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Someone check the Internet connection under the roundtable.

Functioning link to the story (hopefully).

And may I say, it's about bloody time...

But when it comes to baseball, he welcomes input from 63-year-old Enos Cabell, who signed his first professional contract in 1968.

How old is he??? (Sigh.)

Pat Gillick:

"The one thing I think now, I don't see how the reporters, with everything they have to do, how they have time to watch the game. And that's what I want to say about statistics. They're fine. But the important thing is to watch the game. Sometimes if you're doing too much statistically, you can miss a lot of what's going on in the ballgame."

Really? If anything is keeping reporters from having "time to watch the game," it's probably the way-higher output demands in the new-media age, not looking up a hitter's BABIP.

There's a lot of intuition in any job. It's how you formulate a good hypothesis. Then you have to test it with data. The data can be wins, batting average or widgets sold.

The scouts are there to tell you things you can't get from data - like "Can he learn to hit/throw a slider?"

when it comes to baseball, he welcomes input from 63-year-old Enos Cabell

I didn't realize that cocaine use during one's playing career enhances the ability to evaluate talent. Is it the new competitive advantage in player analysis?

Really? If anything is keeping reporters from having "time to watch the game," it's probably the way-higher output demands in the new-media age, not looking up a hitter's BABIP.

Gillick might think that the reporters are generating all the statistics themselves. I think it's easier to look stats up on bbref.com than it is to flip through a giant baseball encyclopedia.

Gillick might think that the reporters are generating all the statistics themselves. I think it's easier to look stats up on bbref.com than it is to flip through a giant baseball encyclopedia.

That is what I was thinking. It's clear he doesn't really know how these stats are generated or how much having knowledge of database design or programming can help speed the process up.

For a team of course looking at bb-ref is probably not really that too useful, but anything that they develop themselves is really a matter of developing the program to spit out the results they want. After that it's not that time intensive.

For a team of course looking at bb-ref is probably not really that too useful,

Nice touch with BB-Ref's disclaimer under the salary information: "All values are estimates and should not be used by GM's for actual team planning."

Most successful round table ever!