We Call Him Boogie

It's no secret that DeMarcus Cousins tops the list of my favorite players in University of Kentucky basketball history. What may not be so clear is that his place at the top of that list is due more to his personality than his on-court performance (which was dominant). The picture of him hugging the Chick-Fil-A cow to the right of this article will remain a fixture of this blog for a long time, and it exemplifies everything that Kentucky fans grew to love about Cousins.

Cousins arrived on campus with a problem child reputation, and for the first few weeks of the season, he lived up to that rep. Then something changed. The guy who admitted that he had built high walls to keep everyone out suddenly let all of those walls come down and became one of the most loved players in UK history. He allowed the world to see the goofy, fun-loving kid that he had fought so long to hide, and Kentucky fans welcomed him with open arms. He endeared himself to the local media to the point that many openly admitted how much they loved dealing with him on a daily basis. Cousins even asked a UK fan site, Kentuckysportsradio.com, to come up with a nickname for him (He later asked them if they would just call him Boogie).

Kentucky fans that watched from afar may have only seen a team full of freshmen that made a run to the Elite Eight, but that barely scratches the surface of what the team featuring John Wall, Boogie Cousins, Eric Bledsoe, and Patrick Patterson meant to the program and its fans. They will, without a doubt, go down as one of the most memorable teams in UK history. Just like the "Unforgettables" in 1992, this team restored a languishing program to its proper place at the top of the NCAA basketball world. Neither team won a national title, but that doesn't keep them out of UK lore. DeMarcus Cousins was the most loved player on one of the most loved teams in UK history. That's pretty hallowed ground.

When it came time for the NBA draft, the national media fulfilled its obligation and created the narrative that Cousins was a head-case and teams should beware come draft day. Was some of it true? To an extent, yes. Cousins needed a team with a good support system to facilitate his growth. At UK, he had Wall, Bledsoe, and most importantly, John Calipari to help him flourish. In the NBA, like most 19 year olds, he would need much of the same type of support. Yet, the Kings and Paul Westphal have struggled to provide a supportive atmosphere on what could possibly be the most dysfunctional team in the NBA (Not even counting Cousins). It begs the question, how can an entire NBA organization struggle to create the requisite atmosphere when John Calipari and fellow freshmen made it look so easy?

Does Cousins deserve much of the blame? Absolutely. He has had bouts of immaturity and has let his intensity get the best of him at times during the season. However, anyone who has played sports at the highest levels of competition knows that there will be strife from time to time when you put a bunch of fiery competitors together. Shouting matches, physical altercations, etc are a common phenomenon in the world of team sports. That's just the nature of the beast. The difference in professional sports is that your reputation determines the media reaction. If Dwight Howard gets into it with a teammate, he'll get the benefit of the doubt because he isn't viewed as a bad apple. Whereas, when Cousins does it, it's because he's a head-case or a guy with serious attitude problems. Granted, Cousins hasn't exactly helped shed the reputation, but the reputation was unfair to begin with. It's always easier to fall back on the troublemaker narrative than to scratch the surface and see Cousins' true nature. This tremendous article highlights some of the amazing things Cousins has done off the court, but it's safe to say that you won't see those good deeds being brought up by the mainstream media. As one of my friends commented last week, Cousins is going to have that reputation follow him around throughout his career no matter how much time he spends as a model citizen.

Aaron Torres has a much more in-depth article on the subject that can be found here. He has much more information and analysis of Cousins and the Kings. Here's a small sample of his awesome piece:

Really though, you know who I blame for this whole mess? The Kings themselves.

Look, it’s no secret that coming into the league, Cousins could- at times- be emotionally unstable. You know what his presence early on reminded me of really? It reminded me of the high school friend that we all had, who came to visit you at college and proceeded to get way too drunk, and just make a general ass out of himself the whole time he was there. But at the end of the night, he was still your friend right? And once he passed out, didn’t you spend the next 45 minutes telling everyone, “No seriously, he’s a good guy. You’ve just got to get to know him.”

Well, that was Cousins coming into the league. He wasn’t like any other dude in the draft. You had to handle him differently. You had to “know,” him.

Here’s a quick excerpt from my Draft Preview on June 23:

What it really comes down to with Cousins though is the support system you put around him. No guy in this draft needs to go to a “good,” situation like Cousins does. That’s why I was almost hoping that the Hornets or Rockets would sneak into the first three picks and take this kid, so that Chris Paul or Yao Ming could show him the ropes and show him how to be a pro.

