How does this ignorance still exist?

[HoustonGM]

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

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They have been replaced by faith in OBP, OPS, UZR (I thought those were the initials of a former Russian state only to learn it means Ultimate Zone Rating), DRS (defensive runs saved)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.

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:

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

[haveacigar]

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

[Alloutwar]

where is FJM when you need them.

luckily Boston fans are all over him

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.

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

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

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.

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?

[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.

[MichelleWie]

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.

What Gm is that?

[HoustonGM]

What Gm is that?

Dayton Moore of course.

[200tang]

Dayton Moore of course.

joke?

[Alloutwar]

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!

[Wassit3]

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.

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

[MichelleWie]

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

[HoustonGM]

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

Of course it would.

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

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?

[haveacigar]

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.

[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.

[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."

[haveacigar]

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.

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.