how spies is stackin up

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mick D @ Apr 5 2009, 03:26 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>As for your win rate thought... it made me think. I, for example, am much more impressed with Britten's short but successful road racing history as opposed to Kawsaki's long but spotty record...

good point, however i don't think longevity should be overlooked. I'll level with you (and probably get ripped appart for it) but the source of my issue is when i read something a while ago that basically insinuated that Bayliss was the best superbike rider of all time based on having a better 'strike rate' than fogarty. I thought that was rediculous because the statistics were produced to overlook longevity and to circumnavigate the fact that Fogarty ultimately achieved more on a superbike than Troy did.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ Apr 5 2009, 02:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>I thought that was rediculous because the statistics were produced to overlook longevity and to circumnavigate the fact that Fogarty ultimately achieved more on a superbike than Troy did.
Fair point, it is hard to go past fogerty's achievements, and in fogerty v bayliss comparisons people's views do seem to be coloured by the perceived differences in personality between the two.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ Apr 5 2009, 09:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>the source of my issue is when i read something a while ago that basically insinuated that Bayliss was the best superbike rider of all time based on having a better 'strike rate' than fogarty. I thought that was rediculous because the statistics were produced to overlook longevity and to circumnavigate the fact that Fogarty ultimately achieved more on a superbike than Troy did.
Like all things we should judge on a case to case basis...

Can Spies just drop the "we" and "I" stuff. He is singularly on the bike during the race. The team is in the garage. On the track it is him alone doing everything therefore "I" and after the race it is them as a team and therefore "we". I find that so annoying. He isn't the only one that does this. WTF does he think he is saying?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ Apr 5 2009, 09:57 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>good point, however i don't think longevity should be overlooked. I'll level with you (and probably get ripped appart for it) but the source of my issue is when i read something a while ago that basically insinuated that Bayliss was the best superbike rider of all time based on having a better 'strike rate' than fogarty. I thought that was rediculous because the statistics were produced to overlook longevity and to circumnavigate the fact that Fogarty ultimately achieved more on a superbike than Troy did.Fogarty won what, 7 more races and one more championship with an extra 50-odd races in SBK? Throw in an extra 15 podiums or so too. Those are very marginally superior career achievements relative to Bayliss, who spent 3 years of the heart of his career contesting a different, superior series.

If you spend significantly less time in the series, challenge yourself by taking on greater challenges, and still end up pretty close to dead-even in career stats, you're the better rider in that series. You can argue that Bayliss spent a larger proportion of his career on winning machinery, but to place so much emphasis on a minor difference in career numbers that exists only because Bayliss, unlike Fogarty, elected to test himself on a more challenging stage, is misleading at best.

Rate statistics here don't "overlook" longevity, they illustrate just how much extra longevity Fogarty needed to accomplish marginally more on track.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mattsteg @ Apr 5 2009, 11:24 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Fogarty won what, 7 more races and one more championship with an extra 50-odd races in SBK? Throw in an extra 15 podiums or so too. Those are very marginally superior career achievements relative to Bayliss, who spent 3 years of the heart of his career contesting a different, superior series.

If you spend significantly less time in the series, challenge yourself by taking on greater challenges, and still end up pretty close to dead-even in career stats, you're the better rider in that series. You can argue that Bayliss spent a larger proportion of his career on winning machinery, but to place so much emphasis on a minor difference in career numbers that exists only because Bayliss, unlike Fogarty, elected to test himself on a more challenging stage, is misleading at best.

Rate statistics here don't "overlook" longevity, they illustrate just how much extra longevity Fogarty needed to accomplish marginally more on track.

You see i disagree. Bayliss' willingness to test himself in a superior series is definitely to his credit, but i don't think an attempt at GP racing makes him a better superbike rider at all.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ Apr 6 2009, 02:33 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>You see i disagree. Bayliss' willingness to test himself in a superior series is definitely to his credit, but i don't think an attempt at GP racing makes him a better superbike rider at all.I don't think it makes him a better one, but it doesn't make him a worse one. The question posed is who was a better superbike rider, not who won the most races or most championships or who was the best that never moved up to GPs. Yes, a certain standard needs to be met for tenure in the series and overall accomplishment on a superbike, but the statistical portion of the discussion can hardly end there, particularly when their career totals are so close. Both easily meet the career accomplishment standard. It's ridiculous to hold Bayliss' leaving a lower series for 3 seasons in the prime of his career against him when he was maybe one good season from matching or besting Fogarty's career numbers in the series, other than starts.

