Wed Sar 3rd - interesting jockey change

[Alydar in California]

JB wrote: \"The Rome in a day thing was good.\"

To be honest, I don\'t much remember writing it, but the rest of it looks pretty damn good, too.

\"The concept of performance figures is to measure ability, not accomplishment\"

 This is captious and wrong. To go six furlongs in 110.00 while 2w is to go 6F + 8-9 feet in 110.00. Performance figures measure performance. When you start adjusting them, as opposed to marking them, for easy wins, you will be able to get away with what you just wrote.

\"Variables in baseball are even more complicated (for one, pitching with a 5 run lead is different than in a tie game) but the idea behind that baserunner per inning stat (which could be refined further, but it\'s a quick check easily made on stats when the pitcher comes into the game) is the same, and usually turns out to be a very good guide to accomplishment.\"

   If your defense of this statistic is that it is a \"very good guide to accomplishment,\" then you have a way of measuring accomplishment, eliminating your need for this statistic, which only hints at accomplishment.

[TGJB]

I really don\'t want to get bogged down in this. Accomplishment in racing (by horses) is in winning and earning money. We know that comparing previous accomplishments in those terms is not a reliable guide to predicting outcomes, hence making and using figures and looking for accomplishment/ability anomolies.
In the short term--a game, part of a season, sometimes a season--ability may not lead to accomplishment (ERA, wins, etc.). But things tend to even out--faster horses will beat slower, more accomplished horses, pitchers who get people out will end up with records that reflect it.

[Alydar in California]

JB: Right. A horse who wins a Grade One by 30 lengths and runs a negative four but gets taken down to last has accomplished nothing. And Darryl Strawberry should be mentioned in the same breath as Babe Ruth. When Bob gets those stats, you are going to have a lot of explaining to do.

And JB, I have been KIDDING with YOU. Things needed to be stirred up. They no longer do, to make an understatement.