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The story
Pro baseball commentator Takenori Emoto has put forward proposals to Nippon Professional Baseball on Climax Series (CS) playoff eligibility, the merits of the OPS stat, and the number of schools allowed into the Koshien tournament — and 5ch had plenty to say about it. His three claims — “teams with losing records shouldn’t make the CS,” “OPS is unnecessary, batting average/RBIs/home runs are enough,” and “cut the number of Koshien schools” — each split opinion down the middle, with some users calling for scrapping the CS altogether and others arguing Koshien should actually expand. The result was a single article that touched off several arguments running in parallel.
⟨Takenori Emoto’s Proposals for the Baseball World⟩ “Teams with Losing Records Shouldn’t Make the CS,” “OPS Isn’t Needed,” “Cut the Number of Koshien Schools” — What He Really Means
It’s not just the pennant race — sharp-tongued commentator Takenori Emoto doesn’t miss a thing happening around the baseball world! Climax Series rule changes, the summer Koshien tournament, a flood of home runs from Japanese major leaguers… he cuts through all of August’s baseball news. ⟨Part 2 of 2⟩
“The level of baseball is dropping, both in the pros and among high schoolers,” argues Takenori Emoto
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
You just can't keep up and find it a hassle, lol
People don't just change because they get older. They only change if they turn conservative to protect their position, or if dementia sets in.
>"We're here to watch insanely fast pitches and the power of hitters smashing them back."
Then go to a batting cage.
Apparently if you go every day, you end up with 70-something grannies smashing back 160 km/h pitches.
He probably thinks schools that can't even field 9 players should just fold. He's the type who won't feel any sense of crisis until numbers shrink down to rugby-team levels.
https://column.sp.baseball.findfriends.jp/?pid=column_detail&id=097-20171126-11
They should scrap interleague play, since it's almost always Pacific League teams that come out on top, and maybe bring back the single-league system that hasn't existed since 1949.
So true, right?
If you let it all concentrate into a handful of powerhouses, baseball would be finished in an instant — it'd become no different from any other sport.
The baseball world fundamentally has no sense of crisis.
"…psst psst…(*´･ω･)(･ω･｀*)…psst psst…"
"Saying OPS isn't needed nowadays… right?"
"This is why old folks…"
"♫ Come on, let's update ourselves ♫"
>"Apparently older fans have stopped showing up at MLB ballparks lately, and it's because all this data keeps cluttering everything up. 'That's not what we came to see. We came to see insanely fast pitches and the power of hitters smashing them back,' he says."
Makes no sense.
Does data showing up somehow stop you from watching insanely fast pitches and hitters smashing them back?
Kinki: 5 times
Kanto: 2 times
Okinawa: 1 time
Tohoku: 1 time
Cancelled due to COVID: 1 time
The winners are pretty much always the same regions. Tokai, Kyushu, and Shikoku, once powerhouses, have declined.
Is this a dig at Nomura (Katsuya Nomura, the data-driven former manager)?
I wonder what Nomura actually thought about OPS.
Wasn't it not really mainstream in Japan while he was still alive?
Won't happen — the individual clubs hold more power than NPB itself.
– slugging percentage shouldn't factor into on-base percentage
– reaching on a dropped third strike shouldn't count toward on-base percentage
– if the pitcher's just wild and the batters before and after also draw walks/HBPs, that batter's on-base percentage should be voided
…a stat like that would actually mean something. But OPS is just simple addition, so it can go past 100%. A "rate" stat that can exceed 100% doesn't mean anything. An OPS of 1.00 would mean being on base or hitting a homer 100% of the time, lol. Nobody in the history of any category anywhere has ever done that.
OPS just happens to work well as a stat when you simply add the two together. That's exactly why calling it a "percentage" doesn't fit.
It's OBP + SLG, so hitting a home run once every 2 at-bats also gives you an OPS of 1.00.
By that math OPS comes out to 2.50. Since you're adding two separate metrics — OBP and SLG — the resulting number has nothing to do with percentages anymore. A number like 2.50 doesn't mean 250%.
Then it's even more of a meaningless, flawed stat. "0.90 is great, 1.00 is even greater, bigger number = greater" isn't a "stat" at all. What's the actual difference in skill between a 0.90 guy and a 0.95 guy? Between 0.95 and 1.00? The numerical gap is the same 0.05 either way, but what's the real difference? Nobody can say, nobody knows.
"Bigger number = greater" is clearly what a "stat" is, lol.
Ever heard of a distribution?
Why specifically 10 games?
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The Climax Series (CS) is NPB’s postseason format, introduced in 2007, and the fact that a 3rd-place team with a losing record — a so-called “debt team” — can still qualify has long been a point of contention. OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) is a sabermetrics-style stat that has spread in recent years, and skepticism like Emoto’s remains deep-rooted in Japanese baseball, which has traditionally emphasized batting average, RBIs, and home runs. In the thread, criticism that “a stat is broken if simple addition can push it past 100%” was met with counterarguments that “it’s a number meant to be read via distribution, not as a percentage,” revealing some disagreement over how OPS is even calculated in the first place. On the question of how many schools should compete at Koshien, opinions split between those wanting to expand the field and those wanting to shrink it, given that some teams already struggle to field enough players amid Japan’s declining birthrate — making it a debate that didn’t reduce to a simple for-or-against split.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Baseball] Takenori Emoto Makes Proposals to the Baseball World: “Teams with Losing Records Shouldn’t Make the CS,” “OPS Isn’t Needed — Batting Average, RBIs, and Home Runs Are Enough,” “Cut the Number of Koshien Schools”.”
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