No one gets into the Hall of Fame, no one should care

 

If the hold an election for the Hall of Fame and nobody wins, does it still count?

For the ninth time in its history the Baseball Hall of Fame held their annual selection vote and no one received the 75% necessary to enter the hallowed halls of the Hall.  Despite what you may have heard, the reason isn’t steroids.

First of all, I don’t see the failure to select someone as a negative.  It proves the Hall has some standards for admission, and won’t admit some mediocre player like Harold Baines just to avoid having no entrants (I hate to harp on the selection of Baines, who by all accounts was a nice guy, but his selection in 2019 was the worst choice for induction since the selection of Jesse Haines).  Some years there will be multiple no-brainers eligible five years after retirement; in other years the choices will be more . . . subtle.  But no entrant this year means they have some standards.

Also, it isn’t like they can’t hold an induction ceremony, since they cancelled last year’s due to COVID.   So people can still gather in Cooperstown in July and watch Derek Jeter and Larry Walker give their speeches, a long as they maintain social distance.

The main thrust among the talking heads on ESPN is that the reason for the failure to elect anyone in 2021 is the hypocrisy of keeping out Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for alleged steroids use.  The flaw in that argument is that, if not for the steroids allegations, they would have been elected on their first ballot nine years ago.  So leave the debate over steroid users for another day.

The other elephant in the room is Curt Schilling, who support hovers just below the 75% threshold.  Some call Schilling an obvious first ballot Hall of Famer, which I think is overselling it a bit.  He won 216 games, while Jim Kaat won 283 games and won 16 Gold Gloves, yet he isn’t in the Hall.  If Schilling wanted to be a first ballot no-brainer, he should have won some more games.

But he did have a Hall of Fame type career, and his post-season heroics elevate his candidacy above those of players who made no impression at all in the playoffs or World Series.  The problem is that Schilling himself has publicized his bigoted and homophobic views; when Schilling complains that “they” have ruined his reputation, he should really look in a mirror.  But should that keep him out of the Hall?

Lots of players are in the Hall despite being racists, bigots, and what not.  The had the name of the man who enforced the segregation of African Americans, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, on the MVP trophies until last year.  As troubling as Schilling’s beliefs are, the Hall is supposed to reflect the history of baseball, and that history includes Schilling’s bloody sock. 

There is a “character” clause in the Hall of Fame voting rules, but what counts as character?  Should it only apply to the game, and not what people do in their private lives?  Was it cheating to use amphetamines in the 1960’s and 70’s, as many players did?  Are all the members of the 2019 Huston Astros ineligible for the Hall of Fame because the team won a World Series because they cheated?  If it applies to activities outside the realm of baseball, what is over the line?  One accusation of spousal abuse, or does there have to be a long running pattern?  Is one DUI enough to keep Todd Helton out, or must there be repeat offenses?

If the Hall starts keeping out players because of a single incidence or allegation of wrongdoing, then the Hall will become like the San Francisco commission on school names that decided that Abraham Lincoln was evil and didn’t deserve to have a school named after him because he didn’t treat Indigenous-Americans nicely. 

I enjoy Hall of Fame debates, because they can be so multi-faceted.  How much do we discount stats from players who played in Colorado?  How much weight do we give to Gold Glove winners (Jim Kaat won 16 Gold Gloves in addition to 283 games, so they must not count for much)?  How much does post-season heroics add to a resume?  But when you start wading in to whether someone is worthy of being in the Hall of Fame, I am not sure there are clear standards.

In the movie 61*, Billy Crystal’s recreation of the Maris/Mantle duel for the home run title in 1961, there is a depiction of Yankee fans being asked who “deserved” to break Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season.  This is a stupid question; the person who “deserves” to break it is the man who does. 

As Clint Eastwood’s character in Unforgiven said, “Deserves got nothin’ to do with it.”

 

Newsflash: Doug Pederson lied

There is a story I once heard that I love so much I have never dared to attempt to confirm it.  When Nick Saban was coach of the Miami Dolphins, the coaching job at Alabama became available.  Supposedly someone asked him whether he was going to take the job, and he insisted he would remain the coach at Miami.  A week later, he was the head coach at Alabama.  When asked why he lied, he allegedly replied, “I didn’t lie, I said something that, in retrospect, turned out to be inaccurate.”

Phooey.  Doug Pederson lied.

