omaha_red wrote:exactly.. i really doubt that when Mo is looking at a player he says "but he has a WARP3:10.2"
Maybe not WARP3, but I guarantee he takes sophisticated statistical analysis heavily into consideration.
The problem with stats is when people use them incorrectly. You should use stats to measure things you aren't refined enough of an evaluator to see and also to verify what you see. "WATCHING A GAME" to quote AWvsCB, is well and good but your eyes can deceive you. Plus you a lot of the time won't know what to look for because you aren't a refined enough evaluator.
You don't need to look at Albert's awesome eqa to know that he's a good hitter. You look at basically any hitting stat and it's going to tell you he's a good hitter. Sabermetrics in their intended form are just a scientific exercise in trying to find the best, most flawlessly unbiased and accurate way to evaluate players. Where people like you get turned off is when stat wonks shove it down your throat saying batting average isn't a good stat. Or just watching a game isn't good enough. They try to make you feel like you aren't a good baseball fan and don't know anything about the game. Then they carry their crosses for their favorite stats and condescend everyone trying to make themselves feel smarter. All of a sudden you're wondering what in the hell happened to just having fun watching a ball game.
Well here's the thing. Batting average is a pretty good stat if it's all you have to work with. When compared to obp or even better, eqa, it comes off as pretty rudimentary and not a very good way to evaluate a hitter because it has some very basic flaws. If you care enough to get past the poor attitudes of a lot of your run of the mill message board stat heads, you can discover that there is merit to what they are saying. Not everybody cares enough though. Some people just want to enjoy watching the game, seeing their team win and rooting for guys they want to like without having to pour over a bunch of complicated math to decide whether or not it's ok to like the player.
AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:Meh. They're alright and they have their place. But to argue based solely on stats, to me at least, is silly because you can learn a lot more about a player by WATCHING A GAME than LOOKING AT A BOX SCORE.
The best example of this, I think, is the entire notion of "protection" in a lineup. I find it hard to believe that haltz, jim, steve, etc. have greater knowledge about baseball than people that have watched thousands of games like Tony LaRussa, Joe Torre and, well, almost every manager in baseball. Although they have sabermetrics on their side, and I'm sure TLR has seen them since he is largely a stats manager, it just doesn't seem that they are correct. And, I'll go to my grave believing Albert Pujols would be a better hitter with Babe Ruth (in his prime) batting behind him than Ryan Ludwick.
Sure, Tony LaRussa and Joe Torre can learn a lot about a game by watching. A lot more than me, Haltz, Jim, Steve and also YOU.
When you don't have decades and decades of intimate involvement with every facet of baseball, the best way to know what the hell you're talking about is to embrace unbiased and accurate statistical analysis. Theo Epstein doesn't have those guys experience. Either does a guy like Josh Byrnes and Mark Shapiro. They embrace sabermetrics and have built some of the most successful systems in baseball. You can believe whatever you want, but don't try to confuse your ignorance of the subject with sabermetrics not being an amazing tool to evaluate the game of baseball with. Just because you don't care to put forth the effort to learn it doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means you don't care; that's all. There's nothing wrong with that. You probably have better things to do anyway than try to understand a stat that you need a doctorate degree in advanced math to master.
