football and basketball allegiances.  Those sports, while still appealing to my romantic side, failed to capture my developing intellectual curiosity.  The distinct nature of baseball, however, makes it uniquely able to be analyzed. Within the now popularized and ever-expanding sabermetrics community in baseball, that curiosity flourished.  As my interest in analytics grew, I found that my favorite team, the Cubs, increasingly represented an antiquated system.  They were stuck in baseball's past.  I found myself questioning whether I could continue to support a team who's methods were outdated.  A team who ran opposed, not parallel, to who I was becoming and who I wanted to be.

Baseball provided me a foundation for how to think.  Everything can be put on trial.  There's no value for what you think you know, or what you've been told.  The information is there to test a hypothesis and reach a well reasoned conclusion.  The sabermetric community cut through the bullshit and found what could and could not be quantified.  It can be carried over to nearly every aspect of life.  I've changed my position on a countless number of things by just exploring why and how I had reached, or in many cases, started with different conclusions.  If I couldn't reason why I felt the way I did, I knew I didn't have enough information to reach that conclusion.  All too often we look for evidence to support our conclusions, rather than seek the necessary information to reach an evidence-based conclusion.  Baseball taught me to leave behind the conjecture and truly value what can be defined.

Baseball helped me learn to value process over outcome.  There's an extreme danger with results-based analysis and we're all prone to this way of thinking.  The results are what you feel in the short term, but they don't necessarily reflect the value of an approach based on a long-term series of correct decisions.  Sometimes, you'll make the right decision and not be immediately rewarded.  Sometimes, you'll make a poor decision and be rewarded handsomely.  The results should not be the focus of the scrutiny, but they often are, which leads to one chasing results, instead of establishing a repeatable and beneficial long-term process.  Life is nothing but a series distinct events, and over a long enough sample size, those making the correct decisions the most often stand to see the greatest return.  The value is in doing what you can, with what's under your control, even through the times when the results are disappointing.  That's a very difficult lesson to learn and take to heart.

Baseball helped me deal with failure.  Along this line of valuing process over outcome, there comes a therapeutic effect.  You can't always control your circumstances, but if you have some control over your reaction and your confidence in your approach.  That can be in and of itself empowering.  The sport teaches this on a constant basis.  From pitch to pitch, when Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher in the game fails on the largest stage of his career.  From at bat to at bat, when Mike Trout, possibly greatest player in our lifetime, strikes out in 21% of his at bats.  Even on a larger scale, the best team in the league any given year, by whatever your measurement, fails to win the World Series 70% of the time.  Failure is a constant even at the heights of greatness.  If you can't learn to devalue the outcome and embrace the process, you'll crumble, in baseball as in life.

There's a failure in our society to recognize this and properly reward not only outcome, but process, and it's born from an expanding culture of anti-intellectualism.  To me, there's no greater analogy for this developing societal problem than the claim that participation trophies make our children weak.  The exact opposite is true.  Failure is a staple of life.  Taking a macho approach to our children in evaluating process/outcome activities is a tremendous disservice to future generations.  If we teach our children the only thing that deserves recognition is success and victory, then we're limiting our children's ability to properly value effort and approach.  The danger to this really comes as these kids reach adulthood and the only thing they've been taught has any worth is success, most often measured by adults in profit.  That sets a dangerous precedent.  I'm not sure we want to live in a society that increasingly values only profit and leaves no room for anything but individual advancement.  If anyone needs to be taught the value of doing something correctly, to the best of one's ability, and to completion, it's children.  By rewarding only outcome, you're instructing them that the process had no value.  You're teaching them to chase profit, a rigid individualism, and all else be damned.

So, now that we're here, at the pinnacle of the ultimate success, a World Series, I ask that we don't let the outcome devalue the real success, the process and the approach.  If the Cubs win in 4, this has been a tremendous success.  If the Cubs lose in 4, this has been a tremendous success.  What we're seeing, either way, is the benefit of trusting an objective process.

From an intimate standpoint, the National League Championship was an exorcism of sorts, but the true validation came from everything that led up to that culmination.  There's a feeling that, for first the time in my life, the approach of the team parallels my own.  As silly as it sounds, seeing this team that's part of my individual identity bring so much joy to so many, to those that I love, is personally rewarding despite the fact I had no real impact on the success.  The Cubs right now are a perfect marriage of the emotional attachment to the team that I carry through my own relationships, and the confirmation of personal philosophy.  I'm enjoying this more than I ever imagined I would.

Go Cubs Go

Tonight's Debate

I just read someone (@MATrueblood on Twitter) making a very well-meaning plea for liberal voters to not just ignore or dismiss Trump supporters and conservative ideologues because these people and their concerns don't just go away.  He claimed watching something like tonight's debate isn't about making up your mind, but rather hearing both sides in full, and being able to engage with people who disagree with you.

"It truly is about having a common starting point for difficult conversations and persuading by being non-judgmental and demonstrating a real understanding of the other half of the country's ideas, perceptions, and concerns. It's about debate outside that hall as much as within it."

I love that mindset.  I just don't know that it's realistic at this point.  I think a major problem that he's overlooking is that you cannot begin to have the difficult conversations without the common starting point.  It's a failed assumption that this debate, or really any part of this political process, has the potential to be a provenance for a common starting point on any single issue, let alone the sum of all the nation's disunity.  You can't begin to have constructive dialogue on an issue when there is, at best, extremely limited agreement on the facts pertaining to that issue.  When you have competing sources delivering contradictory realities, you're going to have individuals approaching each issue with differing 'truths'.

Try talking to any firm Hillary Clinton supporter about concerns over the failed neoliberal policies of the past 30 years, for which the Clintons represent the first family.  It's a nightmare.  You get nowhere because these are 'non-facts' within the accepted dialogue of the party.  These unsavory histories have either been altered to show a different actuality, or have altogether disappeared down the memory hole.  Any reasonable person can see that it's largely these policies, in combination with the suppression of socialistic alternatives, that have lead to the mass discontent of working class Americans, which has unfortunately manifested itself in the rise of, and support for, someone like Trump.  If we can't meet at the starting point of honestly examining the effects of these policies, having an understanding for and conversations with this half of the electorate is impossible.

The same, I think even more obviously for most of us, goes for Trump supporters.  This movement is a completely misguided reaction to some very real grievances and valid distrust of Clinton and those in the same mold.  But again, you can't begin to engage many of these people in meaningful discussion because they're coming to the table with a sense of reality that's skewed so far beyond objectivity that it really feels hopeless trying to hear them out and reason with them on their concerns.  They've read a different version of history and current events than their opponents.  What hope is there for understanding someone's perceptions when there's such a gap in the information?