Often proving someone lied is a complicated undertaking, involving intense research, uncovering sources, and using precise logic to parse what someone said.  What Doug Pederson said was, “I was trying to win the game; and I put my third string quarterback in to play in the fourth quarter of a three-point game because I wanted to give him some snaps.”  Those two statements are prima facia evidence of a lie.

The outrage over Pederson’s statements has been two-fold; some people object to him lying (or at least not putting more effort into lying more credibly), while others are distressed that not trying to win a game hurts the integrity of the game.  Oh, and there are New York Giants fans who are livid that their 6-10 football team was denied a chance to host an NFC playoff game.

The last is easily dismissed; if you want to host a playoff game, then win more than 6 games.  But the first two are worthy of discussion as to whether they are a fundamental breech of protocol in the National Football League.

Coaches lie all the time.  Coaches may say with a straight face that even though the team is 1-6 they expect to make the playoffs.  Coaches may reassure a player that he won’t lose his job because he got injured (I’m sure someone said that to Drew Bledsoe when he was taken out for an injury and replaced by a kid named Tom Brady).  But these are just examples of things that in retrospect turned out to be inaccurate. 

Pederson was NOT playing to win.  What coach, down by three points with a quarter to play, would think of putting in the third string quarterback as a way of increasing his team’s chance of winning, when the first and second string quarterbacks are both healthy?  The lie is so transparent, it becomes an insult.  How stupid do you think we are, to tell us you were trying to win because Nick Sudfeld is a much better QB than Jalen Hurts?  Of course, if Pederson honestly thinks that Nick Sudfeld is a better QB than Jalen Hurts, then it raises a new set of questions about Doug Pederson’s qualifications.

There is some speculation that Pederson was ordered to throw the game by the GM or the team’s owner, in order to get the 6^th draft pick instead of the 9^th.  If that is true, then Pederson should have said, “The owner told me not to win the game.  If you have any further questions, ask him.” 

Let’s skip over the blatant lying and look at the other source of disgust, the fact that Pederson wasn’t trying to win the game, he was trying to put the Eagles draft pick at #6 instead of #9.   Other teams, like the Steelers who had locked in their playoff slot, rested starters and lost to the Browns.  If they don’t try to win, why should we criticize Doug Pederson for doing what’s in the franchise’s best interest?

But the Steelers weren’t trying to lose, as the closeness of the Brown’s two-point win demonstrates.  They weren’t broken up about losing, but they were playing to win in the context that the week 17 game meant very little, and the first-round playoff game meant a lot.  Pederson pulled the Eagles’ starting QB with 12 minutes to play and down by three, and also didn’t go for a Hail Mary on the last play of the game.  That’s not resting starters, that is sabotaging the outcome.

And his reason wasn’t because Jalen Hurts was injured, or too tired to continue.  He wanted Nick Sudfeld to “get some snaps.”  First, why do you care if your third string QB gets playing time?  Do you really expect him to compete for the starting job next year with Hurts and Wentz?  Second, if you want him to get snaps, why wasn’t he put in at the end of the Cowboys game the week before, when the Eagles were down 30-17 in the 4^th quarter, instead of a winnable game when the Eagles were down only by three at the start of the 4^th quarter?  Third, why not take Sudfeld out after his interception and lost fumble?  Hadn’t you seen enough at that point to remember why Sudfeld is NOT your starter?

Of course, you might have put Wentz in at that point, but he’d already been scratched despite being perfectly healthy.  He probably needed a game off given how hard he’d been working in his new role as the back-up QB.

And what did Pederson gain by giving Sudfeld “some snaps”?  His credibility is shot, his players have denounced him, and he lost a winnable game.  Was it worth it to give Nick Sudfeld “some snaps”?  I doubt it.  Now we need to wait and see if it lost him his job.  If the owner doesn’t fire him, then maybe we do know where the order to throw the game came from.

The Negro Leagues are now "major leagues"; this is progress?

 So, the ranks of former major league baseball players expanded dramatically this week when Major League Baseball declared that the Negro Leagues were "major leagues."  My first reaction is to recall the joke told by Ben Franklin in the musical 1776; when told that he has the honor of being called an Englishman he says while that may be, he does not have the same rights as an Englishman and “. . . to call me [an Englishman] without those rights is like calling an ox a bull; he’s thankful for the honor but he’d much rather have restored what was rightfully his.”

