One Hitter

Who had the best "One Hitter Quitter" in boxing history?

Sep 14, 2010 by SirVon1st | Posted in Boxing

Who was the best at knocking his opponent out cold with one solid blow?

Julian Jackson by FAR.

He was the furthest thing from an accumulation puncher. He would even land many punches on his opponents and with one shot they were asleep.

Almost every one of his KOs was a 1-punch KO.

How to Make a One-Hitter from a Pour Spout

Have a pour spout lying around? Can't find your pipe?

No 'Twelve Jewelz'? Really?

I would like to write about the upcoming Matt Hughes-B.J. Penn fight, what the Mets should look for in a new general manager, Jay Mariotti or Pitchfork’s top 200 tracks of the 1990s, or better yet why the best hip hop tracks that were left off the Pitchfork list should be played as Hughes destroys Penn while Omar Minaya’s successor sits in attendance and Mariotti sits drunk in a bar readying to file a column on the fight, which he isn’t watching. But since I wrote a lot about related topics last week, I’d feel a bit silly not commenting on this amusing development. For anyone who doesn’t care to click through, Baseball Reference made a slight adjustment to its WAR figures yesterday by updating the way it accounts for park effects. Before today, Yankee Stadium and Safeco Field were both treated as slightly friendly to mound twirlers. With 2010 data on the books, the one is treated as the best hitter’s park in the American League and the other as the best pitcher’s park. Consequently, Hernandez dropped in the vital Baseball Reference WAR standings by three-tenths of a win while Sabathia improved by nearly a whole win, taking over first place by himself. From IC headquarters in the wealthy liberal enclave of Hyde Park, you can hear the sound of Murray Chass and co. laughing, and fair enough. I’m reasonably friendly to advanced metrics, and even I get preposterous emails fervently denouncing me for not having noticed that Joe Chawchewer’s xFIP is in fact a tenth of a run better than Billy Ballscuffer’s and how could I possibly praise the latter as being better, etc. So I’m sure that Chass and co. get lots of email from louts citing arcane numbers as conclusive proof of absurd positions, and good on them for chortling, as this makes those people, who are irritating, look foolish. None of this of means that Baseball Reference did anything wrong, or that WAR has been exposed as a sham. Making a technical adjustment that anyone who understands the metric knew would have to be made is just nothing worthy of notice. The actual issue is the bad use of these metrics. This wouldn’t matter but for their increasing adoption by old media types, who in an apparent bid for credibility are increasingly citing them without understanding how they work or why they’re useful, and thus encouraging the sort of people who write long, boring emails to sportswriters about xFIP proving this or that without understanding the difference between a predictive and an evaluative metric, which further encourages the sportswriters and thus increases the amount of badness in the world in an unvirtuous circle. There is already enough research passed off as analysis, and analysis given where stories and images are needed. Let’s not have more. A sudden change in CC Sabathia’s WAR, so far as it chastens anyone who who would have used the number in the first place as proof of anything without knowing that it was derived from incomplete inputs, is a good thing. People don’t work on fancy statistics to create new and better versions of RBI and wins, numbers to be cited by way of appeal to authority, but to increase understanding. If a dramatic demonstration of why it’s silly to point to a single number as an argument without even knowing what it means will discourage people from doing so, it makes me happy. As to CC vs. King Felix, my opinion hasn’t changed. I still think Hernandez has been better, for reasons cited previously—more strikeouts and durability and fewer walks, hits and home runs, against tougher competition in front of a lesser defense, plus more of an ace aura. I might change my opinion, but it will be because of how the two pitch from here on out, not because it took Baseball Reference updating its park factors for me to notice that Safeco and Yankee Stadium are not, in fact, equally easy places to pitch.

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