A few notes

- The Phillies took two of three from the NL-central-leading Cardinals. Bobby Abreu remains red-hot, hitting 11 home runs thus far in May, with an on-base percentage of .575 and a slugging percentage of 1.067. Unreal. Jim Thome will be returning to the Phils soon, hopefully injury-free, which means the Phillies should start scoring all the runs that they're supposed to.

- I saw Star Wars last night. Good fun. Plenty of problems, of course, but if you just ignore all the scenes between Anakin and Amidala, you've got yourself a pretty good movie.

- It's always fun when people bemoaning bad history don't know history as well as they think they do. George Will, in a piece on history that makes all sorts of weird generalizations, has this to say: "Kagan's idea is not novel. Nearly three centuries ago Lord Bolingbroke said that 'history is philosophy teaching by examples.'" Well, yes, but Bolingbroke was quoting Thucydides. You'd think that, in demonstrating the lack of novelty in Kagan's ideas about history, Will would prefer quoting someone dead for almost two and a half millenia, rather than someone dead two and a half centuries.

And now, back to the dissertation.

Blogging hiatus

It's getting to be crunch time for my dissertation. It's due on June 10th, just three and a half weeks away. There's considerable work left to be done on it, so it's probably best for me to stay away from blogging until then. I might still write the occasional post, but right now I really need to minimize my time on the internet (something I haven't been all that effective at in recent weeks). I want to write about the differing perspectives on rock music in Nick Hornby's 31 Songs and James Miller's Almost grown, but there's nothing particularly timely about that. And I'm toying with the idea of posting bits and pieces of the dissertation that might work in their own right. But in general, there probably won't be much here for the next three weeks.

The root of the Phillies problems

According to Bill Conlin of the Philadelphia Daily News, the Phillies' current incarnation is hopeless. There's little chance of them making the playoffs this year, and they're not going to get any better without any passing years. They need to get younger and they need to rebuild.

Not words you like to hear, but I think he's pretty much on-target. Based on the past few years, a team has to win at least 90 games to get the wild card spot in the NL. For the Phillies to do that, they'll need to go 75-51 the rest of the way, a winning percentage of .595. That's certainly doable, but it'd be a marked improvement from their current winning percentage of .414. So, as much as I'd hate to admit it at such an early stage, the 2005 Phillies season may very well be lost. I hope they can turn it around, but they need to put together some winning streaks soon or it'll be too late.

A few days ago I read how the Phillies don't have many high-round draft picks this year. This has been pretty standard over the past few years. In the past five years, the Braves (the Braves! Who have won the division for the past decade!) have had nearly twice as many draft picks in the top five rounds as the Phillies. For the Phillies to fail to make the playoffs while gutting their farm system and losing draft picks is inexcusable.

Conlin's right. Changes need to be made. And they need to be made at the top, starting with the firing of general manager Ed Wade.

Further thoughts on Newsweek's high school rankings

After poking around the Newsweek website a bit, I came across this FAQ on their ranking of America's top high schools. Jay Mathews, the creator of the ranking, addresses some of the issues I brought up but I remain unconvinced that the ranking provides a useful way of measuring schools' effectiveness.

When asked about his decision to ignore test performance and examine only how many tests each school administered, Mathews claims that "most American high schools keep their passing rates artificially high by allowing only A students to take the courses. In some cases, they open the courses to all but wrongly encourage only the best students to take the tests." This doesn't fit with my own experience. At my high school, students could take as many Advanced Placement tests as they'd like; in fact, they typically had to take initiative in registering for the tests (caveat: this was back in the late '90s and things may have changed by now). Even in classes that had the AP label, plenty of students (probably a majority) did not take the AP exam. Now as Mathews views it, the fact that most students didn't take the test reflects poorly on my school's educational effectiveness. But the important question is not whether students take a test, but rather whether they actually learn anything.

Mathews appears to be on the same page here, arguing that a rigorous academic environment is crucial to a school's success. He goes so far as to argue that "a student who works hard but struggles in an AP or IB course, and does poorly on the AP or IB test, is still better prepared for college than he would be if he were forced to take an easier course and test." If his argument is that the best high schools for top students are those that challenge them, he has no disagreement from me. I'm all for hard classes.