Let me be very clear here; I am not saying that the African Americans who were forced to participate in the Negro Leagues were inferior ballplayers.  It is the greatest stain on a sport I adore that for many decades some of the greatest athletes in America were unable to play merely because of their skin color.  The history of the Negro Leagues, which Ken Burns ably and rightly included in his series Baseball, is a necessary component of understanding the game.  I have been to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and it was a shame that the exploits of those players were not documented as fully as those of players in the National League and the American League.

But it wasn’t “Major League” baseball, and calling it that I find a trifle insulting.  If anything, maybe it was better.  As Jackie Robinson demonstrated once he was allowed to join the “major leagues,” the style of baseball played in the Negro Leagues was faster, more daring, requiring more strategy than the style of White teams in the 1950’s, where power hitting was all the rage. 

Not only was the style of play different, but the teams also didn’t play a set schedule of 162 games like the “major leagues.”  Facilities were usually inferior and travel schedules were more taxing.  Pitchers pitched more frequently as staffs weren’t very deep.  They played shorter schedules, so adding them to Major League statistics won’t affect counting stats, but average stats will be skewed; according to the LA Times article linked above, now Babe Ruth and Ted Williams will no longer be in the top ten for batting average.  This isn’t because Negro League players were better; they just played shorter seasons and had shorter careers.

What I think is the real damage from declaring the Negro Leagues to be “Major Leagues” is that now MLB can deny that there ever was any discrimination in baseball.  African Americans can now no longer say that they were kept out of the Major Leagues until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, because now Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson DID play in the Major Leagues.  Problem solved.

If baseball wants to do something about racial issues, there are other steps that can be taken.  Cap Anson, the architect of the policy of excluding African Americans from playing in the Major Leagues, should have that fact added to his plaque in Cooperstown, permanently labeling him as a racist.  This year MLB took former Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis' name off the MVP trophies awarded at the end of the season; they should add a similar codicil to his plaque in Cooperstown as well (or just vote him out; what did he do, other than enforce the color barrier for 24 years?).

I will assume MLB meant well by “promoting” the Negro Leagues to Major League status, but it doesn’t make up for over a half century of overt, unabashed racism (and several more decades of covert, clandestine racism).  I consider it to be rewriting history to make past racism seem more palatable.  Once again, a mostly White organization takes symbolic action against racism; maybe eventually there will be some real, non-symbolic progress.

Does Colin Kaepernick have a job in the NFL?  I didn’t think so,

Are TV Comedies even trying to be funny?

 Many people have described the current TV landscape as a “Golden Age.”  Precisely, the third Golden Age; the first was the 1950’s, when TV technology was too crude to allow the filming of car chases or go on exotic locations, so TV dramas consisted of actors standing (or sitting) on a stage . . . [gulp] talking.  The second Golden Age was the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, when Grant Tinker and MTM revolutionized the drama with groundbreaking shows like Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.  We are now in the late stages of the third Golden Age, when pay cable unfettered content restrictions and revenue streams were divorced enough from “ratings” that daring new shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad could forge new ground.

This may be the Golden Age of Drama, but in my humble opinion it is the Lead Age of Comedy.  Of course, it is dangerous to discuss comedy rationally, as it is entirely subjective.  I won’t do the research, but I suspect that the audience for The King of Queens regularly exceeded that of the great TV classic Taxi.  But while I will confess that what I find funny is idiosyncratic, I still look at the recent winners of the Emmy for Best Comedy and wonder if this isn’t some joke on one of those prank shows.

At the last Emmy Awards the series Schitt’s Creek swept all the major awards.  That was for its sixth season; I have not watched it, but I did watch the fifth season (after having been told the first four seasons were not very good).  The show isn’t exactly bad, and my respect for great performers like Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, both of whom I loved when they were on SCTV, is tremendous.  But the set up is cliched, and the writing didn’t seem to go anywhere.  In one episode a rumor starts on the internet that Catherine O’Hara’s character had died; people were surprised to see her, then it all stopped because a giraffe stepped on a kitten and the entire internet focused on that.  There was no pay off, no revelation for anyone about being happy to be alive, or being sad when the attention stopped. There was no plot development that I could detect.

As unsatisfied as I was about Schitt’s Creek, I liked the previous year’s winner, Fleabag, even less.  Again, I did not watch the season that won but the previous season, season 1.  For the life of me I could not understand why this was called a comedy, except that if it was called a drama it would be considered worse.  The sole joke was that the main character was devoid of redeeming qualities, which I suppose could be developed amusingly but there was no attempt to do so.  I gave up after 3 episodes, which may be unfair, but life is too short to watch a TV show you aren’t enjoying (besides, there were only 6 episodes so I watched half a season).

I was only able to watch episodes of the previous Best Comedy winner, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, on a plane over the Atlantic, so I reserve judgement (but I will say that what I saw did not encourage me to seek out more episodes).  I have recently watched another Best Comedy nominee from that year, season 1 of the dark comedy Barry.  This is another show with one joke; a hit man in LA stumbles into an acting class while tailing a mark, and decides he wants to become an actor.  I have been able to keep watching Barry, as it is well made and well-acted, and the plot is developing into an absurdist existential farce.  But it isn’t “funny.”

It’s almost as if the modern comedy has evolved to the point where it isn’t supposed to be funny.  Lucy frantically trying to manage items on a speeding conveyor belt is so passé; now we are supposed to watch a character in an uncomfortable situation and chuckle (internally) at the character’s discomfort.  Eliciting laughter is not a comedy’s raison d’etre.

Frankly, the funniest show on broadcast television now might be Legends of Tomorrow, the CW’s pastiche of superheroes that is masquerading as a show about superheroes.  I will concede that my favorite comedy of the past four seasons, NBC’s The Good Place, often passed on doing jokes in favor of some absurdist philosophical point (but the show still had many, many moments of unbridled hilarity).

I think the problem is that the TV marketplace is now so Balkanized, so fractured, that there is no point in trying to appeal to a mass market funny bone.  Why try to appeal to 22 million viewers, like Friends did in its final seasons?  There are so many networks and platforms, it is futile to try and reach that audience.  I can’t even find data on how many people in America watched Fleabag (I didn’t try very hard) but I am guessing it is in the low single digit millions, if that.

And don’t get me started on what these shows call a “season.”  Barry is all of 8 less than half-hour episodes; Fleabag was 6 per season and ran out of ideas after two seasons.  Cheers produced 22-27 episodes per year for 11 years; yes, the Kirstie Alley were a slog at times, but that’s over 270 episodes.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say creators who can create 270 episodes of a TV show (while racking up 179 Emmy nominations and 28 wins) are more talented than ones who call it a wrap after 12.

So, there will never be another I Love Lucy, or All in the Family, or Cheers.  TV comedies aren’t even trying to be funny; maybe the last funny sitcom was Modern family, and that ran dry a couple of seasons before the end.  I guess if we want to find the humor in our modern world, we have to read the political news.

Dick Allen for the Hall of Fame?

 Ron Santo.

Marvin Miller.

Dick Allen?

The Baseball Hall of Fame has gotten into a nasty habit recently of denying entry to deserving people, then letting them in immediately after they die, when they are unable to appreciate the honor.  Marvin Miller, one of the two or three most influential people in the history of baseball, was kept out until after his death, but he said he understood why the owners, who control the Hall of Fame, would not want him admitted.  The case of Ron Santo I find harder to fathom, as he was a popular player and then a beloved announcer for the Cubbies.  The fact that he also lost a leg to diabetes and was in ill-health when he was not being voted in adds to my confusion.

Recently former MVP and Rookie of the Year Dick Allen passed away.  The objective case for his Hall of Fame induction is obvious.  According to Baseball Reference, his ratings for Black Ink, Grey Ink and the Hall of Fame Monitor all put him over the threshold (albeit marginally in some cases).  He put up impressive offensive numbers during one of the most pitching-dominant periods in baseball history, the 1960’s.  The fact that he picked up an MVP award during his career further solidifies his case. 

Yet he never garnered much support from the Baseball Writers Association, where he never got more than 19% of the vote, and far cry from the needed 75%.  The Veterans Committee came close to inducting him, giving him 11 o the needed 12 votes.  Since then the Phillies retired his number, and a revote on his induction was postponed due to COVID.

The case for Dick Allen entering the Hall of Fame is obvious, but so is the case for keeping him out.  You don’t have his numbers and peak at under 20% of the writers’ vote for no reason.  He was difficult to work with, attacked managers and teammates in the press, was a divisive locker room presence, and never led a team to a championship.  Bill James, in his seminal book What Ever Happened to the Hall of Fame, recounts Allen’s tumultuous history and concludes, “And if that’s a Hall of Famer, I’m a lug nut.”

