I can understand his struggling with how it works, but to have never even heard of WARP seems like a more embarrassing confession of his own ignorance than he quite realizes. He doesn't have to agree with it, or like it, or even write about it.

But geesh.

Why do I feel with every Pierce piece I read that he's writing superb satire?

And it's not like he needs to compute WARP himself for it to be useful; I mean, I'm sure he COULD compute, say, ERA if he had to (or wanted to), but I imagine he feels pretty comfortable with seeing the ERA number printed somewhere and understanding what the number is attempting to capture. He understands what ERA "means," even though he's not computing it himself.

Now maybe WARP is more esoteric, but is it such a leap to go from a simple abstraction such as ERA (for every 9 innings this guy pitches, this number represents the number of "earned runs"---another sorta abstraction---to two decimal places (!!) that he has allowed) to a more complex abstraction such as WARP?

Once you understand what WARP represents, it's a hell of a lot more useful than ERA in determining a player's contribution.

And, as with ERA, you don't even have do the math, because by the time you see the number someone else has already done it!!

#2: Maybe because on the evidence of the excerpt alone, he's a damned fine writer?

Yeah, I find it hard to believe he's never heard of WARP (or WAR) or that he's confused by B-R's explanation, which is very basic.

At least he's not being a Chass about it though.

I think this blog entry was just an excuse to make the timely Wade Boggs joke. I hope his next one is about Bill Monbouquette.

Stop parading ignorance around like it's a virtue. I've been saying this to and about sportswriters for longer than I care to remember. '

In what other profession is it seen as a virtue to not know about the latest thinking?

I had readers (rightfully) taking me to task today for making a tired Lincecum pot joke, and this guy gets to make Wade Boggs riffs? Man, I need to write for an easier audience.

I had readers (rightfully) taking me to task today for making a tired Lincecum pot joke, and this guy gets to make Wade Boggs riffs? Man, I need to write for an easier audience.

Don't feel bad, Craig, we still love you. ;)

A Wade Boggs riff? I know it's nearly Valentine's Day, but keep those tenor saxes down please.

Incidentally, the best BTF pot joke was a headline: BRAVES TRADE BONG FOR LEITER, LATER REALIZE ERROR

Stop parading ignorance around like it's a virtue.

To his credit he looked up what it meant and didn't reject the concept.

and don’t even get me started on WARP2 and WARP3.

WARP2: WARP1 with a timeline adjustment.
WARP3: WARP2 with a schedule length adjustment.

The exact mechanics of those things may be tricky, but the concepts are not, especially.

Are you guys serious when you can't believe he's never heard of WARP? Outside of BTF and sites I've found directly via BTF, I don't think I've ever seen WARP cited at all.

I think one of the biggest hurdles when one is introduced to WAR-type analysis is that the wins are an abstraction, and that ~10 runs is ~1 win. Easy to grasp, but it can take some time to accept/understand.

Stop parading ignorance around like it's a virtue. I've been saying this to and about sportswriters for longer than I care to remember.

I will consider this just as soon as people stop parading metric generation as "knowledge," and cease to confuse measurement with value.

There's a nugget of truth buried in these sorts of anti-statistical screeds, if one has the time and inclination to mine it. They are all undergirded by a very human reaction against the ever increasing and ongoing mechanization of the entirity of the human sphere. There is a deep truth, akin to the need that drove artisans and craftsmen to protest the Industrial Revolution, running through most of these pieces. A need to stop the Man In The Grey Flannel Suit at the turnstyles and ask, aghast, "Really, we need to drop advanced performance metrics on our *games?*" It's the same undercurrent that makes movies like Office Space and shows like The Office popular. It's the driving force behind Dilbert cartoons. Of course, the problem comes down to writers who either can't or won't make the point well, which isn't too unexpected. With rare exceptions, journalists are writers who write poorly (and modern journalists write even more poorly than their predecessors.) Sports journalists are typically journalists who write with even less alacrity or grace. And now they've all been thrown into a maelstrom of "blogging" where they not only have to come up with words, but they have to come up with words hourly. The result is shoddy attempts to convey complex concerns and preferences, usually penned by bad writers to start with.

Add to that the fact that the Murray Chass class of sportswriters are being downsized while ESPN grabs cheap writers by the dozens from the sea of bloggers...

Maybe I'll try to suss the thought out more later. I'm stuck in Chicago for the night. What the hell else am I going to do? But first, pizza.

Are you guys serious when you can't believe he's never heard of WARP? Outside of BTF and sites I've found directly via BTF, I don't think I've ever seen WARP cited at all.

Yeah, this too. It's like talking to your uncle who works construction or the docks about music over a Thanksgiving dinner and breaking out "I can't believe you've never heard of The Dirty Projectors."

Are you guys serious when you can't believe he's never heard of WARP? Outside of BTF and sites I've found directly via BTF, I don't think I've ever seen WARP cited at all.

Yes. I'd expect him to be familiar with BP at the very least, and it'd be pretty difficult to spend much time there and not see a reference to the concept. I'd also expect him to have come across an introductory article on sabermetrics written in the last few years, any of which would discuss WARP/WAR/VORP, or at least the underlying concepts.