But given his belief that the mark of a good school is its difficult classes, it's hard to grasp why Mathews places so much (indeed, all his) emphasis on the AP tests that come at the end of the year. The real value of challenging course work lies in its development of critical thinking skills and broadening of knowledge, not in its providing students the skills to take a test at the end of the year. Yet Mathews clearly believes that the test-taking itself is crucial: "Taking the test is good. It gives students a necessary taste of college trauma. It is bad that many students in AP courses avoid taking the tests just because they prefer to spend May of their senior year sunning themselves on the beach or buying their prom garb." A few comments about this. First, the trauma of AP tests is nothing like the trauma of beginning college. If Mathews really believes that taking a three-hour test with lots of multiple choice questions really prepares you well for college, he doesn't have a clear understanding of the actual stresses associated with beginning college. Believe me, exams aren't even near the top of the list. On a somewhat related note, I think Mathews is mistaken in assuming students in AP classes who don't take the exams are just a lazy bunch. To be sure, there's plenty of such people. But for others, there's often no good reason to take the exam - their college might not grant credit or placement, so why shell out $82 for a test that doesn't "get" you anything. Assuming the class is taught well, the benefits have accrued over the course of the school year, not in a few weeks of studying in May.

None of this is meant to suggest that AP is a bad program. I took a bunch of AP classes and tests in high school and learned a great deal in the process. If I had to do it all over again, I'd still probably take lots of AP exams. But there was no major differences between AP classes and non-AP (but still top-level) classes. Indeed, in some of my AP classes, practically no time was spent explicitly preparing for the AP exams. When I think back to the best classes I had in high school, I don't think about it in terms of AP and non-AP classes. The best classes were the ones with good teachers who cared about their students and challenged them to reach their potential. While the AP designation might signal that a particular class is top-notch, its absence in no way suggests that the class is necessarily less rigorous or teaches students less. Thus, while Mathews's "Challenge Index" might successfully identify good schools, it doesn't even come close to determining which schools are best.

And, as this St. Petersburg Times article suggests, Mathews's method doesn't even find good schools all of the time. Hillsborough High School, according to Matthews and Newsweek the tenth best high school in the country, received a D from the state of Florida last year. According to GreatSchools.net, Hillsborough's graduation rate for the 2002-3 school year was 60.8%, almost ten points below the Florida average (which is saying something, if you know about the state of Florida's public school system). It's hard to reconcile these data with Mathews's ranking of Hillsborough. Are we really to believe that a school that receives a D and has a graduation rate of 60% is one of the ten best in the country?

There you have it. Mathews methodology is useless. It doesn't identify the country's best schools and it doesn't even appear to highlight good schools. What it does is exactly what it says it does: it rewards schools whose students take a lot of tests. Is this really an ideal vision of American education?

What's wrong with the Phillies? (3rd in a series continuing until the Phillies start playing well)

Last week I wrote that Tim Worrell and Terry Adams, the relievers who have hurt the Phillies the most this season, should not be used in close games. Within a day or two, Worrell had lost his set-up man position and went on the DL soon thereafter, citing psychological problems that he needs to address. Ryan Madson taking Worrell's spot as Billy Wagner's set-up guy is a good development that should ensure that the Phillies hold on to most late-game leads.

But it seems that the Phillies haven't yet realized the damage that Terry Adams has done. Last night, with the Phillies up 5-4 in the sixth inning, Adams came in from the bullpen to replace Vicente Padilla. At the time, Adams had an ERA of 9.64, the kind of stat that should relegate you to pitching garbage innings and nothing else. So what did Adams do? He gave up three hits, one walk, and four earned runs while getting just one out. If not for Adams's shoddy 1/3 of an inning pitched, the Phillies would have had a far greater chance of winning. It's a whole lot easier to win a game you're already leading by one run than one in which you're down three runs.

So why Adams? The Inquirer speculates that "it was too early to bring in Rheal Cormier or Ryan Madson, the only pitchers in the bullpen besides closer Billy Wagner who have been reliable in tight situations." This is nonsense. Madson has shown the ability to pitch multiple innings. His new set-up role doesn't take away that ability. There's no reason why Cormier couldn't pitch the 6th, Madson the 7th and 8th, and Wagner the 9th. Or you could even ask for two innings from Cormier, especially considering that he'd made all of seven pitches in the month of May. Or you could ask Wagner to get four outs for you; he's done it before this season. You can get four innings out of Cormier, Madson, and Wagner. It's not at all clear why the Phillies didn't think so.

But even accepting that it was too early to bring in any of those three, why Adams? Aaron Fultz and Geoff Geary both had lower ERAs than Adams. Whether they had shown themselves to be "reliable in tight situations" is beside the point. Adams hasn't shown himself to be reliable at all this season.

As best I can tell, the Phillies bullpen usage problems stem from a narrow view of ideal bullpen management. Use your closer in the ninth. Use your set-up guy in the eighth. Use your third-best reliever in the seventh. Use your lefty specialist to get out lefties. This is well and good, but there's a more basic rule of thumb that the Phillies simply haven't been following this season: don't put in bad pitchers in close games. Now it wasn't clear at the beginning of the season that Worrell was going to be a below-average pitcher this season. But when he'd given up 6 runs in his first five innings pitched, alarm bells should have started to go off. And Adams? He was bad from the start, giving up runs in five out of his first nine appearances. And yet, last night, in a one-run game, he gets the call.

The players on the Phillies aren't doing much to help the team win games. You simply can't win all that often when you average four runs a game and have two starting pitchers with ERAs over 5. But the guys sitting on the Phillies bench making decisions aren't helping much either. I'm sure that you can find at least four or five games this season already where Charlie Manuel's decisions have dramatically weakened the Phils' chances to win. The Phillies aren't putting their best team on the field. Is it any wonder they aren't winning many games?

Problems with Newsweek's ranking of America's best high schools

Via the Volokh Conspiracy, Newsweek has released a ranking of the best high schools in America (Story, Ranking). Orin Kerr notes that they also did a ranking in 2003 and,– if memory serves correctly, they were doing this back in 2000, as well.

Nothing’'s changed since 2000. Newsweek’'s ranking is still absurd. Here’'s their formula for discovering which of America’s high schools provide the best education: take the number of Advanced Placement exams administered each year and divide it by the number of graduating seniors.

That’'s it. According to Newsweek, the only two things we need to know in order to judge a school’'s quality are the number of tests its students took and how many students there are.

There are so many problems with Newsweek’'s methodology that it’s hard to know where to start.

First, the absurdity of Newsweek'’s ranking system should be obvious just by looking at the scores of the top ten schools. Number one, the best school in America according to Newsweek, has a score of 10.755. Number ten, still a rather elite school, one would think, puts up 5.085. Does this mean that Jefferson County is twice as good as Hillsborough? In the absence of any further explanation of what exactly the score means, this would seem to be the conclusion. Given that there'’s no way that, among America’s elite high schools, any given school is twice as good as another, this is a key flaw in Newsweek'’s presentation and methodology.

Using Newsweek’'s metric, schools are rewarded for their students taking lots of tests. How those students do on those tests is irrelevant. A school'’s students could be getting 1s and 2s on all their AP tests (out of a possible score of 5), but as long as they’'re taking a lot of them, the school looks good. If a school wanted to improve its ranking, the strategy'’s painfully clear: encourage their students to take more AP tests. Not, you'’ll note, provide an environment where their students can learn the material and thinking skills necessary to do well on an AP test. Just get them to take the test. Ignoring performance is a huge problem.

Even if Newsweek modified their ranking index to account for students’' performance on AP tests (say, by looking at both the average scores achieved by their and the total number of exams administered), they still have an incredibly simplistic notion of what makes a good school. For one thing, AP tests are not offered at all schools. While I'’m fairly certain most students have the opportunity to take AP tests, they may have to take them at different schools. Newsweek would have you believe that schools that offer AP tests are inherently better than those that do not, but there’'s no obvious reason to believe this. Maybe the school places little emphasis on preparing for exams, preferring to teach their students in a low-stress, non-competitive environment. Or maybe it has a non-traditional curriculum that doesn’'t map well onto the AP tests. In any case, there'’s absolutely no reason why great teaching can'’t take place in a school that doesn’'t offer AP tests. For Newsweek to discount this possibility excludes potentially top schools from their ranking.

And what about all those students who don’t take AP tests at all? At my high school, there were three primary “tracks” in each of the major academic subjects; typically only students in the top track took AP tests, and not even all that many of them did. But what about the education provided to the students in the lower tracks, the average students? Newsweek'’s ranking pays no attention at all to them, focusing instead on the elite students and how good their education is (except not really, for the reasons outlined above). But a school’'s quality is signaled by more than the performance of its top students. To assess how effectively a school educates all its students, we should look at things like graduation rate, what percentage of graduates go on to further education, and the like. If a parent of an median student were to use this ranking as a way of determining where to send their child, they’'d want to know how well the school taught the average students, not its best performers. Again, Newsweek’s ignoring a large set of data that'’s clearly relevant to determining the best schools.

Then there'’s the question of non-educational factors. Surely a school'’s location, facilities, and extracurricular activities must factor into any assessment of its quality. Unless, of course, parents care only about sending their kids to a school where they will take lots of tests. Now, I’'m not a parent, but I'’m guessing that'’s not what most parents want.

