My Baseball Bias: In Defense Of Murray Chass

What the hell…even Fritz Honka had someone to defend him!

Some bloggers are going to take credit for Chass’s departure, who in a 2007 column wrote of his distaste for the statistics-based direction the game has moved to during the last decade. The website “Baseball Prospectus” penned an open letter to Chass and criticized him on this point. Like sheep, other internet writers followed suit. My point is, so what if Chass, who was inducted into the writers’ wing of the baseball Hall of Fame in 2003, didn’t care for what he labeled, “new-age baseball statistics?’’ To be honest, I’m not sure if VORP really adds anything, or simply confuses one’s enjoyment of this beautiful sport. Baseball is a game packed with numbers, some valuable and some not. Does every statistic have meaning?

Under General Manager Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics have placed a heavy emphasis on on-base percentage, but have little or no concern for base stealing, or advancing a runner via a sacrifice bunt. What can we take from this? I think there were instances when had the A’s used the latter strategy, the team would have advanced in the playoffs. But they were stubborn, and paid the consequences. When Joe Torre was managing the Yankees to multiple World Series titles, he never had a problem moving a runner over or swiping a bag. Oh yeah, the A’s never got past the opening round, and only advanced to the second round in 2006 before getting swept by the Detroit Tigers.