But most likely, as an insider, wouldn't he have heard grumblings about all these new methods of evaluating players that supposedly every front office is using, and wonder what they are? WAR is about a quarter of the way down the page on the Wikipedia "sabermetrics" page.

Stop parading ignorance around like it's a virtue. I've been saying this to and about sportswriters for longer than I care to remember.

In what other profession is it seen as a virtue to not know about the latest thinking?

Well, Sarah Palin and her ilk seem to be doing pretty well with making a virtue out of being willfully ignorant -- oh, I'm sorry, "anti-elite." But, yeah, it's quite rare outside of the sportswriter sphere for someone who writes about a given subject for a living to regularly pen columns announcing, with aplomb, their insistence at not keeping up with developments in that given field.

It's like talking to your uncle who works construction or the docks about music over a Thanksgiving dinner and breaking out "I can't believe you've never heard of The Dirty Projectors."

No, that analogy doesn't really work. The Dirty Projectors have nothing to do with your uncle's work in construction or the docks. Statistical metrics such as WARP have a great deal to do with understanding baseball, and baseball is what Pierce is writing about.

If your uncle who works in construction announced at the dinner table that he'd never heard of, say, laser leveling, then you would be entirely justified in breaking out with, "I can't believe you've never heard of laser leveling."

They are all undergirded by a very human reaction against the ever increasing and ongoing mechanization of the entirity of the human sphere. There is a deep truth, akin to the need that drove artisans and craftsmen to protest the Industrial Revolution, running through most of these pieces.

Has Sam been taking Gaelan pills?

Statistical metrics such as WARP have a great deal to do with understanding baseball, and baseball is what Pierce is writing about.

I think that's overstated. You can understand and write about baseball without delving too deeply (or at all, in some cases) into the latest statistical measures. I don't understand or remotely support being disdainful of these endeavors, as is often the case, but I don't think they need to be understood for someone to be effective at covering baseball. I think it's important to understand the bigger concepts (outs are precious, defense is more than fielding percentage, pitchers have limited control on BIP, etc.) that have arisen in the last few decades. But the subsequent, finer-grained gains that we see in WARP don't seem to be as important to either understand or convey to the broader audience.

I know this is a bit of heresy around here, but that broader audience includes me. I frankly don't give a rat's ass about WARP or WAR or similar measurements. They really add nothing to my appreciation of the game. I respect the work those guys are doing on them and I'll often defer to their wisdom, but the latest incremental movements in measuring value simply are not something that appeals to me.

You can understand and write about baseball without delving too deeply (or at all, in some cases) into the latest statistical measures.

Of course. Hell, I do it all the time. But that doesn't mean that an understanding, or at least an awareness, of the latest (or at least modern) statistical measures couldn't improve one's understanding and writing.

I frankly don't give a rat's ass about WARP or WAR or similar measurements. They really add nothing to my appreciation of the game. I respect the work those guys are doing on them and I'll often defer to their wisdom, but the latest incremental movements in measuring value simply are not something that appeals to me.

I'll partially agree, and partially disagree. I don't follow at all the minute issues regarding the finer points of these metrics, and whether this particular latest metric is superior that one is something I don't care about in the least. But the value that these metrics, writ large, and the discussion around them, writ large, has provided to my perception of how baseball games are won and lost is enormous. The field of inquiry has been greatly valuable to me even though I don't follow it closely.

on the evidence of the excerpt, he's a halfwit who uses words like "Intertoobz" and brags about his ignorance.

He's not saying he's proud of his ignorance. He's just saying he doesn't know it. And since when is using colloquial language the sign of a bad writer? If it is, then most screenwriters are sure in deep ####.

I can't believe I'm saying this - I dislike Plaschke, Simers, and Mariotti as much as anyone - but I still think maybe we all need to chill on the knee-jerk anti-sportswriter reaction. When I read this, it reminds me of my dad, in the way he writes and the things he says. And my dad is an intelligent, open-minded person who loves baseball as much as the rest of us. He's just old, and hasn't grown up around the stat stuff my brothers and I have. He freely admits to not knowing about it, and at this point he also freely admits to not having the patience to learn about it at his age.

Now this guy isn't my dad, of course. But it's clear if you actually read what he's saying that he's a similar kind of person. He's not actually insulting statheads - he's poking fun at them, yes, but he also explicitly says: "I respect greatly anyone’s ability to devise new paradigms through which to look at a sport." All he's saying is that sabermetrics are dense and hard to understand to a newbie. Are you saying that's not true? Besides, blatantly insulting anyone who professes not to know the tenets of sabermetrics isn't going to win the movement any new followers.

Of course. Hell, I do it all the time. But that doesn't mean that an understanding, or at least an awareness, of the latest (or at least modern) statistical measures couldn't improve one's understanding and writing.

In some cases. In others, it wouldn't have much of an impact at all.

I really enjoy knowing and understanding and discussing the rules of baseball, and always have. I probably have a better knowledge of the rulebook than most people here, including many of the statheady writers that post here or elsewhere. Those gents might become better writers if they had greater knowledge of the rulebook. But their failure to pursue such information does not mean that will meaningfully impact how well they are able to write about baseball.