We're never going to be able to agree on what to do if we're not even in the same ballpark on what has happened and what is happening.  If there's one thing you're not going to see tonight, it's any equitable discussion on where we're at and how we've got here.

Uniform Shopping with Chris Sale

One of my favorite exercises in creating baseball content over the past few years was by Ben Lindbergh of Baseball Prospectus, attempting to create a trade package for David Price back in 2014 (Found Here).  Lindbergh assumed the role of GM of the Tampa Bay Rays, the team tasked with finding a suitable return for it's star pitcher set to hit free agency after the 2016 season.  He assigned 11 of his co-workers separate GM roles for each of the Rays potential suitors and asked each to make an offer for David Price.  The results were quite interesting.  Most of the offers were pretty aggressive, but centered almost entirely around minor league prospects.  At the time, I think about half of these would have been considered an overpay.  Looking back, perhaps only the offers from St. Louis (Matt Adams, Stephen Piscotty, and Joe Kelly) and Pittsburgh (Tyler Glasnow, Josh Bell, Nick Kingham, Jonathan Schwind) would have been considered a success for the Rays.  As fans, perhaps this display of how frequently prospects don't pan out should ease our concerns over sacrificing the tantalizing potential of non-established talent we haven't yet seen fail.  Lindbergh ultimately settled on the offer of Joc Pederson, Zach Lee, and Chris Anderson from the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Of course, the Rays ultimately received what was considered to be a slightly underwhelming package of Drew Smyly, Willy Adames, and Nick Franklin.  Franklin, despite being Major League ready, never really contributed anything to the Rays.  Smyly, a reliever with the Tigers, transitioned to a starting role with the Rays where he's enjoyed moderate success but has struggled to stay healthy.  Adames is probably the last hope for a breakthrough from the Price trade.  The 20-year-old Shortstop debuted at Double-A this year where he's slashed .277/.372/.452 as one of the youngest players at the level.  There's even been speculation the Rays could to call him up at some point this season.  I'm very high on Adames, but that's not really the point.

I mentioned on Twitter a few days ago I thought the White Sox should capitalize on this trade market devoid of high-end starting pitching and trade Chris Sale before the start of the 2017 season.  Sale has since been suspended by the club for throwing an all-time great temper tantrum when asked to pitch in the White Sox hideous, and probably uncomfortable, 1976 throwback uniforms.  The story is hilarious so I'll link to it (here).  Unlike the Rays with Price, the Sox really aren't under as much pressure to move Sale, who's signed through 2019.  For the same reason, having 3 years of additional team control, he's even more valuable than the comparably talented Price.  So, they have greater freedom to be selective on the when and where decisions surrounding Sale's future.  My reasoning behind trading him now is;

A. The White Sox should not be expecting to contend in Sale's remaining three seasons under contract.  They aren't a good team and there doesn't seem to be a quick fix to reach contention.
B. This is likely their best opportunity to maximize return value with this being a seller's market (see the Chapman deal) and Sale having three more valuable seasons under contract.  In theory, every year Sale moves closer to free-agency, the Sox bargaining power decreases.
C. Pitchers break.  Pretty much all of them break.  Every time the White Sox start Sale, a player they should know by now they're going to have to trade eventually, they're running the risk he blows up and his trade value is destroyed.

Now, I don't have the luxury of 10 coworkers or friends I can ask to send me trade offers for Sale.  So, what I'm going to have to do is assume the role of GM for each of Sale's prospective buyers.  I'll build a trade package and make a brief pitch from each team, with links to each player's baseball reference page, and I'll leave the decision to you, the readers, which offer to accept, if any.

Boston Red Sox: SP - Eduardo Rodriguez, 2B - Yoan Moncada, SP - Michael Kopech, OF - Luis Alexander Basabe, C - Austin Rei

You get an immediate replacement for Sale in your Major League rotation with Rodriguez (23).  Yeah, he's had his struggles this season, but he's only a year removed from being a Top 100 prospect, and he's still a lefty starter throwing 93 mph with a plus changeup and workable Slider.  Moncada is Baseball America's #3 Prospect and is slashing .275/.362/.559 at Double-A despite being only 21 years old.  Kopech (20), a Top 100 prospect according to Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus, was a 1st Round pick for us back in 2014, currently sporting a 1.50 ERA after 4 starts in High-A.  Basabe (19), a toolsy switch-hitting Center Fielder, is our #7 ranked Prospect, currently at Single-A.  Rei (22) is a college Catcher from the University of Washington, showing an impressive ability to control the strike zone with a 10.3% BB rate and 17.6% K rate in 261 Single-A ABs.

New York Yankees: SP - Luis Severino, SS - Jorge Mateo, OF - Aaron Judge, C - Gary Sanchez, SP - Domingo Acevedo

You can slot Severino (22) right into your Major League rotation.  He posted a 2.89 ERA in 62.1 innings in 2015, his rookie season.  He's been killed this season by a combination of bad luck and the long ball, but he's still managed a respectable 3.97 xFIP, and his velocity is actually up a tick to 95.5 mph.  Even if the secondary pitches don't come along, he still could have a career as a valuable late-innings reliever.  Mateo (21), a Dominican Shortstop with elite speed and plus fielding tools, is Baseball America's #26 ranked Prospect.  Judge (24) is a Major League ready Outfielder, rated the #18 Prospect by Baseball Prospectus.  He has big power, smacking 16 homers in 318 Triple-A ABs, while slashing .261/.357/.469.  Sanchez (23) is another Major League ready Prospect, hitting .283 with 10 HRs and 7 SBs in 265 ABs as a Catcher/Designated Hitter at Triple-A.  Acevedo (22), a giant 6-7 242 lb. pitcher, has posted an impressive 4/1 K/BB rate in 7 High-A starts, with a 2.91 FIP.

Cleveland Indians: SP - Mike Clevinger, OF - Clint Frazier, SP - Justus Sheffield, 3B - Yandy Diaz, OF - Greg Allen

We can't offer any established Major League talent, but we can offer an impressive package of Prospects.  Clevinger (25) is a Major League ready Starting Pitcher who's amassed 88-innings at Triple-A with 3.17 ERA and over a strikeout per inning.  Frazier (21) is MLB.com's #27 Prospect.  The 5-tool Outfielder was just promoted to Triple-A after slashing .276/.356/.469, with 13 HRs and 13 SBs in half a season at Double-A.  Sheffield (20), rated the #81 Prospect by Baseball America, has a 3.53 ERA in 18 starts at High-A.  Diaz (24) is a Major League ready Cuban import who's posted some eye-popping plate discipline numbers as he's worked his way quickly through the Minors.  This season he's posted a 1/1 K/BB ratio between Double-A and Triple-A, with a .340/.419/.496 slash line in 238 Triple-A ABs.  The former San Diego State stand-out, Allen (23), is making High-A look easy.  The speedy Outfielder has a .424 OBP and 38 SBs, displaying his great contact skills with an 11.8% K%.

Texas Rangers: OF - Nomar Mazara, 3B - Joey Gallo, SP - Luis Ortiz, SP - Michael Matuella

Mazara (21) has already recorded 372 PAs in the Majors, posting a .286/.339/.426 slash line.  Perhaps the most impressive part of his debut season has been his power potential combined with his well above average 15.9% K%.  This is one of the best young hitters in the game.  Gallo (22), is a Major League ready Prospect with enormous power.  He's smashed 18 HRs in under 300 PAs this season at Triple-A to go with an 18% BB%.  He's also answered concerns about his K% by improving from a 39.5% Triple-A rate in 2015 to a 30.5% rate this season.  Ortiz (20), Baseball America's #64 Prospect, has posted better than a 4/1 K/BB rate in 37 innings at Double-A, with a 3.55 FIP.  Matuella is a lottery ticket.  Once in play to be the #1 Overall pick in the 2015 draft, Matuella (22), slipped to the 3rd Round after having Tommy John surgery just a few months prior to the draft.  He was set to return this June but had to be shutdown after just 3 innings with a ligament sprain in his surgically repaired elbow.

Houston Astros: SS - Alex Bregman, OF - Kyle Tucker, SP - David Paulino, C - Garrett Stubbs

Bregman (22), just made his Major League debut on 7/25, fresh off being named baseball's #1 Prospect by ESPN's Keith Law on the 14th of July.  Alex destroyed Double-A and Triple-A, slashing .306/.406/.580 in 368 PAs, with 20 HRs and 7 SBs.  Good luck finding a better prospect.  Tucker (19), rated the #61 Prospect by Baseball America, is hitting .277 with 30 SBs at Single-A.  At 6-4 there's room for him to grow into his frame and develop some power to pair with his speed and above average hit tool.  Paulino (22) is Baseball America's #91 Prospect.  He's dominated Double-A this season, to the tune of a 1.86 ERA and 10.24 K/9 in 58 innings.  Stubbs (23) is a 2015 2nd Round pick out of USC.  Between High-A and Double-A this season, the talented backstop has hit over .300 with 7 HRs and 11 SBs, and just 39 Ks to 36 BBs in 290 PAs.

Washington Nationals: SP - Joe Ross, OF - Victor Robles, SP - Reynaldo Lopez, 2B/SS - Wilmer Difo

Joe Ross (23), younger brother of 2014 All-Star Tyson Ross, has already tallied 172 Major League innings with a strong 3.56 ERA, and he's under team control through 2021.  He's the type of piece you can build your next contending staff around.  The #29 Prospect in the game, according to Baseball Prospectus, Victor Robles (19) has slashed .289/.390/.436 with 7 HRs and 28 SBs between A and High-A as one of the youngest players at each level.  Lopez (22) is a Major League ready Starting Pitcher with an elite fastball and has shown above average control in the Minors.  He's struck out 116 batters and walked just 31 in 96.1 innings across the three upper levels of baseball, with a 2.90 ERA.  Difo (24) is a Major League ready middle infielder with good speed and contact skills.

New York Mets: SP - Steven Matz, OF - Michael Conforto, SS - Amed Rosario, 2B - Dilson Herrera

Matz (25) is an immediate replacement in your Major League rotation with 5 more years of team control.  In 142 innings in the Majors, Matz has a 3.09 ERA, backed up by a strong 3.49 xFIP.  Conforto (23) is power hitting corner outfielder.  In 453 Major League PAs, Conforto has slashed .248/.318/.430.  The #58 Prospect according to Baseball America, Amed Rosario (20), is a slick-fielding Shortstop who has displayed above average contact skills in the Minors.  He's in the midst of a break-out season, currently hitting .321 with a surprising .464 SLG% in 401 PAs between High-A and Double-A, which should see him rocket even further up Prospect rankings after the season.  This could be the last time he's available.  Herrera (22) is Major League ready middle infielder.  He struggled in first taste of Major League action, hitting just .215 in 149 ABs.  There's reason to believe he'll be a better hitter if given an extended opportunity, though, as he's posted an .846 OPS in 740 PAs at Triple-A.

Chicago Cubs: C/OF - Kyle Schwarber, 2B/OF - Ian Happ, SP - Dylan Cease, OF - Eloy Jimenez, 3B - Jeimer Candelario

Schwarber (23) burst onto the scene in 2015 smacking 16 HRs in just 273 PAs in the Regular Season, followed by another 5 HRs in 31 PAs in the postseason.  He's out for all of 2016 with an ACL injury, but is expected to make a full recovery.  He can play Catcher, Left Field, and First Base but probably projects as more of a DH-type long term.  Happ (21), the #9 Overall pick in the 2015 draft, is ranked as the #67 Prospect by Baseball Prospectus.  The versatile Happ has spent 2016 between High-A and Double-A, slashing .296/.387/.462 across the two levels.  Cease (20) is a power arm, ranked by MLB.com as the Cubs #6 Prospect.  He's currently at Low-A, with a 3.32 ERA and 23 Ks in 21.2 innings.  Jimenez (19), already with 339 ABs at Single-A, is hitting .330 with 11 HRs.  You may have seen him at this year's Future's Game in San Diego.  Eloy went 2-3 with a homer and 4 RBIs.  Candelario (22) is the most Major League ready of this package of prospects.  In 388 PAs between Double-A and Triple-A this year, Candelario has a .353 OBP and a .422 SLG.

