Sabermetrics: Prepare to be destroyed

[Sammy Sofa]

Hey, who knows? Maybe there's a whole chapter about #4 hitters bunting and how that's super awesome.

[imb]

Perhaps reading something with an Slightly open mind might be better than simply making fun of something without even knowing anything about it. Its ridiculous to completely discredit something without even reading it.

 

Pretend this part was written by FJM to Joe Morgan

[davearm2]

Because it's obvious this book is going to be made up mostly of stupid meatball garbage just from the press release alone, so it would be a waste of time for anyone with any intelligence to read it. You can find endless variations of the same reactionary anti-sabrermetric crap on blogs and message board and sports media sites all over the internet. If you want to be one those guys, great, have fun. It should be exceedingly obvious you're in a tiny, tiny minority here, and it's refuge from that type of nonsense that was one of the main reasons this place was created and took off, so don't play the poor, put upon martyr when you support books like this.

I'm not supporting anything.

 

I'm laughing at all of the colossal leaps to judgement going on here.

 

Heck one person intimated that this book seeks to disprove sabermetrics because one time, a bird got hit with a baseball.

 

Seriously? That's what you expect this book is about?

 

Even if unintentional, it still propagates ignorance.

So this book, which you've never read, propagates ignorance.

 

That is quite possibly the most hilarious example of unintended irony ever.

[mike2482]

I dont need to read a book about the glory of white power to know that it is racist, so I dont need to read this book to know what it is about. It has nothing to do with group think, it's just my personal opinion.

[imb]

player to player, i respect what davearm does here

 

he effectively shits the shitters

Edited March 12, 2011 by Bunts Lick Butts

[USSoccer]

I dont need to read a book about the glory of white power to know that it is racist, so I dont need to read this book to know what it is about. It has nothing to do with group think, it's just my personal opinion.

 

We've gotten to you

[TruffleShuffle]

So this book, which you've never read, propagates ignorance.

 

That is quite possibly the most hilarious example of unintended irony ever.

 

no i think that was when you were saying that players should practice bunting even though they'll never bunt in live game situations.

[davearm2]

Instead you're engaging in the mindless, reflexive groupthink that says, "anything even vaguely anti-sabermetric must automatically be a big huge pile of rubbish that deserves unbridled scorn".

 

I assume it's not "vaguely anti-sabermetric;" I assume it's obviously anti-sabermetric. I assume it's railing sabermetrics through the hoary old cliche of "stat geeks" and how they don't understand the REAL GAME, MAN.

Fixed

[Sammy Sofa]

Tell us what you think the book is about.

 

Tell us why you think everything linked and quoted about this book is made up.

 

Tell us why you post such stupid, stupid things.

[davearm2]

Tell us what you think the book is about.

 

Tell us why you think everything linked and quoted about this book is made up.

 

Tell us why you post such stupid, stupid things.

I haven't read the book, but what I'm getting is that it's about looking at the game with a broader perspective than sabermetrics offers.

 

There's undoubtedly a growing populous that thinks everything you would ever need to know about a player/team/league etc can be looked up and analyzed on your laptop, and I suspect this book takes issue with that general perspective, and exposes its shortcomings.

 

Now if you think I'm sypathetic to that viewpoint, you'd be right. I think that there's great value in sabermetrics, but that its limitations have largely come to be obscured and/or ignored.

 

Does that makes me some old fuddy-duddy "baseball purist" idiot whack job, or just a baseball fan with a different perspective? Your call.

[Sammy Sofa]

Heh, just what I was hoping for.

 

Thanks, Buzz.

[Sammy Sofa]

Please note that every "problem" he just listed is made up (and he came THIS close to ye olde "mom's basement") and just highlights how if the book is a "response" to Moneyball (as its own authors publisher and author are explicitly claiming) then it completely misunderstands almost every single critical theory and point presented.

[MWV]

I haven't read the book, but what I'm getting is that it's about looking at the game with a broader perspective than sabermetrics offers.

That may be the case, however the book's authors make the further claim that their perspective undermines that of "Moneyball". One needn't read their book (much less even draw up a simple Venn diagram) to identify this argument as specious.

[Tarver]

Because it's obvious this book is going to be made up mostly of stupid meatball garbage just from the press release alone, so it would be a waste of time for anyone with any intelligence to read it. You can find endless variations of the same reactionary anti-sabrermetric crap on blogs and message board and sports media sites all over the internet. If you want to be one those guys, great, have fun. It should be exceedingly obvious you're in a tiny, tiny minority here, and it's refuge from that type of nonsense that was one of the main reasons this place was created and took off, so don't play the poor, put upon martyr when you support books like this.

I'm not supporting anything.

 

I'm laughing at all of the colossal leaps to judgement going on here.

 

Heck one person intimated that this book seeks to disprove sabermetrics because one time, a bird got hit with a baseball.

 

Seriously? That's what you expect this book is about?

 

Even if unintentional, it still propagates ignorance.

So this book, which you've never read, propagates ignorance.

 

That is quite possibly the most hilarious example of unintended irony ever.

 

Stick around.

 

I should've qualified my comment, but the point stands.

[Sammy Sofa]

There's undoubtedly a growing populous that thinks everything you would ever need to know about a player/team/league etc can be looked up and analyzed on your laptop, and I suspect this book takes issue with that general perspective, and exposes its shortcomings.

 

I'm not defending this fictional nerd who is only a fan of stats, but I'm curious as to what critical information regarding a player/team/league someone with a computer and an internet connection couldn't find.

[Sammy Sofa]

I'd also like to see examples of people claiming that sabermetric analysis is perfect and doesn't have any limitations.

[davearm2]

the book's authors make the further claim that their perspective undermines that of "Moneyball".

If they have made that claim, I haven't seen it.

 

What I've seen is, "the authors acknowledge some merit to the Moneyball approach but, drawing on tales from baseball’s rich history, also identify major flaws".

 

I surely hope nobody here would dispute that sabermetrics has flaws. "Major" is obviously a subjective term.

[Sammy Sofa]

Yes, "major flaws" derived from watching a single season of one team.

 

And one of their key points is how a ball hit a bird.

 

THEY ARE EMPHASIZING THESE THINGS THEMSELVES.

[Guest]

Heck one person intimated that this book seeks to disprove sabermetrics because one time, a bird got hit with a baseball.

 

Seriously? That's what you expect this book is about?

The authors watched all 162 Red Sox games in 2009, and catalog the crazy events (such as a game turning on a ball striking a pigeon in the outfield) that enrich baseball and defeat the best-laid plans of sabermetricians.

[Sammy Sofa]

the book's authors make the further claim that their perspective undermines that of "Moneyball".

If they have made that claim, I haven't seen it.

 

What I've seen is, "the authors acknowledge some merit to the Moneyball approach but, drawing on tales from baseball’s rich history, also identify major flaws".

 

I surely hope nobody here would dispute that sabermetrics has flaws. "Major" is obviously a subjective term.

 

You're trying to paint the authors of being far too reasonable. You're also assuming that they understand Moneyball. They don't.

 

The Beauty of Short Hops demonstrates that the Moneyball approach is doubly doomed. First, it fails on its own terms: it cannot make baseball a predictable game wholly understandable in numerical terms.

 

I really don't give a [expletive] what they concede has "merit" because they clearly don't understand it in the first place.

[Sammy Sofa]

This part cracks me up:

 

The Beauty of Short Hops argues that excessive attention to statistics sucks the life out of the sport, obscuring the great, odd, and spontaneous occurrences that make baseball compelling.

 

Yes, the nerds are so busy getting off on numbers that somehow nobody noticed that a [expletive] baseball hit a bird.

 

And they do realize that so many more "odd and great" occurrences than ever before have been realized and we now look out for BECAUSE of sabermetrics, right? We're not missing [expletive] like balls hitting birds or people stealing home or hitting a ton of home runs because of Moneyball. What the [expletive] is being "obscured" because of sabermetrics?

[davearm2]

Yes, "major flaws" derived from watching a single season of one team.

 

And one of their key points is how a ball hit a bird.

 

THEY ARE EMPHASIZING THESE THINGS THEMSELVES.

You cannot truly be this dumb.

 

Clearly the conclusions reached in the book go beyond watching a single season of one team. And the whole bird thing is obviously just a colorful anecdote, and not some "key point".

 

Seriously, you're embarrassing yourself now.

[Sammy Sofa]

How do you know all of these things and you haven't even read the book?

 

MASTER OF LIES.

[davearm2]

Heck one person intimated that this book seeks to disprove sabermetrics because one time, a bird got hit with a baseball.

 

Seriously? That's what you expect this book is about?

The authors watched all 162 Red Sox games in 2009, and catalog the crazy events (such as a game turning on a ball striking a pigeon in the outfield) that enrich baseball and defeat the best-laid plans of sabermetricians.

I asked a question above.

 

From your response I am left to conclude that, yes, you do think this book is about the time a bird got hit with a baseball, and how and monumental and enlightening that moment was.

[Sammy Sofa]

You're truly the bunt-loving fella you seem to desperately want to to be seen as if you honestly cannot see how they're emphasizing the bird story (and similar "crazy events") because they think it exposes a major flaw with sabermetrics. According to them things like the bird incident "defeat the best-laid plans of sabermetricians."