There is probably too much to know and learn about baseball for all of us to actively pursue. Picking one line of inquiry among them as imperative to writing about the sport is folly in my opinion. As I said before, I don't excuse or support the disdainful attitude toward advanced metrics that are often demonstrated in columns linked here. But I don't like the attitude that the pursuit of such deeper understanding of advanced metrics is required either.

When I read this, it reminds me of my dad, in the way he writes and the things he says. And my dad is an intelligent, open-minded person who loves baseball as much as the rest of us. He's just old, and hasn't grown up around the stat stuff my brothers and I have. He freely admits to not knowing about it, and at this point he also freely admits to not having the patience to learn about it at his age.

That's all well and good but misses a larger point. I'm fine with old timers not being up on the latest and greatest technology whether it is in sports or cars or cooking or whatever. However, that does not give them the right to criticize and insult those who are trying to find better ways to accomplish something.

If Pierce or Chass or Shaughnessy doesn't want to learn about new methods of player evaluation, that is OK. They can write public interest stories about what a great guy player X is. If they want to still be considered "expert" in their chosen field then they either need to be willing to use the new metrics or learn enough about the new metrics to come up with a coherent argument as to why they do not work.

"I don't feel like using a calculator" is not a coherent argument.

I know this is a bit of heresy around here, but that broader audience includes me. I frankly don't give a rat's ass about WARP or WAR or similar measurements. They really add nothing to my appreciation of the game. I respect the work those guys are doing on them and I'll often defer to their wisdom, but the latest incremental movements in measuring value simply are not something that appeals to me.

I agree. The need to fine tune these things has, in my ever humble opinion, passed the point of diminishing returns into absurdity. Ron Johnson and I used to talk about false precision on the Usenets, back in teh day, and I think the vast majority of the new stats are far more false precision than precision. And let's be honest. These sorts of list-ranking orders and probability projections have far more to do with fantasy baseball than with actual baseball. Outside of the fantasy realm, they're really only useful for arguing about free agent signings and award/HOF recognition. That is to say, aside from pretend games of fantasy where you "run" your "team", the majority of advanced stats are only useful for throwing about in flame wars on the internet.

Pierce no more needs to know about WARP to cover baseball than he needs to know about chord change techniques to cover music. You guys are through the looking glass on these sorts of "mediot" bashings. This guys doesn't know a stat that 98% of baseball fans have never heard of. News at freakin' 11.

I agree with the above sentiment that a writer flaunting ignorance is distasteful to me.

But, read the BP explanation. It doesn't teach you anything about WARP. This is the entirety of the nuts and bolts section:

To compute WARP, Baseball Prospectus uses three other proprietary statistics: Batting Runs Above Replacement (BRAR), Fielding Runs Above Replacement (FRAR), and Pitching Runs Above Replacement (PRAR). The three numbers are added and divided by the number of runs per win that season (another proprietary number. In recent years, this number is around 10).

WTF? "WARP" is a number we made up based on the performance of an imaginary player. We calculate it by adding up three other numbers that we made up, and dividing by a fourth number that we made up, which is close to 10. Enjoy!

If you are coming to this without previous knowledge of how BP operates, and of sabertmetrics in general, the explanation is useless and deserving of mockery. Pierce apparently gave it a go, and didn't scoff at the idea of the stat, but was repulsed by this nonsense inadequate explanation ... you could call this a good faith effort.

" 'toobz" grants the moment and denies the moment
hidden ball trick

I'm fine with old timers not being up on the latest and greatest technology whether it is in sports or cars or cooking or whatever. However, that does not give them the right to criticize and insult those who are trying to find better ways to accomplish something.

There's a difference between criticizing and insulting and poking fun. Again, in his words:

"I respect greatly anyone’s ability to devise new paradigms through which to look at a sport."

#28 is right on........Pierce is certaily not a bad writer by the standards of sportswriting, but he's insanely overrated in the lefty blogosphere: multi-sentence paragraphs and a decent vocabulary alone do not make deathless prose.

And since when is using colloquial language the sign of a bad writer?

Actually, unless it's being used in dialogue, in order to establish character, using colloquial language is one of the signs I look for to tell me that what I'm reading might be a piece of glib writing. It's the counterpart to complicated sentence structures and needlessly big words.

However, ['being too senile to figure out young studs' stuff'] does not give [old timers] the right to criticize and insult those who are trying to find better ways to accomplish something.

Well, pace from my facetious summary, experience does indeed give old timers the right to criticize new ideas. I was in my late 20s before I caught sight of a mobile phone, and I think people who are stuck to one of those while being on 24-hour call for work are fools. Good fences make good neighbours, and that includes the fence between work and not-work. It's not a better way, it's just a different way.

PreservedFish in [28] does us all a service in pointing out how informative Pierce might have found BPro's site.

If they want to still be considered "expert" in their chosen field then they either need to be willing to use the new metrics or learn enough about the new metrics to come up with a coherent argument as to why they do not work.

I couldn't disagree more. Plenty of true baseball experts (and I mean legit fountains of baseball knowledge and wisdom) know nothing or virtually nothing about WARP or the metric du jour. These metrics are great, and obviously add value and pleasure to the game for many people. That does not mean one has to either embrace them or refute them.

