How does this ignorance still exist?

http://news.bostonherald.com/sports/...&position=also

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While teams created by Ruben Amaro Jr. of the Phillies or Brian Cashman of the Yankees cling hopelessly to National League and American League pennants and a misplaced faith in the old order represented by stats like batting average, fielding average and RBI, teams of the new millennium like the Red Sox believe those are insignificant relics of a bygone era, the buggy whips of baseball.

They have been replaced by faith in OBP, OPS, UZR (I thought those were the initials of a former Russian state only to learn it means Ultimate Zone Rating), DRS (defensive runs saved) and PMR (probabilistic model of range). Based on crunching numbers into these new formulas, one expert in baseball metrics, John Dewan, has written that the addition of Adrian Beltre, Marco Scutaro and Mike Cameron in the field will add nine more victories to the Sox’ bottom line. Lo and behold, we just won the pennant! Who knew?

...Moneyball, which became defined as the love of sabermetrics over old-school stats like HR and RBI, has led Billy Beane, the godfather of this con job, to build an economic Oakland A’s team that hasn’t won a pennant in 20 years or a World Series in 21, but did manage to have a best-selling book written about the concept. The A’s did win division titles in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2006, but what they have actually won during the Moneyball era is nothing. No sequel is planned.

Now it seems the Sox have headed down the same road of quantum baseball over your grandad’s version, which was mistakenly centered on foolishness like hitting and scoring runs.

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Like, really, wtf? There's practically nothing in this piece that even resembles being accurate.

First few comments on the BTF thread sum it up well:

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Originally Posted by RB in NYC (Now With Resolutions!)

Did this guy just wake up from a coma and here how Theo runs the team?

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Yeah, what would Theo know about winning. He doesn't have 2 rings or anything. What a rube.

where is FJM when you need them.

luckily Boston fans are all over him

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Hey Borges stick to football.
Your knowledge of baseball could be described in detail on the back of a postage stamp. VMart, Beltre, Scutaro and Cameron are projected to hit more HRs than Varitek, Gonzalez, Lowell, and Bay not that they will need to with the stellar SP and defense the RS will have this year.

But of course if you can't write a negative column, you wouldn't be able to write one at all.
And frankly you sound like a damn fool.

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Wow what a tool! Borges thinks the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it.

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Up until this morning I have only heard of what a hack Ron Borges was. Today it's confirmed.

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Basically ever since Borges started his one man smear campaign against BB over 10 years ago, he comes off as so driven by animosity, that he ignores the truth. At least Dan S and Felger blow with the breeze. Borges is old school - he just hates forever.

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I don't know where to start. How about any fan with a grade school education can go to a dozen different websites, look up the definition of these various metrics, compare, watch the games, then decide for themselves if they add anything to traditional stats. It really ain't that complicated. It's called "curiousity" and it seems to really bother some people of a certain mentality. It's certainly less frustrating than reading constant reports of clubhouse intrigue, gossip and innuendo that some sportswriters seem to thrive on. Why do methods that allow people to make valid statisical comparisons worry you, Mr. Borges? Maybe your BS will never gain traction?

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Also, Brian Cashman relies on batting average, fielding percentage, and RBI? lol. I'm pretty sure there's only one GM left that does that.

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Originally Posted by HoustonGM

Also, Brian Cashman relies on batting average, fielding percentage, and RBI? lol. I'm pretty sure there's only one GM left that does that.

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What Gm is that?

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Originally Posted by MichelleWie

What Gm is that?

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Dayton Moore of course.

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Originally Posted by HoustonGM

Dayton Moore of course.

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joke?

How much of a short-term memory do some of these cheeseballs have?

As a Sox fan, in 2004 I was at first dismayed at the loss of Nomar, when we picked up O-Cab an Doug Meintkawicz or however you spell that. A great hitter for defense? Really?

A few months later the Sox had their first WS ring in 80+ years. I mean...if losing the one bat hurt so much in 2004, and we won the WS...losing Bay in 2010 and gaining 2 above-average gloves (and another top-rotation pitcher) would yield a similar result, no?

But everyone wants the big bat. They all want to see a homer total or RBI total to hang their hat on. Man...it's just head-shaking. Sure, offense is great - but if it's not out there and available, and you make alternate moves to help win games, isn't that sound strategy? Should we have just bought Holliday and Carlos Delgado maybe? He had lots of homers and RBIs. Maybe we should have signed Delgado, huff, and Thome. There's a lot of numbers!