San Francisco Giants: SS - Christian Arroyo, SP - Phil Bickford, SS - C.J. Hinojosa, SP - Adalberto Mejia, SP - Joan Gregorio

We're light on trade assets with Major League experience, but we've assembled an impressive package of Prospects nonetheless.  Arroyo (21), a 2013 1st Round pick, is Baseball America's #62 Prospect.  He's currently hitting .285 at Double-A.  The 18th Overall pick in the 2015 draft, Bickford (21), has dominated the low Minors.  In 2016, between Single-A and High-A, Bickford has a 2.72 ERA and 101 Ks in 86 innings.  Hinojosa (22), the former University of Texas stand-out, has hit at very stop through the Minors to this point.  This season, between High-A and Double-A, he's slashed .293/.371/.426.  Ranked by Baseball Prospectus at the #86 Prospect in 2015, Mejia (23), slipped in 2015, only throwing 82.1 innings with mediocre K/BB rates.  He's bounced back in 2016, however, with a 2.81 ERA and 3/1 K/BB rate in 105.2 innings between Double-A and Triple-A.  He's essentially ready for a shot in the Majors.  Gregorio (24), a regular on Carson Cistulli's Fringe Five, has an impressive strikeout potential, and could wind up being an important bullpen piece if he can't stick as a Starting Pitcher.  He's struggled through 66.1 innings at Triple-A with a 5.43 ERA, but he's maintained the high strikeout rate and a 4.22 FIP suggests he's been pretty unlucky.

Los Angeles Dodgers: CF - Joc Pederson, SP - Jose De Leon, OF - Alex Verdugo, SP - Brock Stewart, 2B - Willie Calhoun

Ok, first off, the catch here is that we want BOTH Chris Sale and Jose Quintana.  Now, before you hang up, listen to our offer....

Pederson (24) had a monster first half in his 2015 rookie season, making the All-Star team, but he collapsed in the second half, stumbling to a .210/.346/.417 slash line.  He's leveled off in 2016, managing a .778 OPS while playing an average Center Field.  He's fallen out of favor a bit here in LA, but there's reason to be encouraged with his progress as he's cut his strike out rate from 29.1% to 25.9% while maintaining his power.  The #23 Prospect as stated by Baseball America, Jose De Leon (23) is a Major League ready starting pitcher with enormous potential.  His K/9 rates in the Minors have been video-game-ridiculous.  Between Double-A and Triple-A, De Leon has struck out 170 batters in 121.1 innings.  Verdugo (20), ranked the #100 Prospect by Baseball America, has rocketed through the Minors, having already amassed 378 PAs and a .794 OPS as one of the youngest players at Double-A.  Stewart (24) is another Major League ready starting pitcher with big strikeout potential.  After starting this year at High-A, Stewart has soared through all of the upper levels of the Minors, posting a 1.82 ERA and an absurd 118/16 K/BB rate in 104 innings across High-A, Double-A, and Triple-A.  Calhoun (21) had a strong professional debut in 2015, beginning in Rookie Ball and working his way to High-A by season's end, posting a .909 OPS across three levels.  Calhoun started 2016 at Double-A, unranked by all three major Propsect sites, as has slashed .261/.327/.495 with 22 HRs.  There's some question as to whether he can stick at 2B with the glove, but the guy can hit.

Pick your return.....

Which offer Do you accept?

Don't die with pizza in your freezer

My favorite frozen pizza is the Lotzza Motzza Brew Pub Pizza.  Making that distinction is as significant to me as I assume 'this is my favorite person' is to most people.  In my meandering existence, those 15 minutes I might spend eating something disastrous for my health is often the highlight of my day.  Normally, these delicious gifts from Wisconsin run about $10.49 at my local grocery store.  At the moment, they're on sale for $7.49, a pretty significant savings, and a far more reasonable price for a brief reprieve from the burden of sentience.  Absent any external variables, I'd buy all of the pizzas they could make before the sales end, and I'd live the remainder of my life with one fewer concern knowing I'd never be more than 20 minutes (including preheat time) from salvation.  Unfortunately, reality stubbornly creeps into even the simplest of enjoyments, placing it's limitations over our experience.  And so the challenge becomes; how can we maximize the experience in the face of these obstacles?  How indeed.

The first variable is, at it's core, perhaps the simplest.  In all honesty, though, it's the most complicated.  How long should I expect to live?  Converted to fit this purpose; how many pizzas can I expect to eat before I die? To start, I'll estimate I eat 2 pizzas per week.  Simple enough.  Now to the difficult measurements.  The life expectancy for the average white American male is 76.71.  I don't smoke.  I've never been much of a drinker aside from a few nights in my early 20s.  I get regular exercise.  All things considered, I've been pretty easy on my body aside from my miserable diet.  I also have a family history of several relatives breezing by that 76-year mark.  Considering that average life expectancy already factors in those lost early to some unexpected tragedy, at least on paper, that average is probably a reasonable expectation.  However, if I'm being completely honest with this, there's one more factor.  I don't necessarily intend on seeing this thing through to the end.  I don't have kids and I don't have any significant other.  I have very little responsibility to anyone beyond my parents and siblings.  I'm not religious, so I don't fear the consequences of some eternally torturous after-life.  If I'm not enjoying this life, and my body and mind are diminished, there will come a point where it's going to be clear; not only is life not going to improve, but the quality of life is going to continue to decrease from here.  Continuing at that point, just because of what's been invested, is what's know as sunk cost fallacy.  In a vacuum, free of emotional considerations, the rational act would be to withdraw from existence.  The problem with this consideration has nothing to do with me.  In just thinking about one day not existing there washes over me a relief.  The worry is the effect on any loved ones I'd leave behind.  For that reason, determining my own end remains mostly a fantasy.  As for now, I'm left to wait on nature to run it's eventual course.  I'm going to make my final estimate 70.25, knocking off just over 5 years for my grueling pessimism.  That gives me an even 40 years of remaining life. Yay.

So, our pizza equation now looks like this:

Pizzas per week = A1, Number of remaining weeks alive = B1

=A1*B1, or
=2*2,080

Next up. how many pizzas can I actually afford?  The nice thing about having limited responsibilities, and not valuing my future all that much, is that nearly 100% of my income is disposable income.  I recently had a conversation with a close friend about the hypothetical possibility of following my family if they were to move away, and I told him, "if most of life is going to be terrible, it's of little consequence to me where it's going to be terrible."  It was a joke, but there's a good deal of honesty in that statement, too.  The where does little to ease my overriding concerns.  I consider money, at least as it pertains to my realistic access to it, in much the same way.  If I'm incredibly frugal and responsible with my money, then I'd be only slightly less fucked than I already am.  So far, there's still been enough concern about money and my future that I've been reluctant to just drop everything I hate and make some positive use of the little bit of money I have saved while my body and mind are still well enough off to do so.  Part of me thinks, I could do everything right and invest my money responsibly and all it would really accomplish is affording me whatever pride I find in being self-sufficient in my misery, grinding away to till the very end.  What's the value of that life?  Another part thinks; even if my life savings can only afford me 6 months to a year of some kind of true enjoyment of life before being faced with the harsh consequences, would that time not be more valuable than an entire lifetime spent in a mostly silent execration of being?  Again, there's been a lot of ME's and I's in this paragraph.  Perhaps I'm looking at all of this too selfishly.  As depressing as it is to consider, most of my motivation and even continued existence is heavily influenced by trying to not be an incessant financial or emotional burden on loved ones.  So, in staying consistent with that theme, I'd have to limit myself to $3,000 spent on pizza.