If I go to Baseball-Reference and pull up, say, Richie Zisk, I think there's more than information there for me to have a real good idea of his value. I don't need WARP or EqA or whatever - not that they aren't great. But familiarity (or lack thereof) with them doesn't necessarily mean one is, or is not, "expert" about baseball player valuation.

Well, pace from my facetious summary, experience does indeed give old timers the right to criticize new ideas. I was in my late 20s before I caught sight of a mobile phone, and I think people who are stuck to one of those while being on 24-hour call for work are fools. Good fences make good neighbours, and that includes the fence between work and not-work. It's not a better way, it's just a different way.

But there is a difference between your take on cell phones and the take of the Chasses of the world on new stats. If I read your comment right you have a philosophical disagreement with people who are always reachable because they are not able to escape the pressures of work.

Conversely these writers do not act in this way. They would simply say "I don't use a cell phone so it is bad." If Piercce or Plaschke or Chass or any of these guys want to give a valid reason for not using WARP or UZR or any other stat, I'm good but that is not something that they do.

Has Sam been taking Gaelan pills?

Maybe it's a James Burke injection.

I think it's important to understand the bigger concepts (outs are precious, defense is more than fielding percentage, pitchers have limited control on BIP, etc.) that have arisen in the last few decades. But the subsequent, finer-grained gains that we see in WARP don't seem to be as important to either understand or convey to the broader audience.

I think this is important. The increasingly-popular metrics aren't important but for the fact that they reflect changing ideas about the game. If somebody doesn't like or understand WAR, that's fine. But he needs to be open to advances that have been made in understanding what is most important to scoring and preventing runs, such as the examples you give above.

The need to fine tune these things has, in my ever humble opinion, passed the point of diminishing returns into absurdity.

Maybe so. On the other hand, the extent to which conventional beliefs have been called into question in recent years would indicate that some of these efforts have and will have dramatic effects on the understanding of the game. And as with any research, you never know when a breakthrough will occur. There's obviously a lot of work to be done in objectively measuring fielding competency, for example.

Conversely these writers do not act in this way.

Chass and Pierce are, I think, making the same complaint with slightly different emphasis. Plaschke I don't read because he is glib and silly.

Chass' argument, which he expresses too belligerently to be taken seriously, is that he doesn't need to rank people on the basis of the new numbers. He'll be happy to work with his old methods. He takes this further and in directions I don't follow him in, but that's essentially it.

Pierce's argument is more along the lines of Sam Hutcheson's comments in [27]. Do the new metrics add anything I can't figure out to my own satisfaction? This is more dangerous to the stathead enterprise. Once you learn a few things from the statheads, you can actually junk their newfangled stats.

The cellphone argument is much the same: I don't need a cellphone to do a good job for you, and if you make me use a cellphone there's something wrong with the way you've organized the work.

And let's be honest. These sorts of list-ranking orders and probability projections have far more to do with fantasy baseball than with actual baseball.

I've asked this before and never seem to get an answer: How accurate are all those PECOTA projections? How well does BP do in forecasting division races? If you took your hard earned cash tried to bank those projections in Vegas, would you wind up rich or broke?

Every year we get these projections and predictions? Why don't they include their last year's projections and predictions, so that we can see how they came out?

There used to be places where they rated all the tout sheets like Danny Sheridan, so that you could compare their boasts to their actual performance. Do they have such a thing for the PECOTAs and ZIPs of the baseball world? Or is that a rude question? I get the feeling sometimes that these guys operate on a "If we're right it shows that we're brilliant, and if we're wrong we were the victims of unforeseen factors and random luck" basis.

I can't believe I'm saying this - I dislike Plaschke, Simers, and Mariotti as much as anyone - but I still think maybe we all need to chill on the knee-jerk anti-sportswriter reaction.

Well, most of that comes about because Repoz (who's only doing his job) always manages to post the most buffoonish columns by the most predictably harrumphing writers. If Repoz ever fine tuned his job requirements, we'd get a lot less of this.

OTOH I do think that BTF has made some strides in the knee jerk end of things. I remember the first time I ever stumbled upon the old Clutch Hits, I spent the better part of two hours arguing with two morons who seemed to think that Leonard Koppett (who was then still alive) didn't understand baseball as well as these two particular morons did. Fortunately I think that this sort of scattershot dissing of the writers has kind of calmed down, thanks in part to the example of Posnanski, who seems to function here as a sort of Sidney Poitier of mainstream sportswriters---"He's not One of Them---he's different"---but who still reminds us that there's always a ray of hope out there.

I think this is important. The increasingly-popular metrics aren't important but for the fact that they reflect changing ideas about the game. If somebody doesn't like or understand WAR, that's fine. But he needs to be open to advances that have been made in understanding what is most important to scoring and preventing runs, such as the examples you give above.

