If the PD ran an article like this, I think the collective heads of the average cleveland fan would explode.

Denominator—did you forget your high school math?

Perhaps you were distracted by the “Domican Demoninator”?

Imagine if the papers reported on this in the same way we discussed it here at LGT?

Well, the newspaper would have to be (a) three times larger and (b) dedicated entirely to the Sabathia deal.

Fewer than five percent of readers would value information or analysis like this. An editor who ran such a piece in a daily newspaper would not have his or her job for long, I’d say.

Sentimental is always good. Tug the heartstrings of your readers. And demeaning numbers and complications is also good. Give the public what they want.

Bill Livingston says one particular reason the Indians’ season is a disaster is because they didn’t sign Kenny Lofton to play left this year. That’s gas-station level discourse.

A large part of the problem, demonstrated by the “eek, numbers!” comment above, is the general public’s lack of any basic mathematical knowledge (outside of arithmetic). I’m a high school math teacher, and have had this discussion many times with colleagues. What’s worse, is that many people are “proud” of their lack of mathematical knowledge. It’s become generally accepted in this country that it’s OK to be bad at math and most people don’t need it once they graduate from high school. You would never hear a person brag that they don’t know how to read, yet people brag all the time that they’re bad at math. And they pass this attitude on to their children, who bring that attitude to school.

I once had a mother ask me why her son, a sophomore who was doing terrible in Algebra 1, why her son needed to know algebra! She said, I never had algebra—why should he have to take it? So of course he’s not going to do well, because he thinks it isn’t important.

Mathematics teached critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, how to read and understand numbers, graphs, and many ofther skills that are necessary in every day lives, not to mention an increasing number of jobs in this technology-savvy world. That is why the government is increasing requirements for math classes to graduate from high school. Yet students come to class with the attitude that math isn’t important, and they don’t really need to know this stuff because they won’t need it after they leave school, because that is the attitude that permeates from the adults that they are around.

So, we have a nation that is scared by numbers, graphs, charts, and in-depth analysis of most issues. They don’t understand logic and are unable to spot fallacies when the see or hear them. This has led to a dumbing-down of most news and print, because any high-level analysis is hard for people to understand, so they change the channel or skip the article. That’s why newspapers don’t publish articles like this. Maybe someday they will.

(Sorry for the rant)

Which was a very timely injury, given that all indications were he wasn’t going to start the year in Milwaukee anyway. Also, we should make sure our relievers don’t hit The Porta in the head. Except for the ones that suck, who are free to break their fingers that way or be fed to The Weglarz.