Great Night. Rough Morning. Better Day. Worse Column.
I write this column with a headache. I went to a meeting of the SABR Analytics Conference here Thursday night. The throbbing may never stop.
SABR stands for Society for American Baseball Research. It is basically an organization that turns a child’s game into calculus. A huge room at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication on the downtown campus of Arizona State was nearly full, so my cynicism must be misplaced.
...Of all the statistical gobbledygook flying around, Dipoto, though a disciple of SABR analytics, a.k.a. sabermetrics, championed the retention of the human element in what is, and always will be, a game played by humans.
“The live eyes [of scouts] do mean something,” he said.
He was realistic about the role these statistics play. He said that, despite all the written material, video presentations and discussions of other teams’ tendencies, “There is always gonna be an element of the team that says, ‘Aw, I’m just going to go out and play.’”
In my experience, that “element” never exceeds 25 players.
...Squadron spoke the SABR language perfectly. He showed pitching charts that looked like beehives. He said technology was always changing, that there are “new, faster platforms.” That “you have to keep iterating.”
My first question to Scioscia next time I see him will be: “Are you iterating?”
He’ll probably slug me.
As Scioscia would say, that’s all I got. Besides, I need aspirin.
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1. Mirabelli Dictu (Chris McClinch) Posted: March 08, 2013 at 10:06 AM (#4383870)Wow is this spectacularly wrong. Yes, a portion of the organization is stat minded folks doing stat things but SABR is so much more than that. It is an organization that actively explores the history of the game and tries to keep it at the forefront. For every sat based presentation at the convention there is one about scouts or some historical figure that is forgotten about or so much more.
The informal discussions (my favorite part of every convention) are often just good old fashioned but informed baseball discussion. I can't imagine a more fun group of baseball fans, not number crunchers, baseball fans anywhere.
Bingo. To me the most important/rewarding work I've read over the years as a member has been the non-stat related work. The quality of material that is published is often at an extremely high level, and as noted, local chapter/convention meeting banter is unmatched.
Several years ago SABR created the Chadwick Award, to honor the greatest researchers in history, a veritable Hall of Fame for the field, Of the 22 honorees thus far, five could be said to lean toward the statistical in their research,
Chadwick Award.
That strikes me as fairly representative.
Most especially including the fine biographical material produced under the guidance and assistance of the gentleman who posted immediate after this.
And for God's sake, can we PLEASE finally put away the "they told Torii there was no money and then signed Hamilton" bulls**t?! Hunter signed with Detroit on November 16th. The Angels were still pursuing Zack Greinke at that time, who signed for kind of a lot of money with LA about 3-4 weeks later, and suddenly the Angels had a lot of cash they were willing to part with, and a willing taker. Maybe if Hunter had waited it out a bit, he'd still be in Anaheim.
I love Torii and everything he did for the Angels these last 5 years.
But Hamilton is 1) 5 years younger and 2) a bigger star. Seems to me the Angels took a go big or go home approach here, and had they not landed Hamilton they would have gone with internal options. I don't think it likely they were going to spend in Hunter's range, he did the right thing to sign with the Tigers.
Because Bill James made the well-intentioned mistake of calling it "sabermetrics" and now it's a connection that SABR can't avoid no matter what SABR really is. If you want to do your bit for helping clarify what SABR is, stop using the term sabermetrics.
The SABR Rattlers would be a good new for a nerdy alt rock band.
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