Bob Ryan: I don't think the "average" fan cares about advanced metrics in MLB

It's as accurate as predicting what a player's batting average will be for 2015 in 2014.

 

Yes, statistics is all about proof, as anyone who has taken a simple statistics course knows. I'm glad the board dolt understands this.

 

Damn. The Devil's in the details.

 

What's weird here is that this argument is now both getting very old (over a decade, more like two decades) and ever more irrelevant. Many "advanced" stats have become just plain old stats, the way expansion teams become plain old teams. Even Ryan cites OPS, I've heard him do it. Some advanced stats have not gained such acceptance, primarily because they're a little too abstruse for garden variety baseball discussions such as radio broadcasts, barroom arguments, etc. And the newer advanced stats (New Wave stats?) are just too new to be widely accepted, not to mention to be validated as useful.
This is how the process of intellectual discovery works in all areas of human knowledge. Why fight about it?

 

Because it is entertaining. Are you not entertained?!

 

You would think someone who took graduate-level courses at who knows how many institutions would understand a smidgen of statistics.

 

Well, OOP, let's just say I found this thread's entertainment value running thin a page or two ago.

 

Usually they do not have subjective aspects built into them.

 

Of course they do.

Batting average requires that the official score keeper determine if something was a hit or an error, for example.

And moving beyond baseball, the data is getting dirtier and dirtier - i.e. more "subjective" elements sneaking into the wash. Why? Because statisticians have found that they get a more accurate result when they collect massive amounts of data rather than medium amounts of super-clean data. That's why Google search records are so useful.

 

Really? Going for that .015 of all hits? Yeah, that will change everything about a hitter.

 

Would you like to talk about how often umpires are wrong on ball and strike calls then?