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What is baseball coming to? Where every joe shmo can be an analyst. And what the hell is sabermetrics crap. When I played ball as a kid growing up in NJ I never heard of this stuff. It was all about playing the game hard. You were as good as your last at bat, period. Sure we cared about averages, stolen bases, rbi. But sabermetrics!  What? We're getting to a point where we're over analyzing a simple game.  What's next coaches wearing head phones talking to some guy you can't see calling plays! I say keep technology out of baseball!  

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Best team in baseball today.....Oakland A's.....most successful team in the last 10 years Boston Red Sox....Billy Beane and Theo Epstein....coincidence.....maybe not.

 

The fact that Oakland has been competitive at all is amazing and that they have been so despite having turned the roster over multiple times in the last 10-15 years is incredible.  I doubt they have ever had a payroll as big as the 4 or 5 highest paid players on the Yankees during that stretch.  In fact the Yanks are in the middle of one of their worst periods since 1920 and it is not getting better for them.

 

It is impossible to contemplate running your business without the best information available.  Baseball is a multi billion dollar enterprise that has been slow to the party but is getting there and the fans are waking up to it too.

 

Flip side like anything else is that talent evaluation is more than just numbers.  There is a human element that will always be a factor and a little luck too.  Anyone that says they saw Mike Piazza being a potential Hall of Famer when he was draft eligible is lying. So Sabremetrics is another factor in the process of player evaluation to quantify what players produce. It isn't going away and the new measures will become more part of the everyday discussion. 

 

I'd also suggest part of the reason baseball is so popular is that every Joe Shmo since 1870 thinks they know more about it than the other Joe Shmo's.  Otherwise a good portion of what goes on this board would not exist.  That would be no fun, it is much better that we can prove to each other how smart we think we are!

 

Originally Posted by rroque:

What is baseball coming to? Where every joe shmo can be an analyst. And what the hell is sabermetrics crap. When I played ball as a kid growing up in NJ I never heard of this stuff. It was all about playing the game hard. You were as good as your last at bat, period. Sure we cared about averages, stolen bases, rbi. But sabermetrics!  What? We're getting to a point where we're over analyzing a simple game.  What's next coaches wearing head phones talking to some guy you can't see calling plays! I say keep technology out of baseball!  

Did you get to the games on horseback when you played?

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.

Originally Posted by justbaseball:

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.

 

Of the "real" analysts you're referring to - I don't think any of them discredit the concept of clubhouse presence. It's just difficult…maybe impossible, right now…to quantify. How valuable is that great teammate? How many wins does he contribute? How many less wins would the team have without his presence? Surely clubhouse presence is important - absolutely no doubt. But how important? I think that's an unbelievably interesting question when analyzing the game as a business.

 

Originally Posted by justbaseball:

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 agree with you Golfman - but I also believe there are guys who have something thats hard to measure and just find ways to win.  And I believe there are guys with great sabremetric numbers who won't get a look because they don't fit a profile.

 

Nope, don't have any data to prove either point.  Just the way I see and enjoy the game.  I can think of one particular player that I once coached and made significant contributions to his team winning a WS in the past 5 years - his saber numbers aren't that great and even negative in one of his team's great years.   Yet he played a major role in his team's wins and it didn't surprise me one single bit.  That kid is a classic grinder and there's almost no one I'd rather have up when a playoff game is on the line.

 

If I was building a team for my job, I'd probably go the sabre-metric route as the core.  But I'd be looking out for the other guy, the guy with heart that rises up with the game on the line too.

Last edited by justbaseball
Originally Posted by Golfman25:
Originally Posted by justbaseball:

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.

Last edited by infielddad

infielddad- I would argue that sabermetricians fight FAR more dogmatic traditional views than vice versa. Sabermetrics is objective analysis of the sport, it does not involve opinions. I don't believe an analyst would ever discredit the importance of a player's makeup, but I also don't believe it's dogmatic to state the fact that it is currently financially unquantifiable. Makeup (the "sixth tool" as it's being called here) is certainly an important factor. The question is: how important? I don't buy that the answer will always be "I don't know." We'll figure it out eventually.

 

 

Originally Posted by infielddad:
Originally Posted by Golfman25:
Originally Posted by justbaseball:

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.

This probably isn't your intention, but there's an implicit assumption in this sort of statement that the guy with the superior talent is somehow less of a hard worker, which is rarely the case.

I would also argue that there are quiet, unassuming players who are completely unnoticed by those in the stands who are held in high regard by teammates. And just because these players don't visibly display their emotions and desire to win for all to see, it doesn't mean their competitiveness is any less than those who wear it on their sleeves.

 

And some of those "leaders" who are emotional and rah rah vocally, are not always held in high regard by their other teammates. Their visible and vocal displays are sometimes perceived as a means to curry favor with the coaches.

 

And I've seen examples of both, kids who were natural leaders on the field and those who were posing in an attempt to further their own cause. But, for the observer sitting in the stands, it might be difficult to tell the difference.

 

 

 

Originally Posted by jacjacatk:
Originally Posted by infielddad:
Originally Posted by Golfman25:
Originally Posted by justbaseball:

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.

This probably isn't your intention, but there's an implicit assumption in this sort of statement that the guy with the superior talent is somehow less of a hard worker, which is rarely the case.

That might be an inference you are drawing, but that is quite different from what I might have been intending to imply.

 

http://grammartips.homestead.com/imply.html

 

Originally Posted by J H:

infielddad- I would argue that sabermetricians fight FAR more dogmatic traditional views than vice versa. Sabermetrics is objective analysis of the sport, it does not involve opinions. I don't believe an analyst would ever discredit the importance of a player's makeup, but I also don't believe it's dogmatic to state the fact that it is currently financially unquantifiable. Makeup (the "sixth tool" as it's being called here) is certainly an important factor. The question is: how important? I don't buy that the answer will always be "I don't know." We'll figure it out eventually.

