Normally I don't waste my time with an RG column, but I did peruse his latest "work".
Sir Richard's latest attack is all over the place - frequently, it is difficult to see how one paragraph relates to the next. Worse, RG displays a superficial understanding of SABR, sabermetrics (which he doesn't mention by name) and Bill James.
"The saviour of small-market budgets and the bane of scouting has been SABR, this statistical society of baseball researchers, with clearly defined formulas for judging offensive players and projecting future contributions."
SABR is not a statistical society; it's a research society. A lot of the research it does is historical (not statistical) in nature, along the lines of a humanities discipline. The above paragraph makes it sound as if SABR is all about producing Baseball Prospectus-like projections for the upcoming season. This is not true: the focus of the organisation is and has always been research of baseball's past.
"There are key formulas, which have in common power stats and on-base percentage, underplaying batting average and speed. The first such formula, devised by stats guru Bill James in the early '80s, uses the mathematical sentence: Runs = (hits + walks) x (total bases) divided by (at-bats + walks). He called it Runs Created. There are others."
First, calling Bill James a stats guru is like calling Leonardo Da Vinci a designer of helicopters. James was and is interested in baseball truth. Sometimes he used statistical analysis to aid in the search for that truth, other times he's interested in a particular player or time in baseball's past (I heartily recommend his 3 "Baseball Books" of the early '90s).
Second, Bill James' Basic Runs Created Formula (which RG refers to above, but not by name) wasn't the first attempt to estimate run scoring based on various offensive elements.
Third, run estimation formulas do not "underplay" batting average and speed. The term "underplay" implies that the formulas have a bias against these things. Nothing could be further from the truth: run estimation formulas have always been about developing a more accurate picture of the way offence in baseball actually works.
"Clearly, the easiest positive statistic for mediocre hitters, one that requires keeping the bat glued to your shoulder, instead of the traditional hand-eye induced ball-whacking (which is far more exciting), is the ability to draw walks."
Here RG lapses into superficial moral judgements. Drawing walks is what mediocre hitters do, you see. Pray tell, RG, how can big league hitters draw walks if big league pitchers throw them strikes? The best hitters in baseball are, by and large, the ones that draw the most walks. Jason Giambi, Carlos Delgado, Barry Bonds, Frank Thomas... are these the ones that RG considers mediocre? The main reason these hitters draw a lot of walks is because pitchers are not always willing to challenge them by throwing the ball in the strike-zone and they aren't stupid enough to swing at pitches outside their hitting zone. Regardless of how it fits into someone's moral universe, a walk is worth what it is worth.
Then, as if to undercut his own diatribe, RG switches gears and notes that Jays pitchers Aquilino Lopez and Trever Miller were acquired based on "computer-scouting". The two best relief pitchers the Jays have had this year were acquired on the cheap from the pool of freely-available talent. That's a bad thing?
After that there are the predictable pot shots about young baseball fans getting more pleasure out of studying boxscores than going to a game, and about sabermetricians being unable to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of a baseball game.
One wonders how many members of the SABR "cult" RG actually spoke to before he decided they were humourless and intolerant.
Sir Richard's latest attack is all over the place - frequently, it is difficult to see how one paragraph relates to the next. Worse, RG displays a superficial understanding of SABR, sabermetrics (which he doesn't mention by name) and Bill James.
"The saviour of small-market budgets and the bane of scouting has been SABR, this statistical society of baseball researchers, with clearly defined formulas for judging offensive players and projecting future contributions."
SABR is not a statistical society; it's a research society. A lot of the research it does is historical (not statistical) in nature, along the lines of a humanities discipline. The above paragraph makes it sound as if SABR is all about producing Baseball Prospectus-like projections for the upcoming season. This is not true: the focus of the organisation is and has always been research of baseball's past.
"There are key formulas, which have in common power stats and on-base percentage, underplaying batting average and speed. The first such formula, devised by stats guru Bill James in the early '80s, uses the mathematical sentence: Runs = (hits + walks) x (total bases) divided by (at-bats + walks). He called it Runs Created. There are others."
First, calling Bill James a stats guru is like calling Leonardo Da Vinci a designer of helicopters. James was and is interested in baseball truth. Sometimes he used statistical analysis to aid in the search for that truth, other times he's interested in a particular player or time in baseball's past (I heartily recommend his 3 "Baseball Books" of the early '90s).
Second, Bill James' Basic Runs Created Formula (which RG refers to above, but not by name) wasn't the first attempt to estimate run scoring based on various offensive elements.
Third, run estimation formulas do not "underplay" batting average and speed. The term "underplay" implies that the formulas have a bias against these things. Nothing could be further from the truth: run estimation formulas have always been about developing a more accurate picture of the way offence in baseball actually works.
"Clearly, the easiest positive statistic for mediocre hitters, one that requires keeping the bat glued to your shoulder, instead of the traditional hand-eye induced ball-whacking (which is far more exciting), is the ability to draw walks."
Here RG lapses into superficial moral judgements. Drawing walks is what mediocre hitters do, you see. Pray tell, RG, how can big league hitters draw walks if big league pitchers throw them strikes? The best hitters in baseball are, by and large, the ones that draw the most walks. Jason Giambi, Carlos Delgado, Barry Bonds, Frank Thomas... are these the ones that RG considers mediocre? The main reason these hitters draw a lot of walks is because pitchers are not always willing to challenge them by throwing the ball in the strike-zone and they aren't stupid enough to swing at pitches outside their hitting zone. Regardless of how it fits into someone's moral universe, a walk is worth what it is worth.
Then, as if to undercut his own diatribe, RG switches gears and notes that Jays pitchers Aquilino Lopez and Trever Miller were acquired based on "computer-scouting". The two best relief pitchers the Jays have had this year were acquired on the cheap from the pool of freely-available talent. That's a bad thing?
After that there are the predictable pot shots about young baseball fans getting more pleasure out of studying boxscores than going to a game, and about sabermetricians being unable to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of a baseball game.
One wonders how many members of the SABR "cult" RG actually spoke to before he decided they were humourless and intolerant.