I agree, up until a point. But I strongly advise, to the point of begging, that folks on the advanced-statistical-analysis-uber-alles side of this brouhaha ask themselves a couple of questions. First, what exactly would a fine grained understanding of WARP3 or whatever bring to a casual baseball fan. Is it any more exciting to see the home team turn an inning ending double play with runners on in the seventh just because you happen to have a list that says your shortstop covers more ground than the guy in New York? Does it lessen that excitement? What are you approaching the game for, anyway? Me, maybe one day I'll tell you the story of my favorite at bat - Ozzie Guillen v Armando Benitez, Game 6 of the 1999 NLCS. It has absolutely nothing to do with WARP or PECOTA or anything else that gets discussed virtually ad nauseum 'round here. In fact, it is exactly the lack of that at bat's relationship to predictability and probability that makes it so damned perfect.

Secondly, I'd ask you to ask yourself, "what do I think of when I see grandpa." Is he just some empty shell of an old man that hovers around family dinners with a breathing tube up his nose? Is he more of a hassle, because he watches his crap assed war movies when you'd rather be playing Mass Effect 2 than a pleasure to be around? Because if that's the case, I pity you. I pity you, and I pity a society built around that sort of thinking, where people who aren't hip to the latest sounds, stats and technology are discarded as if they have nothing to offer, because such a society loses every ounce of hard fought, experiential wisdom that *living* teaches us. You may have better knowledge, but knowledge without grace sophistry at best. You ought to be seeking wisdom.

I've asked this before and never seem to get an answer: How accurate are all those PECOTA projections? How well does BP do in forecasting division races? If you took your hard earned cash tried to bank those projections in Vegas, would you wind up rich or broke?

Tom Tango is intellectually honest and actually does the work to see how he and others are doing against reality. Turns out ZIPS and MARCEL are decent, and PECOTA is about as useful as just randomly scanning the previous year and adjusting for age and injury.

If I'm not mistaken, PECOTA did pretty well until the last year or two.

How well does BP do in forecasting division races?

On the team level, vegaswatch.net compares PECOTA to the ESPN guys. Last time I looked, it beat them across the board at picking won-loss records.

Tom Tango is intellectually honest and actually does the work to see how he and others are doing against reality. Turns out ZIPS and MARCEL are decent, and PECOTA is about as useful as just randomly scanning the previous year and adjusting for age and injury.

Sam, I wasn't knocking any particular system, but it still would be nice to be able to look up their past predictions and projections with the same ease that we can look up Creepy Crespi's 1942 OPS+ and Derek Jeter's 2005 range factor. In fact I would think that the better these predictions and projections, the more they'd want to have this information be available for all of us to admire.

Secondly, I'd ask you to ask yourself, "what do I think of when I see grandpa." Is he just some empty shell of an old man that hovers around family dinners with a breathing tube up his nose? Is he more of a hassle, because he watches his crap assed war movies when you'd rather be playing Mass Effect 2 than a pleasure to be around? Because if that's the case, I pity you. I pity you, and I pity a society built around that sort of thinking, where people who aren't hip to the latest sounds, stats and technology are discarded as if they have nothing to offer, because such a society loses every ounce of hard fought, experiential wisdom that *living* teaches us. You may have better knowledge, but knowledge without grace sophistry at best. You ought to be seeking wisdom.

The smart ones will figure that out, and the not so smart ones will merely re-direct their rants from the Old Farts to the Ungrateful Young Whippersnappers without ever missing a beat. It's a character deficiency more than a generational one.

[41] Tom Tango also was quite gracious in responding to my posted question at his blog about the benefits of adjusting the OPS+ calculations.

I find that too many new stats or metrics are put forth with very little demonstration of their marginal benefit or how they improve our understanding or analysis of how well they predicted performance after the fact.

TFE seems reasonable and not preachy. He's not a Luddite like Murray Chass.

Maybe it's a James Burke injection.

I just recently watched the first batch of Connections and The Day the Universe Changed recently, and it was really remarkable the change in his attitude. I really loved all his shows as a kid, but haven't really watched them in years...seeing them as an adult there's a lot that I missed the first time around.

The message he left us with at the end of Connections (in 1978 I think) was that technology was one giant trap and once it inevitably failed we'd all be screwed because none of us really understand the technology around us.

But the in the Day the Universe Changed (1985-6?) the message changed to, electronic communication would create such a spread of information that we'd finally break out from centralized oppressive understandings of the world around us.

I've just started Connections 2, but on the whole he seems a lot more optimstic about man and technology.

Greg K, I read the book companion to Connections and am in the middle of the one for The Day The Universe Changed. In between I read some of his more lighthearted fare. I am learning and relearning quite a bit through his writing. BTW, I notice that Connections the book and Connections the TV series don't entirely sync up. THe material in each differs eversoslightly.

One might say they're disconnected.

Well, Sarah Palin and her ilk seem to be doing pretty well with making a virtue out of being willfully ignorant -- oh, I'm sorry, "anti-elite." But, yeah, it's quite rare outside of the sportswriter sphere for someone who writes about a given subject for a living to regularly pen columns announcing, with aplomb, their insistence at not keeping up with developments in that given field.

To be fair, it's a two way street. Much of the allure of Palin and friends is that, while such movement is merely a celebration of ignorance, those signing on are often reacting to real elitism.

Most of us are immersed in a tier of society that not only values useful, world improving knowledge, but esoteric knowledge and worse, the cultural trappings of that knowledge.

