These three generations are not defined strictly by age, but rather by when you came of age as a saberperson (or how, but the when and the how elements are very closely related). My three groups are:
1. Pioneers—This is by far the most restrictive group, as it only includes those who actually did pioneering sabermetric research (whether they called it by that name or not). Earnshaw Cook, George Lindsey, Pete Palmer, Bill James, and the like are the pioneers.
2. Second Wave—These are the folks who came to sabermetrics largely through the work of the pioneers—reading the Baseball Abstract or The Hidden Game or various SABR publications or The Diamond Appraised, and the like. They may or may not have gone on to become researchers themselves; they may just be consumers of research. It is also possible that their own inquisitiveness led them to sabermetrics without a firm push from Bill James or another pioneer, but they still came onto the scene after the work of the pioneers had been published. Many, many people fall into this group, and even listing a few would be foolish. I consider myself in this group although I also share a few traits with the third group, as I explained before.
3. Internet generation—These are people who have come to sabermetrics in the last 10-15 years and may have done so without ever reading the work of the pioneers. Their interest in sabermetrics is young enough to have been fueled by reading the work of second wavers (or of course their own inquisitiveness). A typical path to sabermetrics for a member of the Internet generation would have been to read Rob Neyer. From there, they sought out BP or Bill James.
Repoz
Posted: August 28, 2012 at 10:50 AM |
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1. Greg (U)K Posted: August 28, 2012 at 11:24 AM (#4220069)I'm probably too young for group 2 proper, but I did come to sabermetrics through Bill James' Abstracts and Baseball Books. Only I read them in the late 90s early 00s. So I guess I fit under the "came into sabermetrics through someone like Rob Neyer" category. Except substitute Rob Neyer for "my dad's old boxes of books".
Me too, nearly exactly (I started playing Strat in the '60s).
The distinction between Neyer and BP is interesting.
I'd like to think of myself as somewhere between 2 and 3, though I'm probably just on the early edge of the third wave. I get annoyed with people who throw around the advanced metrics without understanding them or their nuances, but I'm sure that's what the second wavers thought of me when I started posting here in 2001.
(I'm just as likely to go meta as the next guy, but this one kind of creeps me out for some reason I can't put my finger on).
Did you ever have an error where the game stops working, all the players run off the field and into the LF stands, and the only thing you could do was reboot?
Microleague was the game that allowed me to move beyond pencil and paper, and expand the league from 4 teams to 12.
were they all Cyber-Jeters?
I'm a 2. Tried to be a 1 - submitted a research article to John Thorn when he was taking submissions post "Hidden Game" - but was sadly rejected. Guess I'm not cutting edge enough. Interesting, though - my research at the time (mid-'80s) was on positioning of fielders and impact on fielding statistics, something that is in reality affecting the game much more today than it was then, especially with all the shifts being used now.
Got introduced to Strat in the '60s by my older brother who started playing in '65, I think. For all its flaws, it did do a good job of pointing out undervalued guys like Jimmy Wynn and Bob Allison. Announcers would say these guys had poor batting averages and therefore weren't very good hitters, but whenever I played them in Strat games they would kill the opposition because their cards were full of WALKS and HOMERUNS. I'd never heard of OBP or SLG or OPS at the time but I was certainly picking up an awareness that there was a lot more to scoring runs than BA. Used to really tick off my friends, too - "Oh, c'mon, there must be something wrong with that card - that guy's only a .240 hitter, how come he always kills my team? You're just lucky rolling those dice."
Do Earl Weaver and Branch Rickey count as pioneers or are we only looking at baseball outsiders?
Dabbled in my own baseball research (remember the very first baseball encyclopedia?). Then became more "serious" when I found Bill James's early Baseball Abstracts.
Did not know it until recently, but my dad worked for George Lindsey when he was doing his research. Also did know it until recently -- George Lindsey was awarded the Order of Canada. Sadly, not for his work on baseball. The citation reads (in part) “...he has a world-wide reputation as an authority on deterrence policy, arms control, nuclear weapons policy, naval welfare and strategic analysis...he has published extensively and is a sought-after speaker among defence scientists both in Canada and in NATO." (Nabbed from a great article here )
From the article: A “what if?” contrarian, a huge intellect, and a practical joker, Lindsey was an obsessive puzzler of problems both grand and mundane–from verification of weapons of mass destruction, to figuring out the fastest route from home to work, to devising ingenious ways to persuade squirrels to leap for food from suspended feeders.
You could make a case that some of the absolutely earliest statisticians, like F.C. Lane and Ernest Lanigan, deserve their own, pre-Pioneer category.
Wait, were you a usenet guy?
Ditto. We were playing Ethan Allen's All-Star baseball in the mid-60s (didn't have enough money for Strat, although my parents did buy me an APBA game in 1970 and I bought it for myself every year thereafter once I started working). My mom liked to tell a story about my learning to read about age 3 and wowing the older neighbor children by reciting baseball statistics from the paper - that one might even be true :)
-- MWE
Incidentally, my parents got me Ethan Allen baseball as well... in the late-80s. I was like 'really? this is the best game they could come up with?' (manufacturer, not my parents - they didn't know anything about baseball)
Heck, it feels like a long time since then in the world of sabermetrics. I remember when ESPN.com put up the "sabermetric" pitching stats (or one version of them) and thinking "that's a big deal".
Yeah, it's almost surreal sometimes when you think about different sabermetrics has become.
That'll be fun. All the old stories will have minor facts off, like we'll be talking about Felix "The Run Sprite" Heredia, remembering the old Wiki Hernandez, and teasing Mahnken about Campover Lady.
You should remember that it's been around since the 1940s and that it was clearly aimed at young kids.
-- MWE
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