Obvious troll is obvious.

I'm not going to click on the link to give him an extra page hit.

How could stat geeks "take over" the blogosphere? The early bloggers were largely stat geeks, it's the old-schoolers who are elbowing their way in.

How could stat geeks "take over" the blogosphere? The early bloggers were largely stat geeks, it's the old-schoolers who are elbowing their way in.

Now, now, many of the early bloggers weren't stat geeks. Many were tech geeks, or sci-fi geeks, or fantasy geeks. Surely nobody could have seen the stat thing coming!

Isn't that the common (or default) strategy in politics? Do something stupid/obnoxious/ridiculous/borderline criminal/all of the above, and then denounce the other side for doing it.

Porn geeks demand representation too.

Show me an "old school" anti-stats fan and I'll show you a guy who struggled with high school math. And wore that failure like a badge of honor.

Because I am a Baseball Fan, I will capitalize random Proper Nouns that I find important to emphasize the Case that I am trying to make. I will also remove Commas and other elements of Punctuation from my posts, because we all know that Spelling and anything taught at School is equally as useless as Maths. If only there was no Arithmetic to screw everything up, we could finally enjoy Teh Internets in peace.

How do I shot web?

Show me an "old school" anti-stats fan and I'll show you a guy who struggled with high school math. And wore that failure like a badge of honor.

On a similar tangent, there is nothing stupider about our culture than the accolades we heap upon HS and College athletes. Pro athletes? Sure, that makes sense, like star actors, singers, etc.

But the idea that HS QBs who will never sniff a scholarship, get treated like a celebrity is strikingly bizaare.

Sadly the Mariners have had two terrible seasons despite employing sabermetrics types in the front office,which has made this team tough to follow but my passion for the game seems to drive me on.

Yeah, things were much better under the less sabermetric rule of Bill Bavasi. Truly, it was a time of plenty, or at least plenty of last place finishes.

> HS QBs who will never sniff a scholarship, get treated like a celebrity

Come on now, they'll need that name recognition for their Allstate billboards.

I don't know, I think feeling some admiration for a local kid (who maybe you know, or know the family) helping the local team succeed makes more sense to me than some dude from several hundred miles away getting paid millions of dollars to do the same thing for some corporation.

Two Caveats
1) While I think that makes more sense, that's definitely not how I live my life. All my money and (if not admiration than attention) goes to the hired gun.

2) I've never lived anywhere where anyone cares about high school sports, so I don't have any first hand experience with the heights such insane behaviour can reach. To judge from films and TV about high school football in Texas, apparently quite high.

But the idea that HS QBs who will never sniff a scholarship, get treated like a celebrity is strikingly bizaare.

Less bizarre than venerating some guy you'll never meet for excelling at a sport you don't play.

but I am too old to change now

If there was a phrase that summed up today's America, this is it.

but I am too old to change now

If there was a phrase that summed up today's America, this is it.

I'm 41 now and I hope I never get to the point where I'm unwilling to change AND demean those who seek to advance things. I imagine at some point I'll be unwilling to change but I hope I'm able to recognize it in myself and not be dismissive of those who take a different approach than mine to the different aspects of life.

Has there ever been a more resilient, refuse-to-die straw man than "Stats Geeks Reduce Baseball to Cold Science and Don't Appreciate the Beauty of the Game"?

Every stats geek I know is able to appreciate the game fully, from the game-within-the-game of the batter-pitcher match-up to the nicely turned pivot to the runner taking an extra base because he read the ball well and was able to get a great jump.

Every stats geek I know loves watching baseball, any team, as opposed to, say, your typical "old school" Red Sox fan who won't watch any game that doesn't have his Sox in it, and stops watching completely once his team is eliminated.

Where are all these stats geeks that don't watch the games????????

Less bizarre than venerating some guy you'll never meet for excelling at a sport you don't play.

Well, at least your venerating someone who's among the best in the world at what they, not some guy who's going to be selling you whitewalls in 2 years.

helping the local team succeed

Funny, I never cared if my HS (except for the team I was on) or college teams won a damn thing. Still don't.

This guy isn't even running the sixth-best Mariners' blog out there.

/meme

Another pinata post from Repoz.

/Jolly Old St. Neck Wound

For a second, I thought JFMB was a typo for something I'd read, like "Joe Fire Morgan Blog."

Tell your god to prepare for blood.

Porn geeks demand representation too.

Well they would, if they weren't too busy jerking off.

Why do these people ALWAYS seem to think that creating/perusing the advanced stats INEVITABLY precludes enjoying the game as a game as well? I swear every single time I read the byline of an article like this, that assumption is invariably in there, every single time, explicit or implicit.

The early bloggers were largely stat geeks, it's the old-schoolers who are elbowing their way in.

Stats geeks are old skool -- this is the year 2011. The luddites that reject simple math are comprised mostly of cultists known as Nostalgics. They aren't trying to elbow their way in; they are arriving at the dance by stepping on their cocks.

They aren't trying to elbow their way in; they are arriving at the dance by stepping on their cocks.

Porn geek.

I'm 41 now and I hope I never get to the point where I'm unwilling to change AND demean those who seek to advance things.

