Of course. I thought that was implied. I think the point I am trying to make Jim, is that too often stats become redundant and pedantic. Hence my reference to those who rely SOLEY on stats.  Don't get me wrong. I embrace numbers. When they are applied correctly and used in context and  perspective.

We can talk and write all day long about Zito. Pecotas, Fips, BAA and all kinds of stuff to quantify and qualify players. Great. Thousands and thousands of words, and I don't know how many hundreds of hours building and justifying mathematical models to measure pitching performance and prognosticate future pitching results.

And in the case of Zito, a lot of effort was expended deconstructing these very same models to explain something that a baseball guy could tell you after watching him pitch for 5 minutes. I mean, I think its nice that somebody went to the trouble to quantify it mathematically, but that somebody was just telling the world something that has been understood by MLB folks since his rookie year.  

In a sentence. Zito dominates because he throws pitches that nobody else does, and those types of pitches induce weak suck pop ups mixed in with just enough fastball to break-down hitters' timing.

This is not rocket science. It does not even require great skill in evaluating physical talent. It is simply apparent to anybody who pays attention to what they're watching. You don't need a single solitary stat to tell you that he can be a very dominant pitcher when he throws his very dominant pitch.  Watching opposing hitters flail at Zito pitches illustrates this quite nicely.

And for what its worth, imho, metrics proponents have not made as much progress as they should because of the aura of intellecutal superiority that some, though not all, tend to bring to any discussion with the baseball establishment. A lot of this attitude I believe is simply a defense mechanism. Understandable since many baseball guys tend to be snobbish and just as defensive in their resistance to new knowledge or a new and different way of evaluating talent and quanitifying worth.

Billy Beane has been extremely successful, not because he is a metrics guy or uses numbers to find contract bargains.  That is only part of it.  Billy Beane was a damn good athelete, played the game at the MLB level, and knows what it is like to be a player, and a numbers guy.  In other words in addition to knowing how to use numbers, he knows exactly what he is looking at on the field.  He uses both disciplines and the knowledge base that both provide.  And that gives him a tremendous advantage over others in the MLB baseball establishment

What he would have done had he been the Giants GM over the years is something that would have been extremely revolutionary I think.

1st person: " How did your hearing test go?"
2nd person: "There once was a man from Nantucket, who had big ears and wished for an even bigger nose, and an even bigger dick."

Its what happens when you don't get out of the house very often. Kind of like Napoleon Dynamite, but more nerdy.