You almost have to admire the ambition of Newsweek for presuming that they can objectively quantify the quality of American high schools. But it'’s hard to maintain that admiration when considering how simplistically and narrow-mindedly they try to do it. Looks to me like a ploy to follow the footsteps of U.S. News and World Report and sell magazines.

Morgan and Moneyball (the short version)

I just wrote a lengthy post describing how little baseball analyst Joe Morgan understands about the "moneyball" approach and how often he's ill-informed and wrong. And then Blogger ate it. So much for the new Recover post feature.

Anyway, since I don't feel like writing it up all again, here's the most important part.

After insisting (without any evidence or argument) that the Red Sox are not a moneyball team, Morgan then admitted that he has not, in fact, read Moneyball. That's right. Joe Morgan, a guy whose job it is to talk about baseball, hasn't read the most popular baseball book in years, yet presumes to know all about it. He doesn't have a clue, of course, as his arguments about moneyball reveal, but that doesn't stop him from talking nonsense.

Joe Morgan's a crappy baseball announcer who's stuck in the past and refuses to consider new approaches to baseball. The sooner people stop listening to him, the better.

Two comments on the Phillies

Well, the Phillies lost again yesterday. 7-5 to the Mets at Shea. They're now 5.5 games out of first place. In the first week of May. This is a very bad sign. But on to my comments.

1) This has more to do with the people writing for the Phillies website than the Phillies themselves, but it left me so flabbergasted that I need to comment. When I checked on the score of yesterday's game in the top of the ninth, the headline was "Padilla turns in decent effort against Mets". Padilla gave up 4 runs in 4 1/2 innings. If he put in a "decent" effort like that in every game, his ERA would be 8.31. I don't know whether expectations have just gone to hell or what, but there's just no way a performance like that can be described as "decent." Then again, maybe they were just writing about his effort, not his performance. Well, to be honest, I don't care all that much how hard he tried (though see here). I care how he actually performed. And yesterday's performance was atrocious. For the Phillies writers not to recognize this is a disservice to the fans.

2) Tim Worrell had another awful outing, giving up three runs in the eighth inning, allowing the Mets to extend their lead to 7-2. If that weren't painful enough, the Phillies came right back to score three runs in the top of the ninth. This isn't to say that had Worrell pitched a no-run 8th the Phillies would have won; if it had been a two-run game in the ninth the Mets may have gone straight to their closer, Braden Looper (whether he's successfully close the game is another question). But there's no denying that it's a whole lot easier to erase a two-run lead than a five-run lead. Worrell's poor performance really hurt.

On the bright side, manager Charlie Manuel finally seems to have realized that using Tim Worrell as the set-up man for Billy Wagner is a bad idea. That Worrell accepts this is good news, too. Hopefully this means we'll see better bullpen management from Manuel, with Ryan Madson and Aaron Fultz pitching in high-risk situations before the middle of the eighth inning. After the eighth inning has started, it's time to bring in Billy Wagner, who has been lights-out all season.

This change won't allow the Phillies to jump up to first place. They need more runs and more consistent starting pitching to do that. But using the bullpen's strengths effectively can go a long way, especially in close games.

American impressions of the British election

You already know the results. But just in case you don't, check out the BBC. The MCR had an election party last night, I joined in on the fun. Some thoughts:

- Sunderland South's rush to beat their reporting-time record was really quite hilarious. At first, when they showed people with ballot boxes running into a building, I thought it was some kind of spoof. But no, they actually had people training in order to get the count started as soon as possible.

- I finally got to hear how Plaid Cymru is pronounced. I'm fairly sure I can't say it correctly, but I don't think I'd make too much of a fool of myself if I tried.

- Speaking of difficult pronunciations, no one seemed too happy about the Western Isles' transformation into Na h-Eileanan an Iar. Even my friend from Scotland declined to make an attempt.

- The sheer joy that Peter Snow puts into the Swingometer (hell, all his 3D computer graphics) is rather infectious.

- That there's a party called National Front Britons before Refugees is frightening.

- American politicians should start wearing rosettes. It would make the whole process seem more like a state fair. And who doesn't love a good fair?

- The rather odd voting decisions taken by some. A good friend of mine, who describes himself as naturally inclined to support the Tories (small government, private enterprise and all that) voted for the Lib Dems - he wanted to give Blair a bloody nose but could not stomach a vote for Howard.