To use a random example from above: (and no ill will toward the original poster--it's just an example) colloquial language from within our educational class does demonstrate over-cutesiness and glibness, but for those who simply don't know how to write in academic vernacular, it may just be how they write.

And academia is certainly full of terrible, inaccessible writers writing about esoteric crap as well as those doing revolutionary work.

I guess what's I'm trying (and failing to say concisely) to get across is that we should prioritize meaningful education that improves our society and world, but also avoid the specter of overvaluing knowledge and a particular elitist culture. In other words, mental math is a great skill not because it advances you in education, but because it can be used to improve yours and others' lives. Some concepts that are not focused on at all in traditional education, might be more developed through underserved populations like say, empathy and they may be far more useful.

Finally, I think it's absolutely central to the frequent focus on the "bad ghetto kids" who view "being educated" as "acting white". I'm not sure how many people have experienced this dynamic firsthand and deeply, but what I can say is that it's real and it's a lot more complex than, "That's stupid, they shouldn't be racist and should value education!"

The reality is that it's both self-destructive and a perfectly logical reaction to an education system that asks students to both adjust and learn new skills and cultural context--which is necessary and vital--but at the same time demands that students drop and disavowed much of the daily cultural knowledge they've learned to survive in their community and with their loved ones.

Well, Sarah Palin and her ilk seem to be doing pretty well with making a virtue out of being willfully ignorant

...aaaaannnnnd we're off!

Pierce's blog post doesn't seem that critical of WARP. It basically just says that it is difficult to understand.

Even if you know the meaning, it would be really hard to determine if WARP is a credible idea when you are first exposed to it, based on the information that is easily available. WARP combines two unusual ideas:

1) The replacement level player, which is sort of an unusual concept when you think of it.

2) Quantitative estimates of how many runs (and wins) that a player contributes to his team. This includes fielding contributions, which are pretty tricky. But even the offensive component is tricky, as the way that we estimate hitting runs (and wins) is not entirely straightforward. I will confess that I don't know what WARP uses, but I am guessing some sort of linear weight formula? That means that this is largely based on an empirically derived relationship that is fitted to data. Nothing wrong with this approach -- but how often do most people encounter this sort of thing in their day to day lives? Most people aren't using mathematical models that often.

Then you combine these two things to estimate a player's marginal value over this invented replacement level threshold. Really, are we surprised that anyone might find this confusing? And we are surprised that people might not immediately accept the idea?

I have no problem dismissing out of hand the people who take shots at baseball analysis from the anti-intellectual angle. But that doesn't seem to be the way this (very short) blog post reads.

First, what exactly would a fine grained understanding of WARP3 or whatever bring to a casual baseball fan. Is it any more exciting to see the home team turn an inning ending double play with runners on in the seventh just because you happen to have a list that says your shortstop covers more ground than the guy in New York? Does it lessen that excitement? What are you approaching the game for, anyway?

I would guess that most of the sabermetrically-inclined posters here can and do enjoy the game in much the same way you, or even a casual fan, does -- that they enjoy watching Omar Vizquel turn a double play or Greg Maddux paint the corners. When I watch a game, I don't think about how much a player's performance that day raised his OPS. But as mentioned above, learning about the ideas underlying these stats have helped my understanding of the game -- for example, that bunting in such and such situation with x on the mound and y on deck might not be a good idea. But I suppose if you enjoy the game simply for aesthetic and not evaluative purposes, such as watching Jeter play SS and you don't care whether he's helping his team prevent runs -- then you're right, these stats might have no value.

It's also possible that some people enjoy the means and not the end -- that they are statistically-oriented people who enjoy crunching numbers and refining formulas for its own sake, and have chosen baseball because its events are easier to quantify than most other sports. I sometimes wonder what could be accomplished if some of this amazing objective analysis and efforts were spent on other things.

It's also possible that some people enjoy the means and not the end -- that they are statistically-oriented people who enjoy crunching numbers and refining formulas for its own sake, and have chosen baseball because its events are easier to quantify than most other sports.

I am a pretty analytical guy. I am hard-wired to apply this sort of thought process to everything, so naturally I am drawn to the efforts of people who have worked to better understand the things that I like. And I like baseball. Efforts to analyze baseball and quantify the effects of various events appeal to someone like me.

But not everyone is wired like me. This is fine; we can still go to a game together and have a good time.

--------------------------------

I have mixed feelings about the stats that glue a bunch of stuff together to try to assign a value to a player. I appreciate the idea, and think it is worth trying, but I find that the methods are often too opaque. If we are trying to decide between two players, and determine who is better, then the answer is in the data. Of course, using these data directly is too difficult, but in general I want to pick the simplest analysis required to come to a reasonable answer. Simpler methods have fewer assumptions, and the assumptions involved are much more transparent, so it is easier to evaluate what the pitfalls are.

With WARP, evaluating these pitfalls is hard. Basically, I have to rely on a model that relates various accumulated events to runs, and another factor that estimates how many runs are needed for a win. Then I have to come up with a replacement level, and what is disturbing is that the results can be quite sensitive to what that replacement level is. If I want to compare two players, I think I would only want to resort to such a complicated tool when absolutely necessary. And if I need such a tool to determine who is better, then I think I can probably safely say that the two players are about equal, to within our ability to make a determination.