Our equation just got a bit more complicated.  We now add the price, with a MIN() formula setting the maximum value at $3,000.  Dividing whatever value is produced again by the price of an individual pizza to get the number of desired units.  It now looks like this:

Price of Pizza = C1

=MIN(3000,A1*B1*C1)/C1, or
=MIN(3000,2*2,080*7.49)/7.49

Our total number of pizzas comes to 400.53.  That's how many pizzas I should buy to take advantage of this sale to the fullest extent of my financial and biological limitations.  There's still one problem, however.  My freezer only has room for maybe 10.  That's it.  Five weeks.  10 days.  A grand total of 150 minutes of deliverance is all I'll be able to gain from this tremendous value.  Fuck.

It goes to show, there's no limitations on the number of restrictions that can be placed on our experience of life.  Perhaps the lesson is to find enjoyment in the moment, in that day's pizza.  There's no value in worrying about all the uncertainty of the future.  Maybe the lesson is that there's no point at all.  All of the effort we put in to chase riches that our freezers can't hold.  All the while, the beautiful freedom of insignificance escapes our perception.  If I've learned anything from this exercise.... I don't think I'm going to die with pizza in my freezer.

Jon Lester: Baseball's Memento mori

In late September of 2014, someone, somewhere stumbled across an interesting statistic: Jon Lester had gone all of 2014 without attempting a pick-off throw to first base.  Finding the exact source has become like trying to identify the origins of the Universe:  Nobody knows, and so we assume it's always been there as a basic fundamental truth, discovered as we all simultaneously came online.  That feeling was enhanced as this entire story, start to finish, blew up in front of our eyes in the span of about 12 hours.

September 30, 2014:  Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs wrote this article.  The curious case of Jon Lester has been discovered.  Theories abound.

That very night, this happened....


via GIPHY

The Kansas City Royals ran wild on Jon Lester and the A's in the AL Wild Card Game.  The Royals stole seven bases in an improbable 9-8 comeback victory.  Now, to be fair, much of this happened with Lester already removed from the game.  However, with the A's leading 7-3 in the Bottom of the 8th, seemingly on their way to the Divisional Round, Lester allowed two singles and two subsequent stolen bases.  He then walked the next batter and was promptly removed from the game before that runner, too, had the opportunity to take second base.  In the most important inning of Lester's season, the Royals paid little regard to the threat of Lester's pick-off move, challenging him to throw over to first, and Lester never did.  It wasn't just that they stole the bases.  It was the relative ease with which they stole the bases.  Lester left the game after 7.1 innings, with the A's leading 7-4, but responsible for the two runners left on base, both of whom ultimately scored.  This was no longer speculation.  This was now a problem.

Side note: This game was very much where the Royals were born.  It's fun to imagine there's somewhere an alternate universe where Jon Lester could throw to first, the Royals lost this game, and never became *the Royals* who would go on to make back-to-back World Series appearances, including winning the Title in 2015.

I've long held a certain interest in psychology, but never in the way of academic studies.  I'm sure I have theories that have long been accepted and even more that have long been disproved.  The trade-off being: my organic interest in psychology hasn't been restrained and directed solely towards disciplines where it's uses can be monetized, having all of the life sucked out of the subject.  There's no real value to my thought other than an attempt to further my own understanding.  I could see an argument both for and against my investment, as a waste of time or an example of purity.  It probably depends on who you'd ask.

Much of my interest is in the mind's ability to create an illusory reality that's more tolerable than a more objective reality.  This is why I frequent the electronic pages of Answers in Genesis, antagonizing the site's patrons.  While, yes, it is amusing to me, I'm usually not trying to be directly antagonistic.  The questioning and discussion often turns immediately confrontational because there's no greater perceived aggression than challenging one's sole reason for existing.  It's not just fascinating to me that people choose to believe these things, but rather that they're fully capable of convincing themselves of this reality they've created.  To me, it doesn't seem like this should be possible, because, for me, I'm not convinced that it is possible.  I tried....I tried like hell.  Growing up in a religious family, even as a skeptic, it seemed easier to believe than not to believe, and let people down.  The story was comforting and gave life a purpose.  There were social rewards, positive feedback, for following the correct path.  I stuck with it into my early 20s, almost defiant in my rejection of what I suspected to be true.  As the evidence mounted against my position, however, I found myself no longer able to keep up the illusion.  I was forced to anxiously leave the promised security of religion behind for the never-ending expanse of uncertainty.  Of course, this is not just to pick on religion.  There's a variety of ways people create these useful delusions to circumvent terrifying conclusions about the foolishness of life.

I've been asked: which baseball player would you most like to have a beer with?  The answer is: none of them.  To me, they're far less interesting than people analyzing their on-field performance.  I have no way of relating to their experience, and they have no way of relating to mine.  There seems to be some correlation between the psychology of a successful athlete and the psychology of any ordinary person you might encounter.  The greatest difference may be an inflated sense of one's abilities.  High-level sports is such that, if you think you might not be able, you're not going to be able.  Other attributes I'd apply to most athletes would be: simple-minded, positive, upbeat, gregarious, and optimistic.  In many ways, these traits are all analogous.  Skepticism, self-consciousness, and doubt are a death sentence for most athletes.