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Originally Posted by HoustonGM

Also, Brian Cashman relies on batting average, fielding percentage, and RBI? lol. I'm pretty sure there's only one GM left that does that.

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I'm pretty sure Cashman also looks at clucthiness and tea leaves too:p

Really? I think it would behoove any GM to use any "tools" available to analize players. I thought the answer would be Williams from Chicago sox. I follow the White Sox a little, and some of the crap coming out of their is amazing. Ozzie claiming the team will be better because of flexibility, base running, chemistry etc. He is talking about squeeze plays and stuff in the 1st inning :eek:

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Originally Posted by MichelleWie

Really? I think it would behoove any GM to use any "tools" available to analize players.

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Of course it would.

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Originally Posted by MichelleWie

I thought the answer would be Williams from Chicago sox. I follow the White Sox a little, and some of the crap coming out of their is amazing. Ozzie claiming the team will be better because of flexibility, base running, chemistry etc. He is talking about squeeze plays and stuff in the 1st inning :eek:

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That's Ozzie, not Williams. Williams may be one of the more "traditional" GMs, but he's not a bad GM. Dayton Moore, though, can't put together a major league roster. Durham or KC?

You just have to be the biggest tool in the universe to actually criticize Theo Epstein's plan. This is why no one likes Red Sox fans anymore. They won 2 rings and now have the worst degree of dipshit entitlement imaginable.

I read Moneyball twice, and this might just be a double-reading-comprehension-failure on my part, but his version of what the book was "about" was not what I took away from it at all.

It wasn't about sabermetrics vs. traditional baseball metrics, vis-a-vis which is "better", as he says.

To me, it was about an organization with a smaller budget than the "big dogs" looking to get the most bang for its payroll buck. The strategy they adopted was to spot "inefficiencies" in the player market by looking for under-valued talent they could pick up on the cheap-cheap. The tools they used to suss these out were sabermetric stats.

To get out of Moneyball what he did kind of misses the point.

Actually, by looking at their roster, I don't really know if you can say Dayton Moore knows anything about HR, RBI, or Avg either.

So far, the Dayton Moore evaluation seems to be "I saw this guy play once and he was sweet so, he is."

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Originally Posted by StreetMedic

I read Moneyball twice, and this might just be a double-reading-comprehension-failure on my part, but his version of what the book was "about" was not what I took away from it at all.

It wasn't about sabermetrics vs. traditional baseball metrics, vis-a-vis which is "better", as he says.

To me, it was about an organization with a smaller budget than the "big dogs" looking to get the most bang for its payroll buck. The strategy they adopted was to spot "inefficiencies" in the player market by looking for under-valued talent they could pick up on the cheap-cheap. The tools they used to suss these out were sabermetric stats.

To get out of Moneyball what he did kind of misses the point.

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See, what you got out of Moneyball was the actual point of the book. Anti-SABR mouthbreathing dumbasses get the idea that Moneyball says only care about players with OBP and never listen to scouts or watch players ever.

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Originally Posted by StreetMedic

To get out of Moneyball what he did kind of misses the point.

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Of course it does. Very few of the people that criticize Moneyball like this actually read it. It just so happens that, at the time that the book was written, on-base percentage was being undervalued, and thus, that's where the A's looked for cheap players. In part DUE to Moneyball, this is obviously no longer the case. And, because Moneyball was not about OBP and sabermetric stats, but was about exploiting market inefficiencies, this can be seen in the current makeup of the A's team. People still criticize the A's as "waiting for the 3 run home run" and "clogging up the bases" and whatever because that was sort of the way the Moneyball-era A's were constructed (due to OBP being undervalued in the marketplace), but look at the current A's - a speed-based team (4th in SB in 2009) with very good defense - nothing like the criticisms paint them to be. Why? Because recently, defense has been the main undervalued asset.

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Originally Posted by haveacigar

Actually, by looking at their roster, I don't really know if you can say Dayton Moore knows anything about HR, RBI, or Avg either.

So far, the Dayton Moore evaluation seems to be "I saw this guy play once and he was sweet so, he is."

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Good point.

Another BTF comment:

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Originally Posted by Mudpout

The thing I can't get over is that the Sox are getting roasted by people claiming to be old-school for thinking a guy's glove and some decent offensive production will make him a positive member of the team. Did anyone think we'd reach the "Dave Concepcion, Sabermetric Darling" stage, and have the sportswriters be AGAINST it?

