How Many Sports Blogs Have You Read That Contain a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Excerpt?

For the longest time, baseball players were judged mostly by how they seemed to perform on the field to the trained eye. What constituted a person having a trained eye was never made clear. It was clear, however, that in order to have an informed opinion , one must have had to have played the game at a high level at some point in his life. Or so the experts would have had us believe. Then really intelligent baseball fans came along who'd never really played the game above little league and decided that they could be just as knowledgeable as the "experts." Since they didn't have a "trained eye" they decided that they'd develop an objective way to judge players. Sabremetrics were born.

The old school baseball people shunned the stats people saying that stats didn't tell the whole story. They were right. The sabremetricicans, angered by this, argued that if stats didn't tell the whole story they certainly could tell most of it. They were right. The stats people gained so much steam over the past ten years that now they've become exactly what they hated: pompous. If you don't follow their way of looking at baseball, your opinion holds no value to them.

Of course, as most of these things go, the trith is somewhere in the middle. Stats are extremely helpful, but they don't tell the whole story. They don't take human nature into account. It's like the difference between Sherlock Hokmes and real life. I'll refer you to this excerpt from The Red Headed League".

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“Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.

“How, in the name of good fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?” he asked. “How did you know, for example, that I did manual labour. It's as true as gospel, for I began as a ship's carpenter.”

“Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger than your left. You have worked with it, and the muscles are more developed.”

“Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?”

“I won't insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that, especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use an arc and compass breastpin.”

“Ah, of course, I forgot that. But the writing?”

“What else can be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for five inches, and the left one with the smooth patch near the elbow where you rest it upon the desk.”

“Well, but China?”

“The fish which you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in China....

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Now, that might seem clear cut in a Holmesian universe, but not in real life. An illness can cause swelling in one hand. A breastpin can be picked up from anywhere, especially if it seems aginst the strict rules of an order the man's supposed to be a part of. And so on. While chances are that Holmes and the stats are right, there is room for human nature.

The stats guys loved Javy Vasquez. Turns out, he can't handle the pressure of a big city. What predicts that? Aside from the fact that he failed there before, but that's an argument an old schooler would make. Additionally, the stats love J.D. Drew. Always have. Go find out what any Red Sox fan thinks of him. Better yet, find out what Yankees and Rays fans think of him.

Still, there's room for some fantastic stats. Things that could greatly open up any person's understanding of baseball. The problem is, I don't want to have to do a research paper to understand any opf them. BABIP, for example, sounds like it could be worthwhile to know. It stands for batting average of balls in play, how a person fairs when he makes contact. Great, but what's good? I mean, what's an average BABIP? What's a good one? A great one? A bad one? These things are too difficult to find. They should be simplified. Any sit dedicated to the new era stats should give these vital pieces of information when you click on any stat:

1.) What the acronym stands for.

2.) What the stat means.

3.) Why it's relevant.

4.) What's an average number.

5.) What's good (Number and player example)

6.) What's bad (Number and player example).

Is that really too much to ask for?

Still, some stats seem unreliable to me. For example, FIP (Fielder Independent Pitching or anything the pitcher controls) is the current fad among stat heads on how to evaluate pitchers. There are some pitchers, though, that pitch to contact. About five years ago, Chien Ming Wang started a three year stretch where he was lights out for the Yankees. He'd a low ERA and WHI. Yet he didn't strike out or walk many batters or give up many home runs. Almost everything he did was dependant on his fielders So how could you get a reliable FIP with him?The few days he got lit up, he didn't have command so he walked batters and gave up home runs. That's skew his numbers because he didn't have many otherwise.

Now, the stats people want to get rid of RBIs. Rid of them. Entirely. They claim RBIs are a product of your lineup and supporting cast so are mostly luck and unreliable as an objective stat. Because, you know, God forbid you have a stat that relies on your team helping you out in a team game. So this baffled me. The argument I come down to is:

If you have three hitters who each came up with a runner on third and less than two out thirty times in a season and each consistency came up with the same result: Player A hit a sacrifice fly every time, Player B struck out every time, and Player C walked every time and each player had the exact same stats as one another for the rest of the year, which player would you want on your team? Now, if you look solely at the the "important" stats, Players A and B have the same OBP,, while Player C would have the highest OBP. Player A's BABIP would be significantly lower than the other players (whose would be identical.) Player A would obviously have the most RBIs, but they don't matter. Players A and C would have a higher BA than Player B, but BA doesn't matter either. So what stat, exactly would lead you to pick Player A over the other two? There can be no stat developed that takes RBIs into account, because why would they? They don't matter. Of course, the stats people will develop a new stat that covertly counts RBIs without admitting it and try to push that on everyone.

Look, the some of the best stats are OBP and Slugging. Niether of which were created by the sbremetricians, though they'd like you to believe otherwise. Those stats were brought to the mainstream by them, not created by them. This entry was not meant, at all, to bash the stats. It's just that I've gotten annoyed by the arrogance of stats people and their intolerance of anyone who doesn't totally submit to their way of thinking.

Peace.