This 2015 Jon Lester pick-off attempt is not the pick-off attempt of a confident and optimistic athlete....


via GIPHY

In every day life, as in sports, simple-minded optimism is an advantage.  In this regard, a more well-reasoned approach, devoid of illusion, may actually be a deficiency.  So many things I witness other people attempt and achieve seem to me inconceivable.  I've seen people pass me by in life, with legitimate careers, who'd require my tutoring if asked to pass a basic exam on the very subject of their profession.  I've witnessed men I've regarded as having few, if any, redeeming qualities have the gall the approach women many times their attractive and intellectual superior, and succeed.  Many of these successes are attributable to the individual being blissfully unaware of their own absurdity.  If the veil of their illusory reality were pulled back, I'd have to imagine these individuals drifting into an abulic state, with the mind refusing action.  Whereas, I'm all too aware of my numerous shortcomings.  In many ways, I'm envious.  I'd much rather be an optimist than a pessimist, even if it meant sacrificing the few mental attributes in which I take some pride.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be a choice.  The demand now becomes finding my own path to happiness and satisfaction without the benefit of incognizance.

Sports are often an escape from life's problems.  I know I've explained my love of baseball as providing a harmonization of the experience (emotional conclusions from watching a game/illusory reality) with the immutable evidence of what's real (the statistics/objective reality).  There's a comfort in the physical evidence provided, through the statistics, that's not available in life.  In short, there's a sense of control in baseball because you can make sense of the data.  In life, there's almost 100% uncertainty.  Comedian Doug Stanhope has said he enjoys sports as a distraction from his hatred of himself and dissatisfaction with all of the World.  Baseball Prospectus writer Ben Lindbergh has often remarked that baseball, and our attention to the game, is a distraction from our mortality.  All of these remarks present sports as a treatment for life's hopeless uncertainty.  As an escape from the humiliation caused by the knowledge of our limitations and looming expirations.

When Jon Lester signed with the Cubs, there was some joking about his problem throwing to first base, but most people, including myself, assumed an off-season to work on it would be enough to solve the problem.  It wasn't....


via GIPHY

Initially, there was frustration from the fans, a cursed franchise having spent $150 million on a player that can't throw the ball to first base.  As the team's performance improved, Jon Lester's case of the yips became another amusing quirk of a lovable team.  To me, though, it was more than any of that.  It was a reminder of the uncertainty, the insecurities, and the conflict of the human condition in a place where it didn't belong.  A pitcher, who's job is to throw pitches sharply and accurately to home plate more efficiently than 99.999% of the population, and does that job admirably, should not be worse than the hot dog vendor at lobbing a ball to first base.  It doesn't make sense.  It doesn't fit.  For some reason, when Jon Lester looks at first base, the veil of his illusory reality is lifted and he feels the weight all the world's uncertainty, and washes over him the crippling doubt.  It's an unwelcome reminder of the frailty of the human mind, and the mortality we're all trying to escape.

Then something beautiful happened....


via GIPHY

Last week, asshole Brandon Barnes laid down a bunt, bringing Lester face-to-face with the one undeniable truth: We're all fucked.  Jon wound up, and in the face of all of life's inconstancy, he uncorked one of the worst throws I've ever seen on a baseball field..... but against all the odds, against his own deficiencies, he got the desired the result.  He found his path through uncertainty.  Within the distraction from our mortality, and whatever dissatisfaction or anxiety exists in our lives, we were given this example of Jon Lester making the best of his own limitations to find his way around his individual source of torment.  It's clearly different, but for him, it's an effective path to a satisfactory result, to happiness, without the benefit of incognizance.  Like I said, beautiful.

Revisiting Michael Jordan's Baseball Career

On October 6, 1993, Michael Jordan held a press conference in Deerfield, Illinois to announce his retirement from the NBA, at the age of 30.  For that moment, the world stopped.  I was 7 and a huge Chicago Bulls fan.  All I really knew of existence to that point was that Michael Jordan was great, and I had no reason to suspect that would ever change.  I played hundreds of hours of basketball from my Little Tikes hoop to the driveway, and I never played the role of anyone but Michael Jordan at his most heroic.  Had he walked away from sports all together, and disappeared from the spotlight to never return, it might have taken me a decade and a half to fully understand.  Michael Jordan's father, James Jordan Sr. was murdered in July of 1993.  The weight of that loss was impossible for me to grasp, and probably still is to some degree.  As the 1993-1994 NBA season approached, and details of his father's murder, and the subsequent arrests played out the news, Jordan's grief intensified.  At his retirement, Jordan would tell reporters "I went through all the different stages of getting myself prepared for the next year, but the desire..... was not there."  Looking back now, it was an unexpected time of vulnerability from someone who in every other way seemed invincible.  Michael Jordan was superhuman.  I never expected to see his frailty.  That fall, MJ began working out at the Comiskey Training Facilities with the Chicago White Sox, and in January, Michael announced his plan to attend Spring Training with the White Sox in Sarasota, Florida.  Months later, Phil Jackson, Michael's legendary NBA coach, would say "It was really his father's dream that he play baseball.  His father wanted to play pro ball and did play semi-pro.  When his father passed away, I think Michael was kind of living out his father's dream."

Michael Jordan played one season of professional baseball before eventually returning to the NBA.  Jordan's time as a minor league baseball player is often regarded as a failure.  I think that's wrong.  Jordan's accomplishments in baseball are unfairly compared to his greatness as a basketball player.  There was no level of success he could have reached as a baseball player that could have measured to what he had already accomplished in the NBA.  In that sense, he was doomed to fail.  However, if you analyze Jordan's baseball career on it's own merits, it's in some ways as remarkable as anything he accomplished in the NBA.

Baseball is really hard.  I think that's obvious to most people, but I'm not sure it's widely enough appreciated just how fucking hard we're talking about.  There are a lot of people that can dunk a basketball that never played competitively.  I used to play a turn-based game with my Dad and brother where we'd all take a three-point shot.  If you made it, you got a point.  If you missed, you had the opportunity to make two consecutive free-throws to recover the point.  The first to five points won.  I played the least amount of basketball and was the worst natural shooter of the three of us, but I hated to lose.  I quickly realized I wasn't going to be able to match them in shooting threes, so, like a maniac, I spent every evening for about a month shooting hundreds of free throws until I was making them at something around a 75% rate.  I broke the game and made it not fun for anyone.  The point is, after only a few weeks of practice, I was making free throws at a rate only slightly below the NBA average.  As a fairly ordinary athlete and unskilled player, there's at least one thing on a basketball court that, through repetition, I'm capable of doing at a near professional level.  The basic fundamentals of the game are accessible to anyone.  The difference is, at the professional level, they're played by giant human beings and freak athletes.  Baseball takes the same principles and turns them up to 10.