Likewise, and on priciple I absolutely reject any form of "kids today/not like it once was" article/rant/essay out of hand.

These kids today don't write "it's not like it once was" articles like we used to.

one of the Blogs that delights in always proving how superior they are

Like yours? Or Whitlock's? Does he have one?

trying to hold on to a more colorful and fun era of baseball where everything was not reduced to mathematical calculations.

....when there were less people of color in the game, and attendance was half of what it is today.

There are many different ways to enjoy and appreciate baseball - no one is preventing the nostalgics from doing so. However, with the costs of long term contracts in the hundreds of millions of dollars, it makes economic sense to place a more exact value on production.

As for liking baseball, chacun a son gout.

Well they would, if they weren't too busy jerking off

It wouldn't be wrong to point out that *all* bloggers are, more or less, "busy jerking off." At least the porn geeks usually keep that to themselves. More or less.

I've never lived anywhere where anyone cares about high school sports

I was really surprised when I did a bit of work in Hanover, PA (near Gettysburg). Monday morning conversation was 80% HS Football, and then a bit of Penn State FB and pro FB. In the Philly area, HS sports are close to being an afterthought.

Cities don't really follow HS sports. Cities follow professional sports.

Rural = HS + college
Suburban = college + HS
Urban = Pro + college

Has there ever been a more resilient, refuse-to-die straw man than "Stats Geeks Reduce Baseball to Cold Science and Don't Appreciate the Beauty of the Game"?

Probably "immigrants ruin America", with this coming in second.

Porn geeks demand representation too.


Well they would, if they weren't too busy jerking off.

You kidding me? Porn geeks *never* jerk off. No, they're too busy calculating their "gangbang ratios" and "money shot volumes" to appreciate the subtle beauty of the industry. It used to be all about the masturbation, but they've done their best to ruin it.

You kidding me? Porn geeks *never* jerk off. No, they're too busy calculating their "gangbang ratios" and "money shot volumes" to appreciate the subtle beauty of the industry. It used to be all about the masturbation, but they've done their best to ruin it.

They should stay in their mother's basement once in a while!

Perhaps I am part of a dying breed of Baseball Fans like Jason Whitlock

is that some kind of fat joke?

Sam

Following high school sports has more to do with Midwest/South than just urban. There are large cities up and down the Mississippi where folks follow high school sports very closely and Texas is HS football CRAZY.

Minneapolis. Chicago. St. Louis. Etc. These cities are teeming with folks who follow HS sports with a passion.

Resulting in massive cheating scandals among other things.

The state of MN shuts down for the high school hockey playoffs

It wouldn't be wrong to point out that *all* bloggers are, more or less, "busy jerking off."

Anyone who follows sports is "more or less, busy jerking off." Anyone who gets paid to do it is just a whore.

Texas is HS football CRAZY.

Fixed.

> The state of MN shuts down for the high school hockey playoffs

North of 494, maybe.

Is there any other individual HS athlete award in the class of Minnesota's "Mr. Hockey"?

Is there any other individual HS athlete awarad in the class of Minnesota's "Mr. Hockey"?

I don't follow amateur sports much at all but I've heard the Indiana "Mr. Basketball" mentioned in revered tones on various College hoop broadcasts over the years.

Yeah, Illinois has a high school Mr. (and Ms.) Basketball as well.

What zack said -- Indiana's "Mr. Basketball" is a pretty big deal.

I assume its true for all of Canada, but where I'm from 3/4 of the high school students couldn't tell you who the star player was on their respective hockey/basketball/football teams.....and no, curling isn't a high school sport to any degree.

I can't imagine more than a couple hundred fans attending any high school football game in my area. High school hockey is by far the most popular, but 90% of the crowd would be other students and parents of the players.

I think a large reason for this is the prohibition of athletic scholarships in Canada.

Show me an "old school" anti-stats fan and I'll show you a guy who struggled with high school math.

I know a very accomplished CPA in his mid-50s who, until maybe six months ago, was vociferously anti-sabermetrics. (On the subject of DePodesta's tenure with the Dodgers, for example, he was more Plaschke than Plaschke!) His relative silence on the subject now indicates that he finally is coming around.

I assume its true for all of Canada, but where I'm from 3/4 of the high school students couldn't tell you who the star player was on their respective hockey/basketball/football teams

Isn't that becasue, in the case of hockey, the best players aren't playing for a high school team but rather for a youth or club team? My recollection of the Gretzky story was that he was routinely playing in front of lots of people before he was even old enough to attend high school. Obviously, he's a unique case, but I thought youth hockey was pretty big up there- just not organized by high school as youth sports tend to be in the US. I would think a similar dynamic exists in the big soccer countries such that your "average" 15 year old prodigy finds plenty of people who come to watch him play- even if it's not on a high school field.

Just about everywhere I have lived there was a tremendous HS football following - PA, NJ, VA, for example. Even in Philly, HS football is covered and appreciated widely enough. Not to the extent the Eagles (or other pro sports) but you don't have to look very hard to find it. If people don't follow it or look for it and assume therefore it doesn't exist, then the fault lies with them. And frankly, the reