I seem to recall seeing it on the internet SOMEWHERE — most likely cited by ESPN or some such thing.

you couldn’t have corroborated greg’s comment a little sooner?

To clarify those bullpen homers, those 10 were just the ones where it pulled the opposition even or put them ahead. There have been nearly 50 homers hit from the 7th inning on since the ASB in total.

When teams are winning, nobody notices this of course, because first of all, the coach isn’t trying to fix anything, so there isn’t very much to tune out in the first place. Secondly, nobody is analyzing the relationship, because there is nothing wrong to figure out. So the tuning out is incidental and inconsequential.

in case i’m the one missing the point, i’ll restate what it was you said that i took issue with:

“Reminiscent of Larry Bird’s comment that professional athletes only pay attention to their coaches an average of 1.5 years, slowly tuning them out until around the completion of 3 years the manager usually no longer has any impact on the players.”

other than your paraphrasing of Mr. Bird, I’ve never heard of any generalization of players tuning coaches out based on time.

on the other hand, i have heard of coaches/managers losing a team, but the only general rule I can associate with that phenomena is that the teams in question were losing consistently, or there was some severe disconnect between the players and the coach/manager (again, nothing to do with elapsed time).

players tuning coaches out at the 3 year mark (or at any point) doesn’t seem to be a general rule when it almost never happens to winning teams. the much more simple way to determine when players will tune coaches out seems to be when they begin consistently losing.

maybe you’re right though…and just in case, when I’m watching the Wings play this year, i’ll keep an ear open for any comments along the lines of, “wow, these players still seem to be buying into Babcock’s philosophy, even though its been more than three years!”.

If the team restructured Inge’s contract to have the bulk of it as incentives that would only vest if he tackled a certain amount of opposition catchers, would his contract be easier to swallow?”

Even if the player’s union would let that slide, it’s a little too narrow. It would be more fair to also add in other incentives to the mix, like number of times he tricks the umpire about what the count is.

Another clause which might appeal to Inge would be once the team is eliminated from playoff contention, he could have weekends off to play another sport. Because after watching the Lions first couple of games, and then seeing Inge take down Martinez…well let’s just say some part time secondary help couldn’t hurt the Lions

Dave BW – I can grasp some concepts, including false ones, and the one you just mentioned. Nothing can be proven absolutely, I grasp that some people erroneously believe that you can. It makes them feel secure. In reality, we can only deal with degrees of certainty.

Some statisticians think they can prove certain things, that player A is better than player B for instance, but the so called proof is only valid if you accept all of their presuppositions, which are usually unprovable, yet are accepted as gospel among many sabermetricians, but not other baseball analysts.

Dr. Dre is once again missing the point(maybe, or perhaps he was just trying to be jocund). Why would someone even bother trying to prove that it occassionaly rains? It’s silly, it’s a waste of time. To me it is anyway. And if someone questioned that it rained, would you really take them seriously?

It’s just a way of illustrating a point. I’m sure if I wanted to waste the time, I could come up with numerous quotes about coaches losing a team, or more particularly having an impact for a while, then losing a team. But why would I? Basically, he’s suggesting that I’m making this up. Even though in a few weeks I’ll see on Baseball tonight, or NFL This Week, or ‘Fill in your favorite sports analysis show’. I’ll hear a quote reflecting this belief, and it will be the I dunno, 50th, 100th, 200th time I’ve heard it? I haven’t been counting. Why would I be interested in proving this? It would be silly. There’s just no benefit in doing so.

I’ve discovered that some people simply believe what they want to believe and don’t want to get confused with facts. When I sense that, there’s really no point in continuing the ‘debate’. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.

greg, in case you’re worried about your inability to prove that meteorologists hold a common belief about whether or not it does in fact rain, I was able (with much difficulty) to track down a source to confirm your previously unprovable belief:

http://www.weather.com/

see, you just have to want to.

“I just previously clarified that anyone looking for evidence of slack will find it when they look hard enough”

In writing this I was illustrating (maybe poorly) the tendency of confirmation bias or:

‘the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs’

Now, it could be that my own bias leads me to look at the occasional instance of Sheffield jogging to 1B on what is almost certainly a clear out, and think, well so does every other guy…hence my reference to instances of other players (who aren’t considered lazy) doing similar things occasionally. Or I could be right, Sheffield isn’t lazy in general, its just that when you see him doing something lazy (that’s common league wide) you come to the conclusion that he’s lazy in general.

As for your general rule of players tuning out coaches, I think it is much more a function of success than it is a function of time.