Think of the best baseball player you know.  No, it doesn't count that Anthony Rizzo gave you a re-tweet for your Birthday.  I'm talking personally.  The best baseball player you know is an awful baseball player.  About one in 200, or 0.5% of Senior High School baseball players will eventually be drafted by a MLB team.  Of that group, only 10% will ever reach the Major Leagues.  That's 1 in about every 49,000, or .00002% of the male population will play in the Major Leagues.  Michael Jordan, past his athletic prime, and having not played baseball competitively in over a decade, debuted at Double-A.  The following comes from Jeff Moore at The Hardball Times (here).

Double-A: The entrance to the “upper minors,” the jump to Double-A tends to be the most difficult for prospects, and tells us the most about them.

The Double-A level is where hitters and pitchers begin to have a plan. This is where pitchers can’t get by without a decent off-speed pitch and the hitters who can’t hit them are exposed. The competition is good, as evidenced by the fact that we see players jump from Double-A to the majors with relative frequency. Each organization has its own philosophy on doing so, but it does happen often because of the advanced level of competition. There aren’t as many players in Double-A with major league experience as there are in Triple-A, but one could argue that the pure talent level is actually higher because players are heading in an upward direction as opposed to the stagnation that tends to take place with some Triple-A players.

I don't know how exactly to illustrate what it would be like for a 31-year old man, regardless of athletic prowess, to pick up a bat for the first time in 12 years in Double-A baseball.  It's beyond imaginable.  I'll return us for a moment to my experience.  I'm obviously not the athlete Jordan was, but I did play baseball up until I was about 15.  I had reasonable enough physical skills, but baseball requires a level of self-confidence that borders on insanity.  You need to be able to fail between 60-70% of the time as a hitter and yet, immediately forget the failures in order approach the next at bat with absolute confidence.  If you can't do that, it makes no difference how skilled you are.  At 20, I was invited to play in an adult baseball league, barring a try-out to make sure I wasn't handicapped or anything.  In the try-out I put on a laser show, and was happily added to the team.  Like I said, the physical skills were there.  Unfortunately, after 5 years off, stepping back into a competitive game against pitchers only throwing in the mid-80s, I went 0-14 with 13Ks before my season mercifully ended with all of my equipment being stolen out of my car.  I was over-matched early, then, horrified at my own failure, I started swinging at everything.  I swung at pitches I never saw.  Pitches I never would have swung at in batting practice, with no pressure, just having fun, instead of obsessively thinking "Don't fuck up.  Don't fuck up.  Don't fuck up."  It was a disaster.

That was a league playing with the other 99.5% of baseball players that would never be drafted.  Now, imagine doubling the time away from the game, and playing against competition that's the best pure minor league talent.  I might have been able to shoot a few thousands free throws and work my way to mediocrity.  There's no amount of repetition that would prepare the 99.5% of us to face Double-A hitters or pitchers.  You can't practice your way to throwing or hitting 95-mph fastballs.  Most of us would be so embarrassingly fucked, it would be like the nightmare I'm sure we've all had of showing up to high school completely naked.  You'd stand out.... and not in a good way.

Now, Michael Jordan was bad in his one season at Double-A.  In fact, he was one of the worst players at the level.  However, at 31-years old, in his first competitive baseball in 12 years, for MJ to blend in and not obviously stand out, was remarkable.  He looked like he belonged there.  In fact, in the last month of the season, Jordan hit .280.  He was basically doing baseball as a hobby at a top .00002% performance level.  It's hard to compare Jordan's case to anything because this case had never happened and probably never will again.

There's one other way I can think of looking at this.  Baseball is extraordinarily specialized.  None more so than the pitcher.  Jon Bois once compared pitchers hitting as reflecting our society in becoming hopelessly specialized.  He said "Take your Enterprise Rent-A-Car employee and ask him/her to work the next day at Hertz, she's not going to be able to do it.  The computer is different, the system is different, everything is different.  Which seems really strange because it's basically the same job... Chief among these examples is the pitcher who can't hit."  Now, comparing Michael Jordan to pitchers hitting isn't exactly the same thing because pitchers didn't spend 12 years in between at-bats building Hall of Fame basketball careers.  In most cases, though, a major league caliber pitcher was also the best hitter on his High School team.  Once drafted, they're assigned more specialized roles and hitting becomes far less a priority than developing pitching specific skills.  Once in the pros, some pitchers will go as many as several years between at-bats.  Because of this, despite being exceptional athletes, and great baseball players, most pitchers are terrible Major League hitters.  In 2015, Major League pitchers hit .131 AVG, .158 OBP, .168 SLG, .327 OPS, with a 37.7 K%, and a 2.6 BB%

The rough Major League Equivalent from Triple-A to the Majors is a loss of offensive production near 18% for hitters.  From Double-A to the Majors is 36%.  We can take MJ's 1994 Double-A season and find the MLE, then compare it to ML pitchers.  Jordan hit .202 AVG, .289 OBP, .266 SLG, .556 OPS, with a 22.9 K%, and a 9.75 BB%.

Penalized 36% of the MLE, gives Michael a stat line, compared to ML pitchers, of:

Michael: .129 AVG. .184 OBP, .170 SLG, .354 OPS, 30.7 K%, and a 6.24 BB%
Pitchers: .131 AVG, .158 OBP, .168 SLG, .327 OPS, with a 37.7 K%, and a 2.6 BB%

So, in Michael Jordan's one season, he put up numbers slightly better than the average production of a Major League pitcher.  That's incredible.  I know this batting line looks awful, and it is, but hopefully by now I've help illustrate, there might not be another person alive who could pick up a bat after 12 years, at 31-years old, and match the production of Major League pitchers.  Michael Jordan's baseball career might not have reflected his legendary success on the basketball court, but it should be considered no less remarkable.  It's a shame it's remembered by so many as a failure.  It wasn't.

"I talk to him more in the subconscious than actual words.... Keep doing what you're doing,' he'd tell me. 'Keep trying to make it happen. You can't be afraid to fail. Don't give a damn about the media.' Then he'd say something funny -- or recall something about when I was a boy, when we'd be in the back- yard playing catch together like we did all the time." - Michael Jordan speaking on his father's presence as he lived out his dream

Golden Corral (The Poem)

Line at the door, herded in
like cattle to the slaughter
Bribe the ferryman his obol
For awaiting is the fodder

Torment, silence's metronome
as the feet shuffle in rhythm
Grab a fork and a plate
Fall into place, now harmony's victim

The absence of hope
hangs in the air like a fog
Boundless stacks of plates
Off for more we all slog

He took the last god damn biscuit
I think in my head, now annoyed
I'll have to wait for the next batch
An eternity, to fill this infinite void

For dessert, cookies and cake
Can I dip my soul in the chocolate fountain?
Breathing is labored
The air has thinned, at the peak of this mountain

The adventure is now over, Still
Facing some difficulty recovering morale
I offer sage advice: be wary
For shit will get dark at the Golden Corral

Why aren't the Dodgers spending?

