zbhargrove, quiet night in Fargo? Nice flurry.
Some decry attention to situational baseball, but I view the game similarly to an investment portfolio. The long run is composed of a set of short runs (some of them very short runs) and failure in short runs is likely to lead to underperformance in the long run. There are various ways to measure performance and I think the deep stats movement has helped us determine values that were previously ignored, but in the process of questioning the previously held conventional wisdom, I think the movement has sometimes thrown the baby out with the bath water.
Example: Runner on third, one out, hitter strikes out, and next batter makes an out and runner left stranded. Next time up the guy who struck out hits a 900 foot HR. Stat movement says, "a run is a run" and in the long run, the batter produced a run so it's really no big deal that he didn't hit a grounder to second to drive in the guy from third in his previous at-bat because the net effect is the same. I get that, but the point is the team could have scored two runs with modest execution (the counter argument, of course, is that the situation that ended in a strike out could have ended in a home run, which would have generated two runs and I'm not going to dismiss that except to say that home runs are rarer than ground outs). Granted the value and qualities of each player vary greatly and performance in given situations will also likewise vary greatly. It's hard to hang a picture with only a screwdriver, but that doesn't mean a screwdriver isn't a valuable tool. The valuable qualities in some players won't lend themselves to optimum performance in every situation, hence the failure of the batter in the previous example has to be balanced against his later success. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be some expectation of better performance in those situations.
So my base argument is that the long run is comprised of a collection of short runs and performance in all of these short runs should be measured. Some of it will end up not mattering that much because the result of the game is finite and that is how the team's performance is measured. I agree that players aren't perfect and shouldn't be expected to play against their strengths and fans shouldn't expect Uggla to choke up and go the other way. That's not his game. But there isn't a unified field theory of baseball (as much as the deep stats movement seems to contend that there is) because there is simply too much variance in the qualities of players, the nature of the confrontation between pitcher and hitter, and the situation within that confrontation takes place. That doesn't mean you bring in Varvaro with the bases loaded to close out Game 7 of the World Series or send Pastornicky to the plate expecting to give the fans in the left field stands a souvenir. Each season, each game, each at-bat, and each pitch matter lead to a measurement and it's important to treat them as such. Some more than others (far more in some instances), obviously, but that doesn't mean each shouldn't be noted.
