/facepalm

It’s all Matt Cain’s fault.

14-8 this year.

LEARNED HOW TO WIN THEN FORGOT AGAIN!

Not as good as Brett Tomko!

it just complicates things for people who don’t understand them.

“Baseball shouldn’t be all about statistics,” said Peters, adding sabermetrics “complicates things. You don’t need to look at those statistics to determine how good a pitcher is. It’s why people didn’t vote for Carpenter. They have a formula that shows Vazquez is better than Carpenter, and that’s ridiculous. You can slant statistics any way you want. It makes the game more impersonal.”

http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/tipsheet/tipsheet/2009/11/revenge-of-the-nerds-cya-voting-ruined/

Perhaps someday baseball games will be played in a computer, not on the field. Statistical formulas will determine outcomes, not actual action.

So, how’s everyone’s Baseball Mogul team doing?

Right. They are getting louder because they know they are losing.

Well, if a stat is being used by someone who doesn’t understand baseball or the stat very well, it certainly could (though I doubt that’s the case here). Stats are like words; they need context and intelligent interpretation to say anything.

I think those that value and understand the statistical approach to looking at baseball are concerned about this as well, shanghijim, in that they are always looking to improve the way statistics are recorded to get the most informative data. If there’s a problem with a set of stats, people will look for a way to improve the stats to get a better record of what a player’s performance actually means.

The staunch “traditionalists” don’t have this concern. “If wins were good enough 100 years ago, they’re still good enough now!” went the cry of the outraged this year. These people use stats as well, but they have little interest in ever re-examining what those stats actually tell us. With the stats types, testing ideas to try and disprove the current thinking—including their own—is the name of the game.

Those that value the advanced statistics do so because they think they’re the most informative, rather than having attachment to them because of history or ease of use. If existing advanced stats can be improved (as people are always working on doing), the stats types would adopt the new ones immediately. That’s the key difference, I think, between scientific thinking and non-scientific thinking, in baseball and in other aspects of life.