So I am going to want to do analysis with a simple method, and I am going to want to see big differences. If this is not the case, then it is probably safe to assign roughly equal values to the two players.

The advantage of an approach like WARP is that at least it standardizes things; everyone has the same basic starting point and isn't constructing ad hoc arguments. It also makes an effort to come up with a relative value of hitting and fielding contributions, which I think is very important. I like the intent, and the idea, but am not crazy about the stat.

1) The replacement level player, which is sort of an unusual concept when you think of it.

A lot of folks who play fantasy sports understand the concept of a baseline; although that baseline is usually higher than replacement level. If you don't play fantasy sports, however, that concept may seem foreign.

The replacement level player, which is sort of an unusual concept when you think of it

I'm still surprised at how many people use the term "average player" pejoratively.

Amazing--different things are important to different people! I'd never have guessed.

A lot of folks who play fantasy sports understand the concept of a baseline; although that baseline is usually higher than replacement level. If you don't play fantasy sports, however, that concept may seem foreign.

Right. I'm still wondering what, if anything, beyond fantasy baseball and nebbish internet debates about awards and HOF elections stats like WARP bring to the game. I suppose if you were working in a front office you might use something akin to for evaluation of prospects and free agents, but that's hardly something a sportswriter aiming at the casual audience would need to delve into.

I'm still wondering what, if anything, beyond fantasy baseball and nebbish internet debates about awards and HOF elections stats like WARP bring to the game.

I don't think they bring anything in themselves. But the underlying concepts on which they rely are helpful to understanding which things are most important to scoring and preventing runs. If you're going to write articles telling your audience which players are good and bad, and which players your local team should sign (no idea if Pierce does this), you should understand that, for example, traditional fielding metrics don't account for many skills that are important to defense. It's not necessary to understand UZR, but you should be aware of this idea. The advanced stats are just manifestations of these ideas (whether they do an accurate job or not).

Amazing--different things are important to different people! I'd never have guessed.

Put another way -- different things are interesting to different people. I don't know how much of this is "important." I don't know what about baseball is "important," but I follow it because it is interesting to me.

A lot of folks who play fantasy sports understand the concept of a baseline; although that baseline is usually higher than replacement level. If you don't play fantasy sports, however, that concept may seem foreign.

I think the point is that changing the baseline can drastically affect players' relative value. I always had difficulty with this while preparing for fantasy drafts. E.g., you need a 3B, a 1B and a corner infielder. Do you compare each only to those at his own position, or all to each other? It's not much different than the Red Sox having to decide how much Lowell/Youkilis/Martinez are worth to them, depending on where they will play.

"maybe I just don’t like it when being a sports fan turns into math homework": Numbers are complicated! I like bright colors and loud noises!

Or, put in very slightly less sarcastic fashion, "I don't really enjoy math, and I watch sports to enjoy them." Which seems entirely reasonable, even if it's not a position I share.

But the underlying concepts on which they rely are helpful to understanding which things are most important to scoring and preventing runs. If you're going to write articles telling your audience which players are good and bad, and which players your local team should sign (no idea if Pierce does this), you should understand that, for example, traditional fielding metrics don't account for many skills that are important to defense. It's not necessary to understand UZR, but you should be aware of this idea.

I don't disagree, but I'd point out this idea that every potential acquisition must be poured over in depth is a *consequence* of modern 24/7 coverage. Traditional sports writers probably are still adjusting to the idea that they are expected to file column length during the offseason. Even as late as the mid-90s a beat writer would be expected to write up a major acquisition if it happened, and then kick off spring training with a "pitchers and catchers report" piece. Tell the fans who this year's team features and what they bring to the table.

This idea that it is the columnists "job" to break down every minor transaction - "OMG! They spent money on Alex Cora and this is why the world is about to end!!!" - is itself a function of today's constant, endless droning that masquerades as "reportage."

Again, I'm not arguing that people who sell themselves as analysts to the modern market shouldn't take a cursory look at the underlying concepts. Certainly they should know that OBP is important ("outs are bad") and that SLG% is better than RBI ("context dependent production"), and embracing the non-controversial claim that range is at least equally as important as "consistency", if not moreso, is good. But that is a far cry from embracing WARP or WARP2 or WARP3, much less trying to suss out all of the probabalistic models and thrown chicken bones that go into a ZIPS or MARCEL or PECOTA projection.

"I don't really enjoy math, and I watch sports to enjoy them."

Which is fine. But there's very frequently a hostility to the statheads. Sometimes it's explicit. "Figures don't lie but liars figure" is a popular line in this type of article. This article's a little more restrained, but I can't parse it any other way than a guy saying, "what a collection of jackoffs" -- in his own clever way.

Put me in with Monty. I'm unimpressed.

If this is all for fun (and it is) and advanced stats, or Bill James, or something else makes it more fun, then that is good. I like the HOF arguments, even though I know they are meaningless. Serious analysis make baseball more fun for me. This website makes baseball more fun for me. For others, they want something else. That is not a problem; it is just baseball.

