Baseball adds value to Sabermetrics! Sabermetrics add value to arbitration hearings.
Anyone who has ever played the game knows "You're only as good as your last at bat" - when it comes to winning, stats prove why, but they're not the root cause!
Too many guys that sucked have won the biggest games for stats to truly mean a damn...
Sabermetrics add value to baseball because they help us understand which players add real value, taking subjective opinions out of the equation. For many people who are "anti-statheads," they still like to use stats, just the wrong ones. Seriously, a win-loss record does not tell the whole story of a pitcher's effectiveness on the mound, does it?. A .300 batting average suddenly does not look as good when the player's OBP is only .330, because he cannot draw walks and makes too many outs.
Stats are good at looking at which players were most valuable in the past, but of course they cannot predict future success. Also, of course there are other factors that go into winning, leadership and other intangible qualities. But some statistical analysis allows baseball operations departments--from Theo Epstein's group in Boston--to make personnel decisions based on objective data, rather than overpaying for players who, say, steal hit .300 with a .330 OBP, steal 40 bases but get thrown out 20 times.
Manny, the Rays--I think you were the guy who Silverman paid to blog about them, right?--and Andrew Friedman are big fans of information, and have found the right mix of relying on traditional scouting techniques and statistical analysis.
"Too many guys that sucked have won the biggest games for stats to truly mean a damn..."
1,759
2,596
8,930
Stats are good at looking at which players were most valuable in the past, but of course they cannot predict future success. Also, of course there are other factors that go into winning, leadership and other intangible qualities. But some statistical analysis allows baseball operations departments--from Theo Epstein's group in Boston--to make personnel decisions based on objective data, rather than overpaying for players who, say, steal hit .300 with a .330 OBP, steal 40 bases but get thrown out 20 times.
Manny, the Rays--I think you were the guy who Silverman paid to blog about them, right?--and Andrew Friedman are big fans of information, and have found the right mix of relying on traditional scouting techniques and statistical analysis.
"Too many guys that sucked have won the biggest games for stats to truly mean a damn..."
The reason there, though, is sample size.