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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Sam Hutcheson with the gris-gris on Chris-Chris, Rey-Rey and SABR.
Enter Chris Dial.
Dial loved him some Rey Ordonez. Don’t let that faux-shocked “Who, me?!” fool you. Rey Ordonez was the dreamiest player that Busey ever dreamed to dream. Well. Kind of. See, back then, no one really believed defense was important. I mean, no one important. Just, like, scouts and general managers and ####. No one on Usenet. Except Dial. Chris believed. Oh, how Chris believed. He held his hands wide and clapped and clapped and clapped. Certainly it was true. Defense was important damnit, and Rey Ordonez was a defensive god damnit, so therefore everyone was wrong and Chris was right and SHUTUPSHUTPSHUTUPSHUTUP! It was like that in the land, sometimes. But no one would listen Chris, how ever loudly he clapped. It was like that in the land sometimes, too.
So here’s what Dial did. Short version. Dial grabbed everything he could find about defense in major league baseball and he shoved it through about twenty-three different spreadsheets. He rangled. He finagled. He conjoled. He did math. Complicated math. And in the end, he came up with a protean sludge that would eventually evolve into his vaunted defensive methodology.
Turns out Rey Ordonez actually didn’t have much value. Turns out even after accounting for his defense he was basically worthless, a flashy showboat with a knack for highlight reel plays but otherwise unspectactular in any aspect of the game. The fact that he couldn’t so much as lay down a sac bunt in the most important at bat of his career, effectively eliminating his team from the playoffs singlehandedly? Cake. Turns out Rey Ordonez really did suck.
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The opening, for me, was beautiful.
As a non-SABR member, I'm curious to know how it became so closely tied to stat geeks. I don't see stat geeks as baseball researchers so much as baseball analysts, and many of the true baseball researchers I know are not into stats much at all. It seems like "SABR" isn't a particularly apt (or perhaps I mean "thorough") description of the group's focus.
Otherwise, though, even without knowing the characters very well, this article was highly entertaining.
Probably because Bill James called what he was doing sabermetrics.
Why do you think analysis isn't research, though?
As GGC and DMN say, it really comes down to Bill James and his term for what he did. James = stats and James = "sabermetrics" so "sabermetrics" = stats. I do think you bring up a good point that a lot of SABR and a lot of SABR members aren't stat driven. A lot of the history research isn't remotely interested in stats, for example. And it bears remembering that this too is SABR. I associate SABR with stats personally because I associate SABR with all of my pointy-headed stat-geek friends. It is, admittedly, a bit of circular reasoning.
That's a good point. I guess it's my personal bias that when I hear the word "research" I think "historical research." In the same vein as why Sam says above that he associates SABR with his pointy-headed friends, I associate "baseball research" with my bookwormy history-of-the-game friends. Stats, and really sabermetrics in particular, are more invention than discovery in my mind, which of course still falls under the broad umbrella of research. For whatever reason, SABR makes me think of Jules Tygiel and Charles Alexander before Bill James and Rob Neyer.
Me too. I'm not a member and don't know for sure, but I imagine the majority of SABR is more interested in history and anecdote, for lack of a better word, than in improving stats and analysis.
Taking the empty Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (think snazzier Wheel Pals 5 Car Fleet by Tonka) system from the airport to the hotel...I saw an old-timer (and that's coming from me!) with an Indians bookbag and I asked him if he was going to the convention. Within a minute he told me about a major split in the SABR ranks, the historical crowd and the stats gang...I told him I enjoyed both and that I was involved with BTF/Baseball Primer.
It was a lonely final mile to the Renaissance Hotel...
See, this I don't get. I know of this rift. I know that a faction of SABR thinks the SDCNs are ruining it all. What I don't get is why that is the case. Are they afraid of the new blood? Do they have a warped perception about what the stat geeks are all about? Do I? Is it just a natural and understandable aversion to Dial? And while we're at it, how does that rift get bridged? If it does at all. I'm peripheral to the whole thing. I am associated with the SDCNs because a significant minority of them have been my "imaginary internet friends" for over a decade now. But I just don't get this whole rift thing. It's not like Primer guys don't enjoy a little historical research every now and then. I just don't get it at all.
