Well, I think we've got a $hit-stirrer here, but I do agree with one point:
…every joe shmo can be an analyst...
Yup, too many 'Joe Shmos' out there blogging away who don't have a clue. Some of them are wielding saber-metrics (and giving it a bad name IMO) and too many of those aren't accounting for the grinders that can make the game great.
I really don't care what anyone says about this - there is such a thing as "heart" and there are players who have way more of it than others. Sabre-metrics or not, I'll take 'em on my team. They know how to win baseball games.
I'll suggest that heart does show up in sabre-metrics. The guys with heart, work hard and get results. They may not be showy or have the "body" but they are effective and the numbers prove it.
I certainly could be wrong, and don't mean to speak for justbaseball, but my perspective is that player with heart, the grinder, the one who outworks everyone, i.e., the leader, is more valuable in the context that he makes others better around him.
As JH noted, I don't know how anyone could measure that 6th tool. More importantly, if the 6th tool is truly the glue and intangible, especially in college and HS, which elevates others, there is no statistic which can measure how it translates to 9 or 35 other players.
In 2008, I am not sure Stanford was, from a talent and sabremetrics view, one of the top 8 teams in college baseball, Watching them an entire season, that team had intangibles, they had that 6th tool. They had players with that 6th tool which, in my view, got others to perform at levels higher than in 2007 or in 2009.
I have posted this before about college baseball and one of the great coaches view that the difference between a college team which achieves or overachieves as opposed to those which under-perform or are unsuccessful is determined by whether the 5 guys who lead win out or the 5 dissenters win out. In effect, 20 players get moved one direction or another by leaders or dissension. That does not happen in MLB for many reasons, I think.
I am learning a lot by the postings about sabremetrics. However, I am not sure I appreciate the dogmatic views that seem to be attached, especially when it comes to college or HS baseball, where I believe elements of team/emotion/leadership/bonding/leadership make a bigger difference in success during a 56 game season than pure stats do over 144/162 games at the professional levels.
Put into the context of college sports, the last Ivy league football championship won by Columbia was in the early 1960's. Anyone who knows about that team knows the reason that team won was because of a 170lb offensive guard. He had the heart and leadership to challenge every player to be better. He had the toughness to make every player tougher. He was possibly that lesser talented guy who challenged those with greater talent to achieve at higher levels. Sabremetrics just cannot measure those intangibles but I know they exist.