Trevor Lines

Worst calls in sports history— 4. Seahawks Replacement Refs Call 3. Brady Tuck Rule 2. Armando Gallaraga Losing Perfect Game 1. Me getting called out on this play in Cooperstown 2007

@mckaycoppins @dannyfunt Million $ question you refuse to answer- Do u think youd have placed a $4735 Pats SB bet at very end of the experiment if 1. U werent given a $10k bankroll to begin & instead had to bet $4375 of ur own money 2. U werent wrapping up a story about the dangers of gambling Yes or no?

@dannyfunt “For once”? I write in great detail in the story about how my behavior evolved and thinking became distorted over time. It’s a 13,000-word piece—I think it can stand on its own.

It's been one week since @TheAtlantic published my April cover story on America's sports betting boom. The reactions have been really interesting. A few observations below:

@Kalani_121 @TheBigBroTea @wheresdavie Ok fair. Angelina is the one that seems more sour grapes than Mike, and she was the one that said she’d cut him in preseason, so my comment was directed more toward her

@tlines2 @TheBigBroTea @wheresdavie Did you watch the exit interviews or just see tweets quoting them, bc I’m sure you wouldn’t think that if you watched them. Mike is clearly confused and even says he understands the move. And again ur talking abt ANGELINA not Mike who admits she and Christian weren’t friends

Davie from David vs Goliath weighs in on Christian vs Mike White 👀 #survivor50

@Kalani_121 @TheBigBroTea @wheresdavie Yeah but both have been acting holier than thou when Angelina was ready to cut Christian preseason

@tlines2 @TheBigBroTea @wheresdavie He’s talking about Mike not Angelina

@CollegeHoopsTIk x.com/JaredBerson/st…

I think even most Illinois fans might agree with this, but the eye test and KenPom are in tragic disagreement about Illinois’ efficiency on offense. Some crazy droughts

@RobertStock6 Yup agreed on that. Just disagree about the Ks looking as proof of Lucroy’s thought process himself x.com/tlines2/status…

So now youre working with what I’m saying! That there’s a threshold where NEVER becomes absurd and that’s clearly not the actual rule. So you’d also agree that anyone spouting “never” nonsense isn’t looking at things in a practical way, because clearly you should let a ball go by, even if it’s theoretically possible the umpire could call it a strike. And from there you’re just optimizing the thresholds for when you should take or not. Sound right?

It turns out the concept of Expected Value is lost on probably the majority of baseball fans. Players at a high level implicitly figure it out, regardless of if they understand it. But fans, who don’t have to “feel” the weight and difficulty of decisions, can persist in delusion for their whole life. Confidently passing on their flawed opinions to their kids, making them worse at baseball in the process. If you simply let kids play baseball they’d figure out a lot of this on their own, but instead a coach’s mantra of “never leave your fate in the hands of the umpire, never go down looking, etc” actively makes players worse as they try and progress to the next level. The players that can nod their head “yes coach” and do it the right way, or who are so talented they don’t have to worry about the correct approach because their skills will carry them further, are the ones who advance.

@RobertStock6 “Never” the way you are talking about it would mean swinging at literally every 2 strike pitch. Again, I agree that Perdomos was a great take. Simply arguing against the point of claiming to know Lucroy’s thought process as a player himself

@RobertStock6 I think the answer here is likely that Lucroy’s use of “never” in his rule was clearly an exaggeration, but his 2k thought process in the box likely WAS “too close to take” rather than “cut the zone into damage zones & zones I can’t handle” like typical non-2k approach

@PlusEVAnalytics @robpizzola @CirclesOffHQ The +EV crowd is part of a SHOCKINGLY low percentage of people who are able to have nuanced takes using objectivity instead of blindly choosing a side. Feels like the same part of the brain that allows you to understand the concept of expected value (in life, not betting)

So there are legitimately two sides to this. It's hard to call yourself a "degenerate" when you wagered zero dollars of your own money. It feels contrived and sensationalized, I agree with @robpizzola on this. Where I disagree with Rob and the @CirclesOffHQ crew are: regardless of his P&L or whose money it was, the psychological harm comes through in the narrative of how gambling impacted his relationships, his family and his mental health. The article had a real "descent into madness" vibe that I believe was genuine. Is "degenerate" a state of mind?