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Heh. :) The majority of sportswriters nowadays don't seem to actually have any beliefs themselves. It just seems to be "Figure out what the hot sabermetric topic is and be against it."

Jay Mariotti writes for the Herald too?

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which became defined as the love of sabermetrics over old-school stats like HR and RBI

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see that there sums up the whole stupidity of the topic

1st it dosen'y rely on sabrmetrics OVER old-school stats, but In addition to

2nd all those stats are part of sabrmetrics, as sabrmetrics is the evaluation of ALL stats, not just one or two.

Well, sabermetrics will evaluate HRs because they are important. They don't evaluate RBIs ever, because RBIs are stupid and meaningless.

http://static.stuff.co.nz/1255587179/708/2968708.jpg

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/201...all/index.html

There was another interesting article about Moneyball. Not ignorant like Borges, but interesting nevertheless.

I think Street Medic said it best
"To me, it was about an organization with a smaller budget than the "big dogs" looking to get the most bang for its payroll buck. The strategy they adopted was to spot "inefficiencies" in the player market by looking for under-valued talent they could pick up on the cheap-cheap. The tools they used to suss these out were sabermetric stats."

But if sportswriters have proven anything is that they would prefer to slam and trash anything they can in the name of a byline.

Someone won't use complicated stats?

Burn them at the stake!

:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by metsguy234

Someone won't use complicated stats?

Burn them at the stake!

:rolleyes:

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Yes, cause not using them is equivalent to ranting senselessly about their lack of merit or worth

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Originally Posted by etothep

Yes, cause not using them is equivalent to ranting senselessly about their lack of merit or worth

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HGM and you guys can rant about the stats used by the MM.

The MM can't rant about the stats used by the sabermetric community.


Double standard?

Notice how these arguments don't come about til some clown who thinks that since the metric takes longer than 5 seconds to compute that it is thus some kind of fictional statistic of no value or use takes the swipe?

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Originally Posted by metsguy234

HGM and you guys can rant about the stats used by the MM.

The MM can't rant about the stats used by the sabermetric community.


Double standard?

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They can rant all they want if they have the evidence to back up their opinions.. This guy just spouted ignorance.

When it comes to a debate, you lose when you say one thing without factual evidence to back it up. Therefore, this guy just lost.

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Originally Posted by OregonDuck1989

They can rant all they want if they have the evidence to back up their opinions.. This guy just spouted ignorance.

When it comes to a debate, you lose when you say one thing without factual evidence to back it up. Therefore, this guy just lost.

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"I think RBIs are a useless stat"

FACTUAL STATEMENT RIGHT THERE!
:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by metsguy234

"I think RBIs are a useless stat"

FACTUAL STATEMENT RIGHT THERE!
:rolleyes:

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http://i629.photobucket.com/albums/u...g?t=1264796537

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Originally Posted by metsguy234

"I think RBIs are a useless stat"

FACTUAL STATEMENT RIGHT THERE!
:rolleyes:

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I don't see where anyone said that.

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Originally Posted by metsguy234

"I think RBIs are a useless stat"

FACTUAL STATEMENT RIGHT THERE!
:rolleyes:

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It is factual that they are pretty much useless for evaluating a player's ability.

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Originally Posted by metsguy234

"I think RBIs are a useless stat"

FACTUAL STATEMENT RIGHT THERE!
:rolleyes:

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Shut the hell up. There's plenty of factual evidence why RBIs are a useless stat.

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Originally Posted by OregonDuck1989

I don't see where anyone said that.

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I did.

I want proof that RBIs are a useless stat.

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Originally Posted by metsguy234

I want proof that RBIs are a useless stat.

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You won't pay attention to said proof anyways, so what does it matter?

Like etothep said, and like I've said to you metsguy multiple times on the forums and on AIM, disliking/disagreeing with a particular advanced stat or stats is perfectly fine. Sabermetric writers routinely debate the value of a variety of different stats. There is a difference between that and arguing against stuff that you have no idea about by making repeated ignorant/stupid statements.

You don't get to tell me RBIs are useless unless I get some proof of that statement.

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Originally Posted by metsguy234

I want proof that RBIs are a useless stat.

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They show virtually no correlation from year to year, and they depend wholly on the ability and actions of other players. Thus, they say virtually nothing about a player's individual ability, and are worthless. QED.

I think it's pretty important to drive in runs.

If a guy hits .300/.400/.500 but doesn't drive in a single run, he's worthless.