But now that he has passed away, will he get in?  If he only missed by one vote before, I’m guessing the sentimental vote will put him over the top.  Also, a lot of his “difficulty” at the time can be attributed to racism, and in a more woke culture some of the complaints about him will be muted (Bill James acknowledged that Allen was the victim of racism, but pointed out that so were Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Roy Campenella, Bob Gibson, and others who weren’t excluded from the Hall because they were “difficult”). 

I do wish that the Hall would make an effort to indict players while they are alive so they can appreciate the honor.  I previously wrote that Pete Rose should be inducted after he dies, because his “lifetime ban” will have expired, and the point of the ban was to deny him the honor.  For millionaire superstars (like Rose, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens) there aren’t many penalties that will deter them from bad acts, but not seeing themselves inducted in the Hall of Fame should make them think twice.

I’m not proposing that dead players be ineligible for induction, like deceased persons can’t win a Nobel Prize.  I’m just saying that for marginal persons who are kept out, greater weight should be given to how close the person is from meeting the Grim Reaper.  Come on, you know Marvin Miller should be in the Hall, so when he gets past 80 years old just put him in.   Ron Santo was the best third baseman during a pitching-dominated era and played in a pitcher-friendly park, and put in years as a broadcaster.  He should be alive when the inevitable and overdue induction takes place.

The Hall is not about numbers and statistics.  If it were, they would have an objective standard for entry, like golf.  Anyone with a lifetime OPS of .900 or career WAR over 60, come on down.  There are intangibles.  When Harold Baines was inducted, I protested that it is the Hall of FAME, not the Hall of Pretty Good.  Sandy Koufax only had 6 or 7 good seasons, but he was the best pitcher when he was on, and he led his team to championships.  On the other hand, Rafael Palmiero had 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, but never led his team to anything.  Koufax goes in, Palmiero stays out (although granted it is for the failed drug test).

So, Hall of Fame voters, if you are on the fence in the future, look at the player’s birth certificate and take that into account when voting yea or nay.

 

I defend analytics

 Something happened a month ago that I just didn’t feel like talking about, even though it was in my wheelhouse.  It was something where I would defend a decision that everyone in the world was attacking, but I guess the attacks were so ubiquitous I figured what would be the point?  I love tilting at windmills but it gets tiresome.  But the attacks have gone on for a month and at some point my natural contrariness gets backed into a corner and has to come out fighting.

The event I am speaking of was the decision of Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash to pull starter Blake Snell from Games Six of the 2020 World Series in the sixth inning while he was pitching a 2-hit shutout.  The relief pitcher, Nick Anderson, proved less capable and the Dodgers won the game and the Series.

Cash subsequently won the AL Manager of the Year award (for his work during the regular season).  Snell has said he was disappointed by the decision and he now is the subject of trade rumors.  Last week on ESPN one of their personalities opined that the award for “Turkey of the Year” should not only be given to Cash, but named after him in perpetuity for making the dumbest decision of all time.

The decision was motivated by analytics, namely the fact that Snell had gone through the Dodgers’ line-up twice and that he was not as effective when facing batters for a third time.  The most vociferous attacks on Cash have come from the anti-analytics community, who see the Rays’ loss as conclusive proof that analytics are stupid.

First of all, using analytics to make decisions does not me that the decision is always going to work out 100% of the time.  Analytics is about probability, that over time you will more often come out ahead if you make rational decisions based on past observation of outcomes.  Part of the allure of non-analytics is that practitioners remember when their “hunches” paid off and forget all the times that their gut led them astray.

Second, decisions have to be executed.  If Nick Anderson had come in and pitched two shut out innings, we might not be having this conversation.  But he gave up a double to the first batter he faced, Mookie Betts, and the Rays’ fate was sealed.  News flash—Mookie Betts is a pretty good hitter.  Maybe if he had faced Snell for a third time, he would have timed a fastball and hit a home run.  Anderson’s subsequent failure to execute does not impact the decision made to pull Snell before he started facing batters for a third time, which had historically proven to be a bad idea.