@Dutch_Oven45 @FullCountTommy

Actually Disney boy it is. It’s literally where it crosses the plate. You do realize that your lil K zone on tv doesn’t adjust batter to batter. Seeing that guys are different heights meaning that the strike zone becomes different. So there for when the ball crosses, which side angle shows at his knee- specifically the front knee with angle down to just below the back knee. That is therefore a strike. And strike zone is therefore the belt down to the knee. Again strike. And still out.

Literally none of this is true haha

@RobertStock6 Lucroy had 95 looking Ks post-2010 (start of Statcast data). He chased 1,348 out-of-zone pitches with 2 strikes in that time frame. That doesn’t indicate a 2 strike mentality of “to do DAMAGE at the plate, you have to let some pitcher’s pitches go so you can whack the other ones”

@RobertStock6 Using 127 looking Ks to prove his thought process is a false equivalency bc youd also have to consider how many times he chased w 2ks, which is likely in the 1000s. Does it still “prove” his 2k thought process was swinging selectively if he took 127 strikes but chased 1000 balls?

Is Jonathan wrong to say you never let a pitch that's too close go by? 100% yes. He rightfully didn't apply this logic to his own career and was very successful because of it. Here's the 127 times Jonathan struck out looking. He struck out looking because he was a GOOD hitter who understood that you can't cover every single pitch to every single location with 2K and have a chance for success. You would LIKE to be able to do that. But its not practical. Good hitter's strikeout looking because they understand the goal is to score runs, not "not strikeout". And to do DAMAGE at the plate, you have to let some pitches go so you can whack the other ones. A common theme I see in former players is as they become further distanced from playing, they "misremember" the things they actually did. Would 2014 Lucroy have said you NEVER take a pitch that's too close for strike 3? Well he did so 12 times that year (because he's a good MLB hitter). I can't know what he would have said then, but it would have been fresher in his mind that he DID take pitches too close to take sometimes. #results" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_searc…

@coach_aubin17 @dren_braves I’ve posted multiple screenshots showing Statcast uses Hawkeye for 3d pitch tracking lol. You just keep making stuff up & not showing any sources for your incorrect claims. Was cheering for USA so I’d have no reason to be biased towards it being a ball. It’s simply a fact 🫡

@tlines2 @dren_braves You can use parts of programs without using the full program. Statcast has been in play, doesn’t mean they had all the additions running too. And I get it you wanted the DR to win. Have a good one.

this is gonna have the cretins crawling out of their caves but i think that was a perfect example of ABS not being remotely accurate. the little circle appeared on the screen lower than the ball ever was. not as bad a call as it looked. (thread to follow)

@coach_aubin17 @dren_braves Yeah I do, what does that have to do with anything? They added Hawkeye prior to 2020 so now that is what they use for tracking & that is what is being used in the screenshot, clearly showing the pitch crossing the front of the plate roughly 4-5 inches below the bottom of the zone

@tlines2 @dren_braves You do know that Hawk-eye is an addition to the Statcast program right. Go read the entire page of what you shared it will tell you.

@coach_aubin17 @dren_braves

@coach_aubin17 @dren_braves You literally just said “you must be talking about Statcast, and they don’t use Hawkeye” which is incorrect. WBC game was in the Marlins stadium, which uses Hawkeye, and the 3d view screenshot I sent was directly from the Statcast website

@coach_aubin17 @dren_braves Source? Or are you just making stuff up

@tlines2 @dren_braves Well the WBC also didn’t use Hawk-eye. So the only system you could have been referring to was Statcast, which is hand entered.