No mailbag today; emails mainly about Ken Takahashi’s alteration of his rookie costume (from three different folks; didn’t know y’all spent so much time staring at Ken Takahashi’s legs), and votes on the off-season profile pic.  Santana B makes a late surge.  Someone also made an impassioned plea for a humorous Nick Evans pic.  No write-ins means no write-ins, and the payoff would require too many steps.  But if I can do it where the laughter’s immediate and it’s not so expensive, I’m there as a one-off.  To vote on what my off-season profile pic will be, check out the rules and options here and email your choice to omniality [at] gmail [dot] com.

But in the second half of my post on Wednesday, I wrote:

I sound irritated not just because I’ve been concatenating in Excel
like a fiend all morning, but because I see the writing on the
off-season wall and it makes me wish I could unilaterally define blog
topics.  I’d be a lot more specific than all this business today about
Jerry Manuel.

We can only define Jerry Manuel’s job performance
based on the available data, and I don’t even have a full idea of what
that data set is, really.

I was hoping someone would get out in front of this business with a good and crunchy–I don’t know why “crunchy” sounds good to me there–article about how to a proper mathematical analysis on a manager’s ability.  And while it doesn’t claim to have all the statistical answers, Eric Simon’s post today on Amazin’ Avenue is some good work.  Read read read.

Again, and I think the caveats in the article come a bit too late, it does not claim to have a stats-based mien in toto.  But the heart-rather-than-head arguments made aren’t made with the histrionics that can cloud debate, and the attempt to analyze objectively is at least made.  I think it’s a good start.

Going to the game tonight, and will return to find The Wife at home for the first time since mid-August.  So I’ll see youse guys later.

Let’s go Mets!  Perfect October record coming up!

**

Goddamn.  I don’t even think I can call shenanigans:

Things we can take from this:

  • Metsblog is indeed comprehensive.  Love Cerrone or hate him–I think he does great work but needs a steady and fast copy editor–he’s got his finger on the pulse.

  • Jose Reyes’s injury travails shall be the stuff of legend.

  • This blog is remarkably unpopular.

  • I was right to let my subscription to New York magazine lapse.