What might have happened if Snell had been left in?  Let’s go back to the 2015 World Series.  Mets starter Mat Harvey is pitching a gem in Game 5, cruising after eight innings.  Harvey, who had only pitched one complete game in his entire history (and that was a blowout, not a close game), convinced his manager to ignore what the numbers said and to leave him in.  Mets’ manager Terry Collins eventually gave in and . . . the results were not good.  Harvey blew the game in the ninth, the Mets lost the game in extra innings, and thus lost the Series 4-1.  Analytics doesn’t look so bad now, does it?

As far as I can tell, people who don’t like analytics have one thing in common; they aren’t good at math.  They hate what they are incapable of understanding.  Analytics are responsible for getting the low-payroll Rays into the Series in the first place; analytics is the only weapon teams like the Rays and the “Moneyball” A’s have to compete against teams who can afford to make mistakes and overpay players who don’t work out. 

I concede that analytics has made sports less interesting.  Analytics says home runs are the most efficient way to score runs, so we have to put up with most at bats ending in a strikeout, base on balls, or home run.  In basketball, the mid-range jumper is dying because the most efficient strategy is to combine dunks with 3-point baskets.  In football, the short passing game is preferred to a “ground and pound” rushing offence or unleashing a mad bomber at quarterback because it has proven most effective.

But it is evolution, not heresy.  Yes, I miss the days when Bob Gibson would have punched his manager in the nose before giving up the ball before the ninth inning of a World Series game.  Yes, I miss the days when the 1971 Orioles had four 20-game winners on their pitching staff, when now there aren’t four 20-game winners in all of the majors (in 2019 there were exactly two).  Yes, I wish modern hitters listened to Wee Willie Keeler who said the secret to success was to “hit it where they ain’t,” instead of hitting into a shift when a bunt down the third base line would be an easy double. 

I miss those days, but they are in the past, not the future.

Memo to Mets owner Steve Cohen--don't start planning your parade route yet

 

The Mets new owner plans to win World Series; isn’t that cute?

The New York Mets were sold to Steve Cohen, about whom all I know is that he is rich enough to buy a sports team in New York, which doesn’t predispose me to liking him.  At his press conference after the sale was announced, he said he would be “disappointed” if the Mets didn't win a World Series in 3-5 years.

Mr. Cohen, prepare to be disappointed.

Non-sports people often buy sports teams and announce that the reason why the team hasn’t won recently is that they haven’t tried hard enough, didn’t plan strategically, or just didn't have enough heart. The baseball people who had been in charge, who had spent 20-30 or more years in the game, didn’t have the keen business mind that allows people to succeed in any field.

Let me remind Mr. Cohen of a few facts from recent history.  The Chicago Cubs recently ended a 108-year drought.  The Red Sox, despite the best efforts of Ted Williams and Carlton Fisk, had 86 years of frustration.  Currently, the Cleveland Indians are at 72 years and counting for a championship.   The vaunted Dodgers, one of the premiere franchises of the National League (and one of the richest) just won their first World Series after 32 years.  The Minnesota Twins, who haven’t won in almost 30 years, have lost 18 post-season games in a row.  The Oakland A’s, who haven’t won it all in 31 years, this year won their first post-season elimination game since 1973,  47 years ago.  Currently, 15 of the 30 franchises have championship droughts of 25 years or more.  One of those teams is the Mets, working on a 34 year drought.

Heck, four teams, the Rangers, Brewers, Padres, and Mariners, have never won a World Championship: for the Rangers that’s a 6-decade span.

But this Steve Cohen guy is going to come in, take a team that had a losing record in 2020 (okay, the 2020 season was hardly typical; they did have a .531 winning percent in 2019), and by virtue of his superior intellect, make them World Champions in 3-5 years? 

Because of its rich history with statistical analysis, table-top simulation games like Strat-O-Matic, and the Hot Stove league busy every off-season, there is a long tradition of people thinking they know more than the managers and general managers that play the game.  In some cases, this may be true; but it’s rare.

I would direct Mr. Cohen to the words of wisdom from the late Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti, who once said, “Baseball breaks your heart.  It was designed to break your heart.” You may be planning a parade in Manhattan sometime in 2023-25, but the Dodgers, Braves, Yankees, Astros, Nationals, Cubs, Indians, Tigers, Reds, Royals, Rangers, and 18 other major league teams have other ideas. 

Mr. Cohen, prepare to be disappointed.