So here’s the question: If I knew all that way back in June, how did the Kings not know the same? Why didn’t they stay away from Cousins, or if they did draft him, bring in some veteran presence to help guide him? Why were John Calipari and John Wall able to keep him in line, but Kings management hasn’t been able to do the same? Can you really blame Cousins when the Kings knew this is what they were getting from him, and did nothing to help? Is it Cousins fault that he was drafted by a team with worse role models than the babies on Teen Mom have?

The other thing to remember too, is that Cousins is only 20-yars-old. I don’t care how much fame, wealth or basketball skill he has, this was a guy who was in high school 20 months ago. Are we surprised that he’s a bit immature?

Listen, don’t let Kevin Durant fool you, not all 20-year-old's are as mature, eloquent and well-spoken at that age as he, LeBron James and Dwight Howard were. There are plenty who are equally quiet, insecure and unstable. Yes that includes Cousins, but it also includes the kid working at the pharmacy down the street from you, and your nephew the Econ major. Just speaking for myself, I can promise that I'm not proud of everything I did at 20.

An Updated Statistics Post To Ring In The New Season

I've tweaked this article a bit, and it's always a must read before the baseball season gets going. 

One of baseball's most special qualities is the ability to make incredibly effective use of statistics to evaluate performance. Unlike other sports, Baseball can basically be boiled down to numerous one-on-one match-ups throughout the course of a game, and that is why baseball is considered such a statistics driven sport.  A batter hitting a home run relies on nothing but himself to score a run, and you won't find that ability to score without any help from your teammates in any other sport. 

Baseball has always been a sport where analysis is heavily reliant on statistics, but recently, the effectiveness of the old school statistics have come into question as different metrics are created and studied. Many analysts/writers are making the transition to the newer metrics and stats, but there are still plenty of the old guard who refuse to change their ways. With this in mind, I decided to delve into the debate between the old school and new school and explain it as simply as possibly.

WARNING: This may be a struggle to fight through at points. Feel free to take your time.

Old School Pitching Stats

BABIP – Batting Average on Balls in Play

This is not an old school stat, but it is necessary to understand it since I will use it in the analysis of multiple statistics in this section. BABIP is the batting average on balls hit into the field of play. The historical average for pitchers has always balanced out around .300. Any variance from this number shows that the pitcher has either been getting lucky (lower BABIP meaning hard hit balls being right at people, etc) or been unlucky (Higher BABIP meaning more balls sneaking through the infield, etc). Here is a quick example of why this is important. A pitcher gives up 5 hits on 5 shattered bat bloopers. Has the pitcher pitched badly? No. The pitcher has pitched well, but just gotten unlucky. Obviously his BABIP is going to be 1.000 and comparing that to the .300 norm shows that it was unlucky. You can look at a pitcher’s BABIP during the season and be able to tell whether the pitcher is due for a regression or an improvement based on the BABIP returning to the mean of .300.

Pitcher Win-Loss Record

The biggest battles in the baseball community have been over Win-Loss record. It defies logic, but Win-Loss record is the most overused stat in baseball. It doubles as the most overrated. Wins measure a team’s success, not an individual’s performance.

I won’t go too deeply because there is a fantastic article written by Keith Law of ESPN’s Scouts Inc that covers this exact issue.

Basically, Law goes through and examines how much affect/responsibility a starting pitcher has for a team win in any particular game. The answer is less than 30%. This quote from the article sums it up perfectly.

If you tell me a starting pitcher went 15-10, the only thing I can tell you is that he appeared in 25 games that year. I don't know if he pitched well, if he pitched really well but got lousy run support, or if he pitched poorly but played for an offensive powerhouse with good defenders.

Pitcher wins apply a team outcome to an individual player in a sport where no one individual player can win a game.

So why on Earth would you use Win-Loss record to evaluate a a pitcher's performance?

ERA – Number of earned runs per 9 innings

It's not a bad stat by itself, but there are two problems with ERA. Both involve an inability to separate what the pitcher actually controls from what is out of his control.
1. ERA has no way for accounting for luck or the contributions of the defenders in the field. The pitcher could be benefiting from a low BABIP and good defense or vice versa. The effect BABIP has on ERA is by far the biggest issue because BABIP can completely skew the resulting ERA.

