"Baseball folks just do not seem to get that the people who get into baseball statistics often do it BECAUSE they love the game, because they want to understand it better, because they want to celebrate the greatest players, because they want a more specific answer than 'We had great team chemistry' or 'John just knows how to come through in the clutch.' "Long story short, some of the I-played-the-game, don't-question-my-authoritah baseball flat-earthers resurrected that rubric on the otherwise awesome MLB
Network over the weekend.
At this point, it's best just to hope as time rolls along, sabermetrics will just continue to slowly seep into the mainstream. Good friend Neil Acharya always makes the point that 20 years ago, you never heard on-base percentage cited on a baseball broadcast. Today, it is displayed every time someone comes up to bat. These things take time.
Related:
Straw Hats and Calculators (Joe Posnanski)
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1 comment:
Poz continually blows me away. In one blog post, he not only manages to give the strengths and weaknesses of both ways of looking at the world of baseball but comes off as reasonable while doing so, a feat few on either side have managed in this discussion. He really seems to get where both sides are coming from and make some logical points without reducing the discussion to insults and namecalling. I particularly liked his idea that both sides deeply care about the game, just in different ways; also, the non-stats guys are still using stats and the stats guys are still using some traditional approaches, so it doesn't necessarily have to be such a massive divide. Very impressive post from him.
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