When did the lightbulb turn on for you?

[davell]

I didn't post here when that guy was here and I'm fully aware he's a smart guy. But he was so much of a prick, my honest guess is I probably kept holding out hope he was wrong about everything.

[SouthSideRyan]

I didn't post here when that guy was here and I'm fully aware he's a smart guy. But he was so much of a prick, my honest guess is I probably kept holding out hope he was wrong about everything.

 

We'll always have Khalil Greene and Jr Towles.

[Sosa21MVP]

I can't pinpoint the exact time it happened but I remember back in either 2004 or 2005 still being pretty much a meatball in terms of even attempting to understand the advanced stats. I remember at one time, either 2004 or 2005 there was a point in time that Jose Macias had a .274 BA and a .274 OBP (lolzerowalks) and people were raging about how awful he was and I kept thinking, well he has a decent BA right? :lol:

 

2008 might have been the tipping point actually. That Cubs team was so patient at the plate and was so productive overall...in any case, I respect the sabr analysis now. I accept it as a valuable tool.

[XZero771679666304]

It was in the mid-late 90's when it began to dawn on me that there was something very wrong with using most of the traditional stats to determine a player's worth, and it really coalesced in the early 2000's.

 

So there wasn't a moment of epiphany or anything.

[Guest]

I didn't post here when that guy was here and I'm fully aware he's a smart guy. But he was so much of a prick, my honest guess is I probably kept holding out hope he was wrong about everything.

 

We'll always have Khalil Greene and Jr Towles.

 

And the 2007 Florida Gators, AKA the best team in college football that year.

[MSG T]

It was turned on dimly when I was in HS back in the mid 80's when some friends and I would kill our days off from baseball with Strat-O-Matic. After playing a couple of seasons on the easy side of the cards, we flipped them over and tried the advanced side. About that time, one of my friends got Bill James' book and we started keeping a few stats he mentioned in there.

 

It actually cooled somewhat after that, had far to much going on early in my career, but was rekindled when I found this place, which lead me to fangraphs, b-r, hardball times, etc (thanks guys). I'm still trying to get my comprehension level caught up and what stats apply to what situation, but it's getting better.

[Soul]

For me the lightbulb turned on when I came here, and finally found out why we suck. Before then, it was just handwringing & not knowing why.

 

Thanks NSBB!

[Guest]

Around 1998, because I remember being high on the Jeff Blauser signing because of his .400 OBP in 97 (and his history of decent to very good OBPs) and I remember being down on Doug Glanville because he was an "empty" .300 hitter.

[Guest]

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.

 

Pretty much how I am.

[champaignchris]

Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of a re-read of MoneyBall. I just read the introduction on Bill James. For him, it was the hitting stats that bothered him. For me, it was the pitching stats.

 

I remember very clearly in middle school in about 1986-1987, I would have been 13-14 years old, reading the box scores and league leaders in the paper and just thinking that stats didn't tell you anything about the pitchers. "Joe Blow is 3-2 with a 3.57 ERA." What the heck are you supposed to make out of that?

 

My solution to this "problem" was mainly to zone out any time a broadcaster started blabbing about stats.

 

It wasn't until much later, maybe about 2005, where I learned that other people had similar issues with the stats that I did and had actually done something about it.

[Andy]

I read the Bill James new abstract in summer 2003 and that probably planted a bunch of the seeds. It probably most hit in 2005, when conventional wisdom credited the White Sox being good to 'grinderball' and not the fact that they hit eleventy billion home runs. But it was a long process (I was relatively excited about the Pierre trade, I recall). It was probably summer 2006 when I totally moved over to the other side.

[Guest]

I read the Bill James new abstract in summer 2003 and that probably planted a bunch of the seeds. It probably most hit in 2005, when conventional wisdom credited the White Sox being good to 'grinderball' and not the fact that they hit eleventy billion home runs. But it was a long process (I was relatively excited about the Pierre trade, I recall). It was probably summer 2006 when I totally moved over to the other side.

I can't remember very meany people on here being happy about the Pierre trade. I remember Bob Sanders aka "where's Pedro" and I making fun of his pornstache and the fact that he looked like Dave Chappelle.

[imb]

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.

 

Hahahahah, I made that same passionate argument about 12 times in 1998.

[minnesotacubsfan]

I unscrewed that damn light bulb Oct 7, 2003 at 11:00 pm cst and have been comfortably obtuse ever since

[ELCABALLO45]

2007 probably. So not that long ago.

 

As a Brewer fan I remember being excited to get Carlos Lee because he drove in over 200 runs the past 2 years (hence screen name that I made on brewerfan.net and I just kept it) and because he hit .305 the year before. At the end of the 2005 season he had 32 homers and 114 RBI's and thinking how great he was. Little did I know his OPS that year was .811 while playing below average defense in left.

 

Sigh.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Sometime after 1998, when I unsuccessfully tried to convince the Cubs usenet group that Sosa deserved the MVP because he'd produced more than McGwire, even though McGwire had been more efficient.

[Guest]

Much like with Derrick Rose, I was aware that Sosa didn't deserve that MVP, but I didn't care at all.

[seanimal]

i did the whole neyer-james-bp progression, though i didn't really start to pick up on it until late 03 and into 04. i probably would have been way lazy about it though if it weren't for the relentless condescension of meph to motivate me to not be such an lol moron

[NewUserName]

Back in the 80s I read Bill James Baseball Abstract religiously every year. Of course that was just the beginning and many of his stats were seriously flawed. I used to figure out Secondary Average for players during the season. I have always been the first to question conventional wisdom, so James really drew me in. But anyone who could statistically say at the time that Steve Garvey sucked was really going to win me over.

[Guest]

The arguments on the cubs.com forums in 2001 and 2002 where dozens of nutjobs argued with extremely knowledged people like sanclementecubfan, mlpeel and a very small handful of others convinced me to be part of the new line of thinking on nsbb.com when it formed in 2003.

 

Been here since and haven't looked back. I haven't kept up with with some of the newer terminologies and how they are applied/calculated, and I got so down on the Hendry administration, that I feel really out of tune with baseball in general these days.

[sneakypower]

honest to god, i was all about OBP as a kid playing this game:

 

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/misc-games/3214-1.jpg

 

and loading up the Cubs with all the guys with the gaudiest stats

[SouthSideRyan]

honest to god, i was all about OBP as a kid playing this game:

 

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/misc-games/3214-1.jpg

 

and loading up the Cubs with all the guys with the gaudiest stats

 

Slugging Average in Earl Weaver Baseball II for me.

[bcl412]

The only time I really utilized a stat I knew nothing about was in one of the High Heat games for the PC. Unfortunately that stat was [expletive] holds.

 

It's a shame too because if I remember correctly that game had a very good database of statistics to use.