The Los Angeles Dodgers are Major League Baseball's wealthiest franchise.  Due in large part to the team's record $7 billion deal with Time Warner Cable for the club's local TV rights, agreed to in 2013.  That off-season the Dodgers increased payroll from a 2012 mark of $152 million, to $240 million in 2013.   The trend continued, with a payroll climbing to $246 million in 2014, before peaking at a staggering $302 million in 2015.  That 2015 payroll was nearly $113 million over MLB's Luxury Tax ceiling of $189 million.  That means, with 2015 marking the third consecutive year Los Angeles had exceeded the Luxury Tax threshold, the organization faced a 40% competitive balance tax on the $113 million difference.  Now including penalties, the Dodgers 2015 Major League player expenditures exceeded $347 million.  For comparison, the New York Yankees, owners of MLB's second highest payroll, spent $236 million, including penalties.  That $111 million gap between the highest and second highest payroll, was a greater sum than the entire player payroll for 11 of the 30 MLB franchises.

Now that we've established the Los Angeles Dodgers have money, you can begin to understand why it's been something of a surprise to see the Dodgers routinely outbid for free agents this off-season.  An off-season in which a record breaking amount of money has already been handed out, no less.  The most notable for the Dodgers was losing All-Star pitcher Zack Greinke to their small-to-mid market division rival, the Arizona Diamondbacks.  It's widely accepted that having Zack Greinke on your team is a good thing.  It's also been noted that Greinke had been unusually honest in revealing his intentions to sign with whichever team offered him the most money.  All signs were pointing to him returning to LA.  So why in the hell did the team with all the money not just offer Greinke more money?  It would seem their greatest advantage is the ability to do just that when negotiating with a player all of baseball covets.  Aside from being just wealthy, the Dodgers front office is perhaps the greatest collection of minds in a baseball operations department we've ever seen.  When they do something unexpected, it's safe to assume there's a good reason for it.  So, why are they operating like a small market team?

First, it's important to understand what baseball is.  Of course, on it's surface, it's a series of athletic competitions.  Step back, and it  appears as a series of math problems that can be broken down into various probabilities.  Everything from the outcome of each individual pitch, to the odds of winning a World Series can be assigned a probability based on past outcomes or a simulation of outcomes.  In this case, the relevant information is the goal of every franchise, the probability of winning the World Series.  The 2015 pre-season favorites for both best record and World Series odds was the Washington Nationals.  Their 94.7 win projection gave them an 86% chance of winning their division, a 94.5% chance of making the Playoffs, and a 17.0% chance of winning the World Series.  Only one other team had odds greater than 10%, the Dodgers (92.1 win projection), with 13.4% odds.  Eleven other teams entered 2015 with a greater than 2% chance of winning the title.  So, being the best team in baseball gives you, roughly, somewhere between a 15-20% chance of winning.  Odds only three times greater than a team with only 50% odds to make the Playoffs.

What does that mean?  It's easier to understand if you think of baseball as a lottery drawing.  In each season is contained a vat of 1,000 ping-pong balls.  The Nationals entered 2015 with 170 ping-pong balls, and the eventual World Series Champion Kansas City Royals entered with just 9.  Now, a game theory problem; Let's say we're faced with 10 of these drawings, representing 10 seasons.   Dividing resources, wealthy teams get 400 balls each, with poor teams getting roughly 266 balls.  The max is 175 balls per vat, and the minimum is 5.  This is so that odds in any single given season do not exceed 17.5% while demonstrating that loading up to maximize odds for one season is not sustainable.  Representing a rich team, the Dodgers, is it better to?:

A. place your 400 ping-pong balls as to maximize your odds early
B. spread them out, putting 40 in each vat

Here's what that looks like:

A. 17.5%, 17.5%, 1%, 1%, 0.5%, 0.5%, 0.5%, 0.5%, 0.5%, 0.5%

TOTAL ODDS: 36.7671476956%

B. 4%, 4%, 4%, 4%, 4%, 4%, 4%, 4%, 4%, 4%

TOTAL ODDS: 38.6094674556%

Note: The math on that was a son of a bitch.  Mostly because I haven't been asked to do much math over the past decade, and I didn't have a handy algorithm for that on my computer.

This reveals setting even a mediocre floor is more effective than pouring all of your resources into a couple high-ceiling opportunities.  Beginning in 2013, LA began investing heavily in player development and the international market.  In 2015, the Dodgers went over their allotted international spending cap by $20 million, reaching a total investment of over $40 million after signings and penalties.  They're investing their wealth in organizational depth, not free-agency.  This suggests a shift in strategy for wealthy teams away from spending wildly to purchase expensive free-agent talent in an attempt to maximize short-term odds at the expense of long-term organizational health.  The new goal is to use your wealth to set a perennially high floor, giving yourself the greatest odds of success over a longer period of time.  Not only is this strategy optimal for competitive purposes, it's also far more cost-effective.  The Dodgers are already beginning to see the benefits of building less expensive, organization depth.  To this point in the off-season, LA's payroll is down over $100 million from 2015, yet they're projected to win more games in 2016.  They've set a very high floor.  There's no reason for the Dodgers to invest in players like Greinke, making as much an investment in years as money, when the cost is great and the benefit to their probability of winning is marginal.

Baseball is always evolving, and teams are always finding advantages.  The newest trend may be mediocrity.  It's simply more cost effective to use your financial resources to build a team with an acceptable median outcome expectancy than to commit to competitive windows, aiming to maximize short terms odds.  If you look right now, nineteen teams are currently resting with a projection between 75 and 87 wins.  One standard deviation is considered +/- 6 wins.  With baseball having freshly entered the new two-Wildcard era, teams aren't spending to be division favorites anymore.  The risks outweighs the rewards.  Poor teams are aiming to set a median outcome that gives them an opportunity to play themselves into contention, and rich teams are aiming to set a floor that keeps them in wildcard contention.  The Los Angeles Dodgers are, if anything, a rich team, and they've already done their part.  Investing their wealth into building a strong organizational foundation is a better strategy than using free-agency and market value players as the primary source of talent supplying the Major League roster.  The Dodgers are going to be just fine.