Salon's Kaufman accuses Kindred of 'ignorance'

Can I point out for the record that King Kaufman brings, like, nothing to the table. Not funny. Not particularly insightful. Pretty rote recaps of the weekend action. You want to raise some fire there, Salon, put Dave Zirin in that spot. Outside of la Paglia, this guy is the most pointless feature on that site.

 

You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. These "senseless statistics" are the answer to stats from the '70s and '80s that tried to "determine the stats of a player on nights when there's a new moon." The sabermetrics crowd is actually trying to find statistical metrics with actual meaning - stats like the one you cite are complete aberrations a lot of the time.

Again, for the 10,000th time, they aren't coming up with arbitrary stats as some sort of mathematical masturbation exercise. They are trying to sort through all the statistical noise to determine a player's value to his team, or to determine the relative value of a walk vs., say, a double. And of course that depends on the situation. Of course. Which is all part of the deal, depending on how deep you want to wade.

And, again, with all the money being thrown around in baseball, GMs want all the rock solid information they can collect and analyze. On a scale of lesser importance, people have been winning fantasy leagues for years using these "senseless stats." Go ahead and draft a fantasy team on your "gut instinct" vs. a league full of guys who put some work into analyzing a player's performance. See where you finish.

 

If it works for a fantasy sport, it must be especially utilitarian.

 

Instead of being sarcastic, maybe you can tell me why that isn't important? It works for fantasy sports because it can be predictive of future performance, moreso than simply scanning BA-HR-RBI. Is that not relevant in the real world? Are you saying now that baseball stats, simply a record of a player's performance throughout a season, are now entirely meaningless?

 

I think you'd be better served dealing with the fact that if a player's HofF candidacy comes down to an analysis of his VORP, he shouldn't be in anyway.

 

Why, though?

And NERDS!!!! isn't an acceptable answer.

 

Waylon --

Two words: Fantasy Sports.

Or one, if you prefer: Fantasy.

I've argued all of this at length on this site and elsewhere. I would further had I interest in completely wasting my time and yours. The divide cannot and will not be breached. This is tantamount to a religious conversion.

One hell of a book is waiting to be devoted to this debate -- extremely focused and disinterested -- I wait for one of the minds of this board to get it done.

 

N---

ah, forget it.

EDIT: Seriously, Waylon, the burden of proof there is on you, I think. Give me an example where a player who would otherwise not be Hall material shows his true worth by use of "newer" statistics.

 

If Ichiro bats .350 for your fantasy team, he also bats .350 for the Mariners, so?

 

Alan Schwarz and Michael Lewis already both wrote those books.