When did the lightbulb turn on for you?

[davell]

Involving advanced stats? With certain threads going on here right now, it made me remember when I thought like Dusty Baker as well. For me, I remember being excited when we traded for Juan Pierre. I posted on a different site back, but tried reading stuff here, mainly because this board was much bigger and never missed anything breaking. But I remember thinking all these stats are stupid and me eyes tell me what's needed. When we traded for Pierre, I was shocked at how poorly it was received here. Hell, we made fun of it, how badly this site took it. Anyway, by June, I was totally aware he sucked and started trying to understand how this site already knew that, but I didn't. So, I was late in converting, I'm guessing anyway. When was it for everyone else?

[Little Slide Rooter]

Much of it still confuses the [expletive] out of me, but I probably have to thank NSBB for what enlightenment I do have on the subject. I'd been realising that BA and ERA were somewhat over rated but not exactly how much less important they were than OPS, SLG, OBP, WHIP, and BB/K ratios. W/L too. I always saw it as a worthless stat for relievers, but I used to put a lot more stock in it for starting pitchers than I do these days. I still couldn't tell you how to calculate WAR if you paid me.

[BeerHere]

Probably about the same time for me. Moneyball (the book) played into that as well and a lifetime of watching prospects that scouts raved about flame out in AA or after a cup of coffee. I didn't like the trade for Pierre more because I liked Nolasco and less because I didn't like Pierre though.

 

Where do people get decent defensive stats though. UZR?

[Guest]

Reading Peter Gammons Diamond notes column and taking statistics classes in grad school in the late 1990s.

[PriortoTheoIhadWood]

A decade ago (so around the time I started HS? [expletive] that was ten years ago? Jeebus) when I read Moneyball, bought the James Abstract, and started reading Rob Neyer and Fire Joe Morgan.

 

Of course now stats are a dime a dozen and it's all coming back and molding together like it should have from the start, but sometimes it takes time. Us for that to happen everything had to start being quantified and put out there as a number. That's where you get your velocities, LD%, swinging strike%, and all those little numbers that quantify what scouts see. Evolution....

[PriortoTheoIhadWood]

Reading Peter Gammons Diamond notes column and taking statistics classes in grad school in the late 1990s.

 

Oh yeah forgot about Gammons...he got in fairly early and tried to understand more than most of the writers of the time.

[treebird]

i started reading rob neyer in like 1998 or so and decided he was smarter than everyone else i read/heard talk about baseball.

[MembersOnlyJacket]

Rob Neyer's early work for ESPN.

[Guest]

Neyer & Hidden Game of Baseball

 

It's odd that a writer for ESPN of all places helped turn many of us on to advanced analysis.

[jersey cubs fan]

i started reading rob neyer in like 1998 or so and decided he was smarter than everyone else i read/heard talk about baseball.

 

neyer and the discussion about the 1998 NL MVP race

[bukie]

Neyer, Nate Silver and Bill James, mostly. Grew up as a math geek anyway, so I was already into statistics before many of the newer things started being tracked.

 

I'm not exactly sure when statistical analysis really started trending away from the classic triple crown line (AVG/HR/RBI), but I do remember MLB tracking GWRBI for a while like that was some advanced "thing". OBP and SLG tracking didn't pick up much widespread attention until after Moneyball was released, and then Neyer's OPS got picked up more widely by ESPN as the go-to "advanced" statistic (even though Neyer knew it wasn't a great additive stat right off the bat).

[treebird]

i started reading rob neyer in like 1998 or so and decided he was smarter than everyone else i read/heard talk about baseball.

 

neyer and the discussion about the 1998 NL MVP race

 

yeah, that was how i was able to pin it down to 98. i was a hardcore "WHO CARES ABOUT ON BASE THESE GUYS AREN'T LEADOFF HITTERS" 13 year old, and neyer slowly swung me around.

[PriortoTheoIhadWood]

Neyer & Hidden Game of Baseball

 

It's odd that a writer for ESPN of all places helped turn many of us on to advanced analysis.

 

Multiple writers from ESPN as Gammons really made a conscious effort...Even Karl Ravech on Baseball Tonight would troll the dummies like Kruk.

 

Now yeah...ESPN is just happy to make everyone a little more dumb evey morning and evening.

[Tracer Bullet]

i started reading rob neyer in like 1998 or so and decided he was smarter than everyone else i read/heard talk about baseball.

 

Yup. I think I started reading him in 97 bc I was a freshman in college and he was new to ESPN and he was awesome.

[bcl412]

It was more recent for me, in 07 I read moneyball and I started reading this site actually. I then read baseball between the numbers and ever since then I stopped even paying attention to how many RBI's a guy has and his batting average.

 

There are still some advanced stats that I don't understand but that's mostly because I haven't taken the time to look too closely at them.

 

I'm still stunned though that there are people who use the old school traditional stats to evaluate players but at the same time it does seem that a lot of people are at least starting to consider stats like OBP and OPS, and while they are still flawed stats it's still nice to see.

[JoshiQ]

2003. Had been a big Cubs fan since the early '90s (7 years old), but never really looked for any forums about them. Did that when we went to the playoffs in '03 and realized pretty quickly that my previous assumptions about baseball were wrong. I now hate stolen bases and sac. bunts. My dad thinks I'm an idiot.

[Post Count Padder]

When I joined NSBB. Sorta because of video games I cared more about OBP when I was younger and started realizing that was better than batting average, but more advanced stuff didn't come until I read more posts here and read Moneyball.

[UK1679666180]

Probably around 2000, its about getting the most out of something and the stats are a tool for that.

 

I knew stats (I miss having XR on my excel) before I knew anything about scouting.

[Little Slide Rooter]

When I joined NSBB. Sorta because of video games I cared more about OBP when I was younger and started realizing that was better than batting average, but more advanced stuff didn't come until I read more posts here and read Moneyball.

 

Makes me feel old. When I was a kid, I only knew who the best hitter's in video games were because he was the one who'd rush the mound and beat up the pticher when he got beaned in the 8th inning.

[javy knows my name]

Unequivocally FJM. Couldn't digest it until it was presented with some humor.

 

Then NSBB. I got flamed a couple of times when I first got here, but I figured things out. That is why I'm a big proponent of trail-by-fire for newbies at NSBB.

[rocket]

probably some time in 2004 thanks to nsbb.

 

lol, i remember the days when i quite passionately declared that sosa deserved the mvp over mcgwire because of his rbi totals, and the fact that the cubs made the playoffs. i also used to argue quite seriously that shawon dunston was as good as ozzie smith.

[Cubswin11]

I'd say 2006 during my Freshmen year of college is when I started to realize that there was a whole group of baseball stats/community I didn't know existed. I really didn't start understanding it or learning it until my soph-senior year of college when I took more advanced econ/stats classes, however.

[Sammy Sofa]

It was a combination of things for me; being a huge baseball card/stat nerd in my younger days made it kind of a natural progression. It helped having friends over the years that were HUGE into old school fantasy baseball, so they explained a lot of this to me while I just had a dazed look on my face. A cousin introduced me to Bill James' ideas in the late 90's, too. Like many others here, Moneyball just sort of crystalized these various ideas a as a real, legitimate and awesome "thing," and I remember going into the 2004 season just not getting enough of it.

 

That said, I still consider my overall stat/sabermetric knowledge pretty limited. Math is not a strong suit for me at all, so I constantly rely on reading over other people's analysis and definitions/glossaries to remind me just what the hell I'm looking at.

[Rob]

I was a moron through the 2003 season. Near the end of that season, I began reading more of Rob Neyer, as well as picked up Moneyball and The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (can't remember which came first).

 

I was immersed immediately after that. It probably took 4-5 seasons of making an ass out of myself by not fully understanding the statistics I was talking about, but I feel I've got a reasonably good grip on them now. And I'm learning to blend them with scouting reports and what I've seen with my own eyes in terms of things like mechanics.

[TruffleShuffle]

after i read meph's blog.