But I do think making some of the analysis and stats more accessable is not a bad thing.

Ron

I don't let the "I hate math" types get to me. I make a pretty good living, and have a pretty good life, because I am good at math. I wouldn't trade places with any of these guys, as I figure I am much better off.

But while it may not be the best way of saying it, If the writer is making a complaint about WARP being difficult to understand -- I can see his point.

66, As sAM mentioned above I have no patience for false precision -- though I'm obviously very much a numbers guy. And I'd have plenty of sympathy with a "damn, they sure don't explain what they're doing very well" article.

This article just left me cold.

Because this didn't really see the light of a workday...

Bump.

Guess I did that too early.

When I watch a game, I don't think about how much a player's performance that day raised his OPS

Nor do I. If David Murphy hits a double to win a game for the Rangers, I just get up and cheer. But I appreciate sabermetric analyses that help me understand why there might be a lot better players than David Murphy, even if the local media insist that his batting average is good and that he brings so many more intangibles beyond that batting average that he's an unsung star.

I'll get behind the false precision opinion on all-encompassing statistics, I don't have alot of trust in the determination of the numerical value of a "replacement player".

Also fully stating the I havn't checked it caveat; but I always get an itch in the back of my head that the error bars on the numbers are greater than the precision in which the numbers are reported.

Because this didn't really see the light of a workday...

Thanks, I lurk here an hour or two a day and had still managed to miss this thread. It's one of the better threads I've read in a while. On-topic and spirited but civil and restrained.

I don't have alot of trust in the determination of the numerical value of a "replacement player".

Nor do I but I don't worry about it. My feeling is that as long as the metric in question is evaluating everyone on the same baseline what a replacement player is doesn't matter. Whether a player is 5 WARP or 45 WARP is fairly unimportant to me as long as there is a consistent methodology and portrayal that allows me to compare players.

Thanks, I lurk here an hour or two a day and had still managed to miss this thread. It's one of the better threads I've read in a while. On-topic and spirited but civil and restrained.

I'll have to up my incivility quotient.

I'll have to up my incivility quotient.

Like cilantro, a little neck-knifing goes a long way.

I am the pico de gallo of BTF.

Thanks, tyler. I knew there was a reason I occasionally bump threads.

Secondly, I'd ask you to ask yourself, "what do I think of when I see grandpa."

Why can't I love my grandfather and respect his knowledge and wisdom in some areas, while being frustrated that such an intelligent man is so convinced that he's learned enough in other areas?

My grandfather has lived a very long life, and he's still full of interesting stories about his past. He offers more advice that I want, and some of it in places where he's not aware of how society has moved on, but I don't ignore it, because he's still sometimes right. There are things that haven't changed dramatically over time.

He has no interest, however, in any music that was produced within the last 50 years. He can't distinguish, for example, between Fine Young Cannibals and the Beatles (I use this example because I remember distinctly a conversation we had about these two groups years ago). Not because he's not smart enough, musically speaking, to learn the difference, but because he has already decided that it's not worth his time. I don't think the fact that I'd rather not talk about non-jazz music with my grandfather makes me a terrible person.

To come back to the topic of the thread, Pierce is a lousy pinata. He wrote an article where he basically complained about the relative difficulty in approaching a particular family of statistics. And he's right. I understand WARP, but it's not intuitive and not simple to deconstruct, and that's not a good thing. He didn't say that it was without value, and it's not like he didn't at least do some legwork.

I think some people are just hyper-sensitive to hearing Star Trek jokes about WARP. I agree that they aren't particularly clever or funny, but this seems a lot more playful than mocking in tone. As for "Intertoobz," that's a reasonable combination of several internet memes: "a series of tubes," internets, unnecessary capitalization, deliberate misspelling, and "z for s."

Why can't I love my grandfather and respect his knowledge and wisdom in some areas, while being frustrated that such an intelligent man is so convinced that he's learned enough in other areas?

You most certainly can. I don't suggest that you take received wisdom as the end of inquiry. That's the quickest way I can imagine to turn the river of thinking into a fetid swamp of ideology. But with that said, you solve the riddle in your first clause. Even though you disagree with and are frustrated by his mental calcification, you respect him nonetheless.

For curiosity's sake, have you ever attempted to consider the frame of reference required to believe that the FYC and Beatles are essentially interchangeable?

For curiosity's sake, have you ever attempted to consider the frame of reference required to believe that the FYC and Beatles are essentially interchangeable?

Of course. I would imagine that it's much the same frame of reference that would consider Will Smith and Ice-T to be interchangeable (probably something my mother would think). It's not like there aren't ANY common elements.

There are places where I have a similar lack of knowledge, like car engines. I'm not particularly interested in the nuances between particular engines, especially across makes and models. I think the main difference is that I recognize my lack of knowledge and don't claim to really understand cars. I know that I need a car that will start for me, that will safely get me from point A to point B, and that will be relatively inexpensive to maintain. I'm not an expert, so I rely on the advice of others who do have that knowledge, and choose accordingly. I certainly don't write articles about how an 8-cylinder engine is excessive, even if it is entirely unnecessary for my personal needs. If I were hired to write about the differences between engines, I'd make it my business to learn as much as possible about them.