Salon's Kaufman accuses Kindred of 'ignorance'

BJ had some pretty outlandish praise for maz. i was on a baseball message board that BJ visited about 11 or so years ago, along with many of his original disciples, and even a vast majority of them couldn't support their master when he rang maz's bell.

he was mentioning maz as being one of the greatest second basemen in the game.

 

The original argument, actually, was that Dave Kindred and others like him are ignorant morons for not embracing all these numbers that may or may not tell us anything worthwhile. My limited understanding of VORP and WARP is that they somehow measure a player's value compared to some hypothetical replacement player. Which sounds a whole lot like arbitrary crunching of numbers pulled from the air.

 

No. He's not.

http://www.firejoemorgan.com/2006/08/best-ever.html

The original Plaschke column: http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/dodgers/la-sp-plaschke16aug16,1,897131.column?coll=la-headlines-sports-mlb-dodger

 

TGD --

What I'd read a few months back is mistaken, then. Not with Oakland, or not in baseball?

This is a FJM-free work terminal, by house rule. I'll take your word for it.

 

Tom,

I can't say one way or another on Mazeroski, except to say that most of his support comes for his glove, which is notoriously hard to gauge, either by NERDS!!! or by the old-timey baseball men suddenly so beloved of LJB.

Speaking of...

I'm sure lots of baseball scouts are super-nice guys, though I'm not sure exactly what it means to "understand human strength and weakness," or what the hell it has to do with hitting or throwing or catching a baseball.

It's a pretty simple question: Would you rather run your business based on somebody's "gut feeling," or by actual facts?

The fact is, it doesn't take a "baseball lifer" to tell me Carl Crawford is good. It doesn't take me a stat geek to tell me that Rob Mackowiak is below-average.

But the "baseball lifers" have some pretty big whiffs. Trust me: I'm a Reds fan. Dusty Baker loves those gut-feeling guys, guys who just SEEM awesome, and damn the numbers. Which is why Corey Patterson had 366 (!?!) at-bats last season, and sucked up a storm. It's why Willy Taveras will probably open the season hitting leadoff for the Redlegs, even though he was worse at getting on base last season than Angel Berroa, Fernando Tatis or Reggie Abercrombie.

Do the NERDS!!! have blind spots? Sure. But I think relying on stats -- which are pretty black and white -- leaves you considerably fewer opportunities to look like an idiot.

 

Scouts are fine. And as important and valued as ever.

It's simple really. Sabemetrics - or stats, if you will - measure the long-term performance of a player. And sabermetricians try to cut through some of the misleading statistical noise to retroactively assess a player's performance. It's not so much to rewrite the past, as in this Hall of Fame debate, but to predict future performance. And spot dangerous trends, so that scouts and coaches can fix them. They aren't "made up" stats. And they aren't arbitrary, either. In fact, that would defeat the purpose. The point of the Bill James school of analysing baseball is to eliminate meaningless stats and concentrate on the worthwhile ones.

Sabermetrics are basically a diagnostic engine test for your baseball team, and with the money being committed to players in 2009, I think I wouldn't mind tossing a few hundred grand the way of a statistical analysis guy if he helps me save millions on a Juan Pierre.

But even when you run a diagnostic test on an engine, you still need a mechanic to know how to fix it.

A lot of you guys are misrepresenting what BP is and how it reads. The player bios contain plenty of scout speak, because these are human beings, and wild up or down swings in performance are probably attributable to something other than sheer luck.

 

If the Yankees sign Hanley Ramirez, Derek Jeter's VORP drops like a rock.

Yeah, that's a complex stat that can explain a lot.

 

It's extremely valuable in fantasy baseball for comparing the value of, say, Chase Utley to Ryan Howard. Or, more importantly, someone like Orlando Cabrera, a middle-of-the-road SS, to the player you would likely get if you waited until everyone else had drafted a SS.

 

I'm pretty sure that's not true, dools. As I understand it, the VORP metric is set -- and don't ask me how, please -- to a standard that's based on a "replacement" player, whose supposed to be a average-ability waiver-wire type. Has nothing to do with a given team's roster.

 

I've never understood why more emphasis isn't put on things A PLAYER CAN ACTUALLY DO at the plate or on the mound.

You can go up to the plate and knock in a run. You can go up to the plate and get a hit or draw a walk. You can go up to the plate and advance a runner by hitting it to the right side. You cannot go to the plate and get a "win share".

Things players actually have control over with the bat or ball in their hand should always take precedence over statistics that may or may not reflect the basics of what they're trying to do.

And I'm not even anti-sabermetrics, but this seems so elementary to me.

To wit, no one goes up to the plate at Fenway Park or Dodger Stadium and ballpark adjusts their approach when facing the pitcher, they just do what needs to be done in whatever situation they happen to be in.

That's why I think stats like that should be used as accent material, not as a basis for shooting someone down or building a candidacy around them.

 

I don't know that Kaufman is that far off in his assesment of Kindred.
The guy did vote for Dale Murphy and Andre Dawson. And Mark McGwire!

Too many rounds at the 19th Hole, if you ask me.

;D