When you're discussing the best rider in a series that isn't the pinnacle of racing, you can't weigh tenure so heavily. It's not like we're talking about someone like, for example, Colin Edwards here who had a nice run for a while in superbikes, but left and stayed away.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mattsteg @ Apr 6 2009, 01:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>I don't think it makes him a better one, but it doesn't make him a worse one. The question posed is who was a better superbike rider, not who won the most races or most championships or who was the best that never moved up to GPs. Yes, a certain standard needs to be met for tenure in the series and overall accomplishment on a superbike, but the statistical portion of the discussion can hardly end there, particularly when their career totals are so close. Both easily meet the career accomplishment standard. It's ridiculous to hold Bayliss' leaving a lower series for 3 seasons in the prime of his career against him when he was maybe one good season from matching or besting Fogarty's career numbers in the series, other than starts.

When you're discussing the best rider in a series that isn't the pinnacle of racing, you can't weigh tenure so heavily. It's not like we're talking about someone like, for example, Colin Edwards here who had a nice run for a while in superbikes, but left and stayed away.

Thats fair, i just don't agree

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (gsfan @ Apr 5 2009, 10:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Can Spies just drop the "we" and "I" stuff. He is singularly on the bike during the race. The team is in the garage. On the track it is him alone doing everything therefore "I" and after the race it is them as a team and therefore "we". I find that so annoying. He isn't the only one that does this. WTF does he think he is saying?

I hear ya gsfan, bugs the hell out of me too, but it's something nearly all riders do during post race interviews. I would suspect it is a way to give credit to the team when things go right and maybe point blame to the team when things go wrong. Maybe Spies should start talking about himself in the 3rd person? Then everyone would think he was a nutter.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ Apr 6 2009, 09:33 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Thats fair, i just don't agree
I'll add some more: as far as "longevity" is concerned, Bayliss' championships spanned 7 years and Fogarty's spanned 5. Throw in another year of Fogarty as a championship contender the previous year, and Bayliss still remained a championship contender across a longer span of time than Fogarty did. On the flip side, Fogarty spent some time on uncompetitive rides, inflating his number of starts relative to wins/podiums/etc. If rate stats mislead in this case, it's more down to that than any anti-longetivity bias as Bayliss' longetivity as a world class rider was as good as or better than Fogarty's. Take away the first bit of Fogarty's superbike career and their rate stats are probably fairly similar, maybe even with a slight edge to Fogarty. Instead of going off on a quixotic rant against rate stats in general, why not dig in a bit an see why they might mislead in this case? There are so many arguments to make here, yet you insist on making the wrong one, the one that's most easily countered leaving you with nothing except the lame "going to GP doesn't make him a better SBK rider" whine.

If you rephrase the question to "most accomplished superbike rider" it's easy enough to pick Fogarty based on his slightly higher totals, but for "best" rider that just doesn't cut it. You can certainly make arguments each way, but whining about rate stats giving one rider an unfair advantage over another isn't the way to go. It's easy enough to break down why Bayliss' "hit rate" is better - he didn't spend any time on anything other than a factory ducati and only had a (fairly successful) partial season initiation before becoming a championship contender.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mattsteg @ Apr 6 2009, 04:51 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>I'll add some more: as far as "longevity" is concerned, Bayliss' championships spanned 7 years and Fogarty's spanned 5. Throw in another year of Fogarty as a championship contender the previous year, and Bayliss still remained a championship contender across a longer span of time than Fogarty did. On the flip side, Fogarty spent some time on uncompetitive rides, inflating his number of starts relative to wins/podiums/etc. If rate stats mislead in this case, it's more down to that than any anti-longetivity bias as Bayliss' longetivity as a world class rider was as good as or better than Fogarty's. Take away the first bit of Fogarty's superbike career and their rate stats are probably fairly similar, maybe even with a slight edge to Fogarty. Instead of going off on a quixotic rant against rate stats in general, why not dig in a bit an see why they might mislead in this case? There are so many arguments to make here, yet you insist on making the wrong one, the one that's most easily countered leaving you with nothing except the lame "going to GP doesn't make him a better SBK rider" whine.

If you rephrase the question to "most accomplished superbike rider" it's easy enough to pick Fogarty based on his slightly higher totals, but for "best" rider that just doesn't cut it. You can certainly make arguments each way, but whining about rate stats giving one rider an unfair advantage over another isn't the way to go. It's easy enough to break down why Bayliss' "hit rate" is better - he didn't spend any time on anything other than a factory ducati and only had a (fairly successful) partial season initiation before becoming a championship contender.

Good post, i'm glad you were prepared to make the effort to go into a deeper analysis of the statistics before i was, saving me the effort. However, i don't think rate stats give a rider an unfair advantage. My point was that they overlook the totals which i feel are significant, which i think is where are points of view mainly differ. Yes rate stats may lead us to speculate that Troy 'could' have been as great as Foggy on a superbike, but he wasn't. That was my point about going to GP not making him a better superbike rider, yes he moved on to a higher level of competition and i admire that and think it is to his credit but it does not alter his achievements in the previous class. To put it another way, Lukas Pesek moved into 250GP last year while Talma stayed back to defend his title. i would not deduce from this that Pesek was a better 125 rider because he went on to compete at a higher level.