That’s the main thing.

This whole argument seems foolish to me. There’s an easy way to settle it, at least in the abstract. Do sabermetrics do a better job of predicting who is going to win than the more traditional stats? If not, they are a waste of time. If so, then use them.

Everybody uses statistics. The only thing special about batting average, RBI’s, etc. is that they were first compiled a long time ago. If you’re going to say X is better than Y because he has a higher batting average, despite having a lower OPS, you have to explain why batting average is a better measure of a player’s contribution to winning. (The OPS advocate has the opposite problem, of course). That batting average is older doesn’t count.

It’s not exactly the same in other sports (though I expect basketball to make significant sabermetric advances soon), because in baseball there are so many traceable data points. If you (rightly) consider each pitch a mappable event, then you have about 150 events per team per game. Since each team plays 162 games each year, that means you have about 24300 data points per season. When this much data stacks up, why wouldn’t people, especially those in charge of churning out winning teams, try to find things that correlate to winning, and how strong those correlations are?

In order for this statement to make sense, the people on the other side of the argument would have to be arguing that there’s no need to play the games on the field because we can create statistical models to predict the future. The problem, of course, is that nobody is saying anything remotely close to that. Nobody’s neglecting to address that point, it’s just irrelevant.

And yet when your choice is say Jerry Hairston as your everyday LF or your bench player over Brett Gardner, do the numbers make your decision for you – or do you go with your gut? Or do you sign Matt Holliday for 3 more Ws(?). How many wins do each player on each team guarantee based on these predictors? do they add up? To what? Debates, I think.

I don’t think Mike Silva or any savvy observer of baseball dismisses anything 100%. Most of us like stats. But the one and only fact is the one most of you neglect to address, they are based on the past. If they could accurately predict performance, why play the games? Well, for the money, natch.

Can they tell you Bucky Dent hits that HR v. Mike Torres? or that Alex Rodriguez was juicing? The narrow focus of most sports people, while logical & pragmatic, is a weakness. You can rip anyone at anytime for having a dissenting opinion, it made America famous. But just like the US & the world’s state now, these new stats just dig a deeper hole. While you, if you’re lucky, get paid to see what crawls out. What’s not to like, huh?

Rough numbers off the top of my head:

~20 degree angle = line drive

~45 degree angle = fly ball

~70+ degree angle = popup

The lines between them are fuzzy, and obviously it’s a judgment call made on the spot.

I care, because I don’t respect the opinions of people who don’t understand the value/utility of statistical analysis. If two people have different opinions about the value of a certain player or strategy or anything at all, really, and one has evidence on his side and the other eschews the very concept of trying to gather such evidence, why would you put any credence at all into the opinions of the latter person? This isn’t a baseball thing, it holds true in any walk of life.

“They don’t become any less telling of statistics just because some stodgy old baseball writers & MLB personnel don’t use them.”

First of all, I’m sorry, but I’m not quite sure what this sentence means… Poor writing aside, though, I think you’re trying to say that people who appreciate statistical analysis don’t have to be sensitive about “stodgy old baseball writers & MLB personnel” dismissing such statistical analysis. But you’re creating a fantasy conflict that doesn’t actually exist. This isn’t a geeks vs. jocks argument, as it’s often made out to be. I don’t care if the person dismissing statistical analysis is a stodgy old man or a 22 year old kid in his mother’s basement, he’s wrong either way.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/m.....ine-drive/

One thing I noticed is that Cameron’s UZR seems to trend with where he’s playing, which could be affected by how line drives and fly balls are differentiated.

http://www.fangraphs.com/stats.....F#fielding