well sure, but it is what we have and nobody said you can't take two numbers and avg them out. Nobody said it's perfect, we know there is probably little difference between a 4.8 WAR season and a 5.4 WAR season due to random variance, but we can generally all agree that the players each had great years anyway.
people don't seem to demand perfection from the old baseball card stats, but they do from modern stats..... I always smell agenda when I hear stuff like above. and yeah maybe i come off like a dick, but I am really sick of old farts ranting about how stat nerds "know nothing about the game" the only good thing is that eventually they will all die off and the new generations will take over. That's usually the only way anything gets done in the first place.
but the argument is always "DEFENSE DOESN'T COUNT THAT MUCH!" it is never the other way, and if there is error (which there surely is in defensive WAR) the odds are that it could easily be AGAINST the defense not for it.
Ok, I'm old (not that old, I coach my middle school age kid, but not a young buck, either). But there are a couple of things that piss me of, too. The biggest one is that I can't find a message board where I fit. The AJC and braves.com (for instance) ones are frequented by simple-minded morons who just don't get....anything.
This message board has a lot of intelligence and a lot of wit but every ****ing issue gets boiled down to a ****ing statistical pissing match where everybody picks out their favorite new stat - wOBA and FIP and XFIP and the Mac daddy of them all, WAR. And they're so sure of their stat that they call it fact. My God, I've seen huge disparities between bWAR and fWAR.
Yet you treat it as gospel. It ain't. And, if I may remind you, past performance is no guarantee of future results, either. It's a good predictor. Looking at BABIP and seeing somebody is undervalued and hitting in bad luck is useful data, for sure.
I have two advanced degrees and have been fortunate to have put together a nice career. Because I don't toe the line with your exact interpretation of events (and they are interpretations, not facts) doesn't make me an old school dinosaur. It means I appreciate the game that's played on dirt as well as a spreadsheet.
My firm has decided to try and call on people who sell our products that a statistician has determined have a "propensity to buy" and customers who have a "propensity to sell." They've rated them accordingly and have decided to pursue these people to the exclusion of the local knowledge that our existing reps have of those sellers, instead putting a big bet on big data.
We're 21% behind plan this year. Relying on statistical indicator hasn't worked. I think we weigh certain indicators too heavily, others are missing, but without local knowledge it doesn't matter. The whole thing has been an unmitigated disaster.
My preference, you might have guessed, is for belly-to-belly meetings and sales and mining the opinions of our reps and relationships. What is not as obvious is that I like to augment that with statistical knowledge and make decisions using both. If the numbers tell a different story from my eyes I triple check and adjust course,
but I make the decision, not the data.
I think it's the same with baseball. Matt Wisler doesn't strike out enough guys to sustain the success he's having. His BABIP is unsustainable. Yet, he's savvy, has a great fastball, uses his breaking stuff to great effect, is working on his change (with Tom Glavine, which the numbers don't tell you), has rebounded strongly from adversity, seems to be maturing. So which is it?
Saber guys would say "unsustainable BABIP and low K/9 rate. Sell him now before they figure out he's just another guy," but my eyes say otherwise. Eventually I think the stats will, too, but it won't have been the predictive value of the stats that govern the decision, they'll just be post hoc confirmation that we got it right.
My point is this: Matt Wisler is not a series of statistical entries on a spreadsheet. He's a young man, with muscles and bones and brains and guts. I'm never going to overlook that, because I shouldn't.
It's very popular on this board to make fun of anyone who doesn't back their argument with strict statistical analysis (no such thing as grit or clutch, right?). But I played a long time and have coached even longer, and I promise you, it's more than random when some people rise to the occasion and others wilt. Or when one guy develops and another doesn't.
Do I over rely on those things with my decisions? Probably I do. But I'm okay with that. I'm aware when I go against a trend or a stat. Doesn't make me a moron or a dinosaur, it means I value more than the statistical analysis. I realize you don't agree with that, but does it make sense?
