What was wrong with Jayson Werth?

What got my goat was the dismissive assessment of Eckstein as a “busher” who “must know somebody” because he “could not possibly have the necessary experience and savvy for the job.” I reacted too strongly (the word “hilarious” was unnecessary, among other things) and I do apologize for the tone, though not the content.

I certainly get the frustration, but when I step back and take a deep breath a number of possible alternatives to the prevailing wisdom emerge. I tend to question prevailing wisdom, but I don’t automatically assume it’s wrong either. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t know whether I am perfectly satisfied with the Eck’s work, because it takes place out of my sight. I do know I’m not happy with the Nationals’ offensive production, but I don’t know how much of that to lay at Eckstein’s feet. For all we know Eckstein’s work may be all that is keeping the Nationals from falling to Seattle-like levels of offense. Unlikely, but possible. I would understand if the Nationals made a change at hitting coach if they found someone they thought was better – but who is that going to be? Specifically? I’m willing to listen to alternatives

I’m not really sure why you thinking quoting RossingtonCollins post

This is one reason why sabermetrics is a little BS in my opinion, anyone who’s ever played competitive ball will tell you that having great hitters around you helps a great deal.

is a response to you someone telling you that calling him stupid is impolite. He disagrees with sabermetrics, because his expierence tells him somthing different. He states that others with a similar expierence will agree with him. While these aren’t the arguments that I would make, they are hardly offensive. On the otherhand, your statements were.

Which I guess is your right. One of the most valuable freedoms is the right to be stupid. For instance, if you have a heart attack someday, you’re perfectly free to treat it with magnets and 19th century mercury-based medicine.

This is not ok. I’m not saying that we don’t rib each other about being stat geeks or old-school dudes, but there is a line between playful teasing between friends on an internet site and directly attacking someone.

Moving on from that, I don’t really understand your response to my statements about Tango. Here is Tango’s opening statement from the link above:

In discussing strategies of intentional walks, we tend to focus on the "yes/no" question: should the pitcher walk the hitter, or pitch normally to him? In reality, there are intermediate answers as well, as a pitcher need not throw pitches down the middle of the strike zone, or for that matter within the strike zone at all. In other words, the pitcher can pitch in such a way that the odds of a non-intentional walk are higher, while the odds of a well-hit ball (should the batter not be walked) are lower. While we’d love to be able to conduct a thorough analysis of this, the available data do not include accurate pitch locations.
Instead, we will have to use certain situations as a proxy for what we think a pitcher is likely to do in a given situation. In other words, if the situation allows for an intentional walk (good hitter at the plate, poor hitter on deck, one or two outs, batting team leading or tied, and first base is open) but the pitcher opts to pitch, then we would guess that the pitcher is probably at least being a bit more careful than he would otherwise be. On the other hand, if the situation were identical but a good hitter was on deck, we assume the pitcher is pitching normally. If our theory were correct, in the first situation we would see more walks and fewer well-hit balls; in the latter we would see the reverse. Is this what we actually find?

I read the italicized portion of this statement as to imply that Tango believes that some pitchers might be capable of “pitching around” a player without an IBB, by throwing throwing junk and hoping the hitter chases it, but the Tango didn’t have the data to conduct that analysis.

However, I would like to read you evidence that Werth moving from the Phillies line-up to the Nationals had no special relationship with his declining performance. After all, you have gone to such great lenghts to say that evidence trumps believe, so I would like to see your evidence. Plus, I think it would be an interesting read.