Unless it's the aversion to Dial thing. That I _totally_ get.
I think that alot of it is a generational thing. There's some exceptions to this of course, but the really old fogies want Palmer, Cramer, David Smith, and David Vincent off of their lawns, while those guys probably want us off of their lawns. Fangraphs? What's that? You mean there's something on the net other than retrosheet?
Also, I have to admit that I find the historical stuff MUCH more interesting than the stat stuff. I just find 25 minutes too short an amount of time to do a stat presentation because either the methodology or the results get short-changed (although the steroids one seemed to time it perfectly).
I need you all to keep pestering me throughout the year to make sure that I do submit my presentation for DC next year.
It's essentially the same reason why statheads and scouts are at odds, and why statheads and journalists are at odds. There are some for whom the most fun aspect of baseball is the mythology of it all. For good or for ill, statheads are anti-mythology.
and me i like hearing stories and unlike a lot of people i don't really care if it was pittsburgh instead of philly the day some old timer went 4/5 and squeeze played in the winning run
isn't sam hutchinson one of the 60 somethings his own self?
here and i thought most new members of sabr are in their 20s to 30s.
and of course you have to have a lot of extra money hanging around to go to one of the conventions. you have to pay for plane tickets. you have to pay to park your car at the airport for 5 days. you have to pay $100-200 a DAY for 5 days for hotel. you have to pay for 3 meals a DAY - and if you drink alcohol like a whole lot of guys say they do - that must be hundreds more right there.
You have me confused with someone else, perhaps. I'm older than a lot of Primates but I'm not that old. Mid-30s.
Not to mention play poker until all hours of the morning. Someone has to lose, and losing those games ain't cheap.
-- MWE
sorry
i don't have you confused with someone else - i seriously thought you were andy's age. i've been reading your comments here since 02 and i always thought you were my daddy's age
and i like your writing. i know you don't like dial, but he is write about how you should right a lot more...
hehhehheh
i would guess you are right about gambling money needed too. i didn't think of that i guess because i don't gamble.
i was trying to add up the least amount of cost because i really wanted to go and theres NO way i would go without Husband and it added up best i could tell to a couple thousand and that is a lot of $$$
I don't gamble or drink, and our time in Cleveland was in the $2K range. DC's going to be worse (although Paula won't be going).
-- MWE
you don't drink either??? kewl!!!!
now i can count 6 primates who don't drink!!!!!
and i would guess paula don't have a problem with you going alone to conventions when most everyone else there is a male stat geek. drunk or sober
Not exactly by choice (although I wasn't a heavy drinker before). Alcohol doesn't mix with some of the medicines that I have to take. As the guys know, I do drink O'Douls or St. Pauli Girl NA.
This will only be the second one that I attend alone (St. Louis was the first). Paula doesn't exactly LIKE it when I go alone; it's more that she tolerates it (as she tolerates everything baseball-related that I do). But we've done the DC thing a couple of times, and there's nothing that she especially likes to do in the area.
-- MWE
Oh, I love Chris. He's one of my oldest baseball friends. We fight all the time, yes. We insult each other viciously. He's a Mets fan, I'm a Braves fan. But don't confuse that with real disdain. Chris and I have been friends for over a decade now. Even when he thought St. Rey was worth a run a game. Even when I was spinning madly to find a rock big enough to hide John Rocker beneath.
i am glad you take your medicine although i am sorry you have to take medicine at all.
- grinning
i see paula is doing her Job
and trust me on this i know ALL about having to make sure your man don't "forget" his medicine/drs appointments
- and i would guess paula would not have real too much tolerance if the convention was almost all females who look like scarlett johanson/jessica beil (or your idea of female who is hot and, um, eager - ahem - for the, uh, pleasure - ahem - of your company)
sam,
i like dial my own self. he has a, um, forceful - personality. but then so do a lot of guys here. and he has got a lot of interesting things to say about a lot of things and he has taught me a lot about baseball and a lot of other things too
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