            2. using errors to decide whether a run is unearned or earned is no longer the best way to determine the defensive value behind the pitcher (Explained later). It is based upon an official scorer’s decision that can often vary depending on whether the hitter is on the home team or not. Official scorers are more likely to give home batters credit for hits while the opposite is true for visiting batters.

WHIP – (Walks + Hits) / Innings Pitched

A better determinant than ERA, but still flawed. WHIP still doesn’t account for the luck of balls hit into play. Also, the denominator should be At Bats and not innings. An inning is immeasurable in length. It could be a pitcher gives up a hit every four batters (three outs). Or it could be a pitcher gives up a hit, two errors, and three outs. The pitcher's WHIP in each scenario would be the same, but the pitcher was more effective in the second scenario (one hit per six batters as opposed to one hit per four). 

QS – Quality Starts 

Six innings with three earned runs or less.

 The issues with this stat are as follows. 

     1. Six innings and three earned runs measures out to a 4.50 ERA.

     2. Four earned runs in eight innings is not a QS, but it results in the same ERA (4.50 ERA) as six innings with three earned runs and saves the bullpen two extra innings. 

     3. Worst of all, a complete game four earned run performance is not a QS even though it results in a 4.00 ERA and saves the bullpen three more innings.

New School Pitching Metrics

FIP - Fielder Independent Pitching

FIP is basically a metric designed to measure factors that the pitcher can control. The key elements of FIP are walks, strikeouts, and homeruns. The calculation is then adjusted using a .300 BABIP to look similar to ERA. As with most stats, FIP is not perfect. My problems with FIP are that it doesn’t account for how hard balls are hit. For example, a double off the wall is not considered any differently than an infield hit. Regardless, FIP is still one of the best ways to measure a pitcher’s performance.

WAR – Wins Above Replacement

The best all around tool for evaluating pitchers. Uses innings pitched, FIP, and adjustments for ballpark, WAR measures a pitcher's overall value to his team. It is still flawed due to not taking innings as much into account as I would like and is based on FIP, but it is still the best we have so far.

Go here (scroll to the bottom) to read the seven part explanation of pitcher WAR. 

Old School Hitting Stats

RBI

This one will hurt some people’s feelings, but RBI is another useless stat. It is too too reliant on the performance of other players on the team to be an adequate measure of individual performance. In order to pile on the RBIs, a hitter has to hope his teammates have success in front of him. Without that, he will struggle in the RBI category. The hitter himself has no control over his teammates.

Extreme Example: A batter could come up to the plate 100 times in a row with a man on third. He hits 100 weak ground balls to second base and gets 100 RBI. Another batter could come up 100 times with the bases empty and hit 100 triples. He would have no RBIs. Which hitter would have performed better? Obviously, the answer is the batter who hit 100 triples. 

Runs

Same premise as RBI. The batter who gets on base has no control over whether the other hitters in the lineup drive him in. 

On Base Percentage – (Walks+Hits)/Plate appearances

Not to be overly simplistic, but OBP is the most important stat in hitting because the basic goal of hitting is to minimize outs. Statistical analysis has measured the impact each of the simple statistics on a team's likelihood to score runs. OBP had a greater correlation to a team scoring runs than the other "simple" rate stats (Batting Average and Slugging Percentage).

New Age Hitting Metrics

OPS -- On Base Percentage + Slugging Percentage

Easiest of the “new” stats  because it only requires you to add On Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage. The downside of OPS is that it does not give appropriate weight to OBP and also overvalues Slugging Percentage. 

Unless you are a statistician or math whiz, you'll just have to trust the math that goes into these next stats. They are mainstream enough for there not to be any issues with incorrect equations, etc.

wOBA – Weighted On-Base Average

My favorite pure batting metric. Basically, it is a metric designed to measure and weight a hitter’s performance in all aspects and is scaled to look like OBP. This article explains wOBA better than I ever could.

Hitter WAR -- Wins Above Replacement

The most complete indicator of a player’s worth. WAR calculates how many wins a player is worth to a team over the generic replacement level player. WAR uses wOBA for the hitter’s offensive value, adds UZR for defensive value, adds a replacement level calculation, and then adds or subtracts for positional adjustments. The best example of how positional adjustments work is that catchers gets credit for playing a position where good hitters are rare, while a first baseman is not given much credit for playing a position loaded with great hitters.

Links to the explanations

Offensive Value

Defensive Value

Positional Adjustments

Replacement Level

Defensive Stats

Errors and Fielding %

Fielding percentage has a major flaw in that it doesn’t measure how many balls a fielder's range allows him to reach. This is how Manny Ramirez and Pat Burrell end up looking like good fielders using Fielding percentage. Fielding percentage doesn’t account for big slow outfielders or middle infielders with very little range. On the other hand, a player like Troy Tulowitzki will get to tons of balls because of his range, but he may make more errors since he puts himself into position to make tough plays more often.

Errors are also based on the subjective viewpoint of the official scorer for the game. Many times the decision of hit or error depends on whether you are the home team or the visiting team.

UZR -- Ultimate Zone Rating

Very complicated stats, but I’ll try to go for a simple summation. Basically, UZR divides the field into zones. Using those zones, the fielder is evaluated not only on whether he made the play but also how far he had to go to get to the ball. Simply put, it evaluates range as well as sure-handedness.  

In summary, the biggest issue with many of the old school statistics is that they allow too much mixing of team factors into stats that are supposed to measure individual performance. In order to properly evaluate players, there has to be a separation between team and individual factors. While I have given you what I believe are the best stats to use for measuring individual performance, the fact remains that none of them are perfect. The best way to evaluate players will always be by using multiple statistics and taking a totality of the circumstances approach.

Links and a Video That Should Result In A Starting Job

Awesome trick shot video from a UConn backup QB.

Decent list of the most underrated and most overrated position players in baseball. I could add a few.

Article on the SEC schools and the Bible figures that best represent them.

Michael Vick isn't forgiven by all. Not even fellow athletes.

My favorite Super Bowl commercial. Albeit in a weak field.

Another soccer video. Sorry. However, a soccer player gets smoked in the face so it's worth it.

Keith Law's weekly chat. Praying for an extra side of snark.

Randall Cobb (UK legend) is projected to go in the first round according to Todd McShay. Good for him.

Carson Palmer has put his house up for sale. Your move Bengals.

Ranking the best NBA players from the University of Kentucky.

A freshman has his coach go the extra mile to help save his life.

Are the Twins insane? They might be contemplating a Francisco Liriano for Michael Young trade.

It's Not The Hall of Very Good

With the addition of Andre Dawson and Jim Rice, Cooperstown's transition to the "Hall of Very Good" is in full swing. However, there may still be time to reverse the trend. We need to return to the days where only the truly elite players get the honor of being called Hall of Famers.

My general requirements for Hall of Fame induction are a career peak that landed the player in the top five for multiple years, elite overall stats, and longevity. Obviously, there are balancing tests that also apply, but in the broadest sense, those are my criteria.

The recent retirement of Andy Pettitte, and subsequent HoF arguments being presented for him, has given us a chance to begin returning to the elite standard. Pettitte had a very good career, but it was far from elite. Through 16 seasons, Pettitte was a top 10 pitcher three times. He finished in the top 5 once. That in itself shows that Pettitte lacks the career peak necessary to be considered elite. As you can see in the table below, his career stats are also far from elite.

	Innings	ERA	FIP	K/9	BB/9	WHIP	WAR
Andy Pettitte	3055.1	3.88	3.75	6.63	2.83	1.36	66.9
Kevin Appier	2595.1	3.74	3.81	6.91	3.24	1.29	55.2
Kevin Brown	3256.1	3.28	3.33	6.62	2.49	1.22	77.2
Mike Mussina	3562.2	3.68	3.57	7.11	1.98	1.19	85.6
Curt Schilling	3261	3.46	3.23	8.60	1.96	1.14	86.1

The important to focus on in this table is Kevin Brown's career. Brown failed to gain enough votes to make the Hall, and he is now off the ballot. Notice that Brown's stats are much better across the board (minus the .01 difference in K/9), and to add to that, Brown gave up the fewest HRs of any pitcher with 3000 innings in the last 50 years. If Kevin Brown isn't good enough to be a Hall of Famer, Andy Pettitte sure as hell isn't.

Another interesting comparison is Kevin Appier. While obviously not equal to Pettitte, Appier does come pretty close. Have you ever heard a Hall of Fame argument in favor of Appier? Exactly.

Hopefully this table will also put to bed the comparisons between Pettitte and Schilling/Mussina. As Keith Law would say, one of these things is not like the other.

Pettitte supporters have managed to hang their hopes on his postseason success. They claim that his stats in the playoffs give his career enough of a bump to earn an induction. Are they really that impressive? Take a look at the table below.

	Innings	ERA	FIP	K/9	BB/9	WHIP	WAR
Career	3055.1	3.88	3.75	6.63	2.83	1.36	66.9
Playoffs	263	3.83	4.17	5.92	2.46	1.30

Most baseball statisticians don't consider playoff performance when looking at Hall of Fame candidates because of sample size issues. The vast majority of players don't play enough postseason games to provide a sample large enough to draw any conclusions about their performance. The prevailing sabremetric theory is that postseason performance will mirror the rest of a player's career when his postseason sample size approaches a full season's worth of stats. That would be around 162 games for hitters and 34-36 starts for pitchers. Of course, there are still issues with that sample because it would be a seasons worth of stats accumulated over ten to fifteen seasons. For this discussion, we'll assume that the sample size is acceptable in Pettitte's case.

Andy Pettitte seems to be the perfect example because he has reached a season's worth of starts in the playoffs with 42. He has an acceptable sample of starts, and his postseason stats are remarkably similar to his career numbers. So, if his career numbers weren't elite, why would his postseason numbers be any different? The answer is that they aren't. He was basically the same pitcher in the playoffs as he was in the regular season. Not surprisingly, Pettitte supporters rely on pitcher wins and World Series rings to prove his case. Of course, both of those are measures of his team's performance and thus, useless when talking about his Hall of Fame credentials. Pettitte was lucky enough to have been on a team that was good enough to consistently make the playoffs, and he has the bulk stats to prove it. Unfortunately for him, that's the entirety of the argument in his support. His actual playoff performance isn't elite, and definitely isn't enough to bump his overall career performance into Hall of Fame territory.

National Signing Day Open Forum

As I mourn Joker Phillips being an idiot and driving away our best hope at QB, other schools are actually getting good news.

I'll let the fans discuss the signings/hate on each other's school in the comments section.

Let me start by saying that UGA's recruiting classes are irrelevant when they win the Fulmer Cup (Award for most/worst arrests in the offseason) and half of them are suspended or kicked off the team.

6-6 Clemson still has Dabo the Donkey running the show so nobody cares.

FSU has a great recruiting class, but they've had top 3 classes in three of the last 6 years and haven't done anything. Congrats on beating South Carolina without their best player.

BREAKING NEWS: Ohio State and other Big Ten teams signed a bunch of white guys.
Oh, and an Ohio State recruit was just arrested for fondling eight girls.

Site Design Changes

Over the next few days I will be experimenting with some layout changes, etc. Some will be decent looking and others will probably end up looking heinous. Please leave any suggestions in the comments section or contact me at YouCantPlayHere@gmail.com.

We're also working on a logo to replace the big title at the top.

Thanks,

John

The Pistol's Links and News

The Jimmer bandwagon is gaining steam after he unleashed an amazing performance last night against San Diego State. It was his fifth 40+ point game in his career, which is impressive, but Pete Maravich's 58 career 40 point games kind of overshadow it. Just to see how good the "Pistol" was, here's a link to the NCAA scoring records. Keep in mind there was no 3-point line when he played.

Keith Law's top 100 prospects for 2011. ESPN Insider required.

If you've got about 40 minutes of spare time, this is a must-listen. Jason Whitlock calls into a Chicago radio station and gets roasted.

Roger Goodell will cut his salary to $1 in event of a lockout. Otherwise, he'll keep making a cool $10 million.

The Oscar nominations have been released. 

The Best Picture nominees are:

‘Black Swan’
‘The Fighter’
‘Inception’
‘The Kids Are All Right’
‘The King’s Speech’
‘127 Hours’
‘The Social Network’
‘Toy Story 3′
‘True Grit’
‘Winter’s Bone’

I've only seen the Black Swan and Inception, but they were both excellent. My main gripe is leaving out The Town, but I guess there is still some "Ben Affleck sucks" sentiment lingering. In all honesty, it's the best movie I've seen this year so to not even be nominated is pretty ridiculous. 

The Wall Street Journal ranks NFL teams form most exciting to least exciting.

If this is true, I can't wait to hear all the NFL players bash Pouncey for missing the Super Bowl after having two weeks to rest his sprained ankle. Oh, wait.......It won't happen.

In what would be a major shift in Colts philosophy, the team has offered Peyton Manning a contract along with a plan to be more active in free-agency in the offseason.

What in the hell is going on with Iowa's football program?

Can Will Ferrell revive the Office? 

Be careful who you mess with in the NHL.