- Along these lines, the idea of a seat swinging between the Tories and the Lib Dems (or vice versa) strikes me as rather unlikely and counterintuitive. But it happens.

- On an inquisitive note, could someone explain to me why this is such a bad result for Blair? I understand that his majority's weakened considerably, but he still has a majority, and he's still prime minister, right? Does his smaller majority have serious consequences for his ability to implement policies?

What's wrong with the Phillies? (2nd in a series continuing until the Phillies start playing well)

First, they're still not scoring enough runs. Even after last night's 10-run explosion, they're still in the bottom half of the National League when it comes to putting runs on the board. Hopefully the insertion of Ryan Howard into the lineup to replace the ailing and largely ineffective Jim Thome will help keep the runs coming.

Second, they're allowing too many runs. It's fairly easy to pinpoint who's to blame for the poor pitching. Assuming each pitcher on the Phillies staff was equally effective, they'd give up runs at the same rate. Pitchers who pitch more innings would allow more runs, but any other pitching those same innings would give up those same runs. By comparing how many runs a pitcher has actually allowed to the number a team-average pitcher pitching the same number of innings would allow, we can assess how much he's hurt or helped the team. Here's how the 2005 Phillies pitching staff shakes out.

(Scroll down. The table doesn't seem to be formatting properly. Suggestions welcome.)

Pitcher	Expected Runs Allowed	Runs Allowed	Difference
Brett Myers	23.4	8	15.4
Jon Lieber	24.2	15	9.2
Billy Wagner	6.4	0	6.4
Aaron Fultz	7	3	4
Ryan Madson	7.4	6	1.4
Geoff Geary	2.1	1	1.1
Rheal Cormier	4.1	4	0.1
Cory Lidle	16.1	17	-0.9
Tim Worrell	5.8	9	-3.2
Pedro Liriano	6	2.7	-3.3
Randy Wolf	16.9	21	-4.1
Terry Adams	5.4	10	-4.6
Vicente Padilla	6.4	14	-7.6
Gavin Floyd	8.1	22	-13.9

As you'd expect, Brett Myers, Jon Lieber, and Billy Wagner top the list as the Phillies pitchers who have made the greatest contributions. Myers has been spectacular, exceeding virtually everyone's expectations. Lieber has been solid in every start, never giving up more than four runs. And Billy Wagner has yet to give up a run. That's the good news.

The bad news starts with two pitchers who haven't even pitched all that much for the Phillies yet have found ways to hurt them. Gavin Floyd, who's allowed almost 15 more runs than the average Phillies pitcher would give up. In Floyd's defense, he was sterling in his first start. And he's back down in the minors, so there's not much use criticizing him now.

Vicente Padilla is next worst. I just don't know what to make of Padilla. At his best, he's very very good. But if he gets off his game, it gets ugly quickly. His last start was a decent one, 2 earned runs over 5 innings, so maybe he just needed to recover fully from his injury.

Randy Wolf's struggled as well. He's pitching for the Phillies tonight. Hopefully he can get back on track and get his ERA under, oh, I don't know... 6.

There's not much you can say about struggling starts. It's not as if there are many other options out there. The starting rotation you have is, for the most part, the starting rotation you've got to work with. There are potentially some players in the minor leagues who could outperform Padilla or Wolf, but the situation has not yet become desperate.

There's plenty, however, to say about bullpen usage. Liriano, the Phillies least effective reliever, has been sent down to AAA. No complaints there. One has to question Charlie Manuel's judgment, however, when you look at the usage of Terry Adams and Tim Worrell. Adams and Worrell are the two least effective relievers on the Phillies active roster. Yet Worrell has made more relief appearances than any other Phillies pitcher, and Adams is tied for second in appearances with Billy Wagner. Adams has given up runs in over half the games he's pitched in, Worrell nearly half. Look at it this way: if you put in Adams or Worrell, there's roughly a 50% chance they'll give up at least one run. These are not the guys you want pitching in close games. Yet Manuel continues to use Worrell as the set-up man for closer Billy Wagner. Manuel's bullpen usage has clearly lost the Phillies some games.

So, to sum up, the Phillies have several problems. They aren't scoring enough runs. Not to much you can do about that except send your best lineup up to bat and hope they turn it around. They've got a few starting pitchers who aren't getting the job done. Again, not much you can do about that. And they've got some crappy relievers who, inexplicably, are pitching in lots of games. This is something that can be fixed. Until Charlie Manuel stops using Terry Adams and Tim Worrell in close games, the Phillies won't be putting their best team on the field, and they won't be performing to their potential.