 

 

JH, I don't know whether the perspectives between traditional vs. sabremetrics is as imbalanced as you have proposed, but I don't know that it isn't.

Where my comment was directed wasn't that dichotomy.  Mine was the perspective of sabremetrics being applied to the college and HS game in ways which I "infer" to be dogmatic in some threads recently.

I completely agree with you that it is not dogmatic to say the 6th tool is not financially quantifiable at this point, but I also am not sure I could agree with you that it "will" be figured out to be financially quantifiable within the context I used it(making others around them better) in the college and HS team environment.

Even with sabremetrics at the professional level, isn't the end result  that 10 GM's might have the same objective information but use and apply them differently, with some applications proving to be successful and some not? In other words, how the data is used involves judgment and skill and talent and opinion applied to each player on a 25 man roster and we don't yet have sabremetrics for those in the front office paid to apply the objective data?

Originally Posted by Stafford:

I would also argue that there are quiet, unassuming players who are completely unnoticed by those in the stands who are held in high regard by teammates. And just because these players don't visibly display their emotions and desire to win for all to see, it doesn't mean their competitiveness is any less than those who wear it on their sleeves.

 

And some of those "leaders" who are emotional and rah rah vocally, are not always held in high regard by their other teammates. Their visible and vocal displays are sometimes perceived as a means to curry favor with the coaches.

 

And I've seen examples of both, kids who were natural leaders on the field and those who were posing in an attempt to further their own cause. But, for the observer sitting in the stands, it might be difficult to tell the difference.

 

 

 


Worse than the rah rah guy currying favor is the team cancer in this role.  The guy who yaks loudly for all to hear like "hang with them" at 100 decibels and drops "you suck" in your ear while sitting on the bench that no-one else will hear.

 

Everybody in the bleachers...and sometimes even coaches think this guy is great but the guys he plays with want to throw him a blanket party. 

Originally Posted by rroque:

 And what the hell is sabermetrics crap. ....... I say keep technology out of baseball!  


Sabermetrics is merely meaningful data about a baseball game and its players.  The demand for technology and information in all walks of like isn't going away any time soon.  My kids have more processing power in their hands than my company had in its data center 25 years ago.   People want more data not less.  It is time to evolve.....lets start with that blinking VCR. 

 

Originally Posted by fenwaysouth:
Originally Posted by rroque:

 And what the hell is sabermetrics crap. ....... I say keep technology out of baseball!  


Sabermetrics is merely meaningful data about a baseball game and its players.  The demand for technology and information in all walks of like isn't going away any time soon.  My kids have more processing power in their hands than my company had in its data center 25 years ago.   People want more data not less.  It is time to evolve.....lets start with that blinking VCR. 

 

I don't need to watch any more games with Angel Hernandez umpiring behind the plate(or the base paths for that matter) to become  a louder voice for more technology or better scrutiny by MLB over the quality of work done by its umpires, or both!

Originally Posted by infielddad:
 

I don't need to watch any more games with Angel Hernandez umpiring behind the plate(or the base paths for that matter) to become  a louder voice for more technology or better scrutiny by MLB over the quality of work done by its umpires, or both!


The same could be said for Dan Iassogna behind home plate yesterday for the Orioles/Nats game.  He was having a really bad day behind the plate.  I'm really surprised both managers were still in the game when it ended.  He missed a lot of strikes mostly for the O's....no question about it.  Without technology there is no way to hold these guys accountable for a bad performance. 

You can't take technology out of anything.  It is the reason we have safer helmets and better equipment.  It provides us with valuable information right at our finger tips.  

 

At some point we will have every variable covered.  I know there is something to be said regarding keeping things simple.  The problem is things aren't simple.

 

Umpiring is changing.  We partnered with MLB Umpiring Association to find the best candidates.  Just a couple weeks ago they did a camp in Georgia.  They have decided to scout for umpires just like clubs scout for players.  It might take quite awhile, but I think we will see improvement in umpiring at all levels.  To me the most obvious improvement needs to be calling pitches.  In fact, technology has shown us just how bad some of the calls are. I know how difficult it is to call balls and strikes, but it would be better if it were improved.  I actually think there are some amateur umpires that are better than the professionals at calling balls and strikes.

 

I have never understood why one umpire would have a different strike zone than another umpire.  Right now we have balls called strikes and strikes called balls.  Sometimes it gets ridiculous how bad the calls are. Technology is putting it on display.  Umpires are no different than players, some are much better than others.  The good ones deserve a lot of respect.  All that said, I would hate to be an umpire.  

During my 17 years operating the Area Code games, traveling to the tryouts, several players emerged during the 6 days in Long Beach. I personally visited each teams dugout talked with the scouts who coached the teams and the scouts who watched the games. A few players exhibited the 6th tool.

 

Bobby Bradley RHP from Florida was one of my favorites. He called me from Florida 2 months before the games. He said "how do I get in the games". Learned later that he was 6'0 and weight 160 lbs. He said "I have the best curve ball in America".

I placed Bobby on the same team with Josh Beckett and told Bobby he would pitch behind Beckett on Friday night at Blair Field.

Beckett and his personal catcher toured the talk show in Southern California. On Friday night Beckett reach 97 mph in his three innings then departed with his personal catcher, the catcher's father for dinner.

 

Now Bobby Bradley is pitching his three inning. His 1st pitch starts at the batter's head and finished at the knees. 300 scouts said the same name "Bert Blyleven".

 

That night "back to back" 1st round drafts. How do you measure the 6th tool.

"Inner arrogance" is a factor.

 

Bob

 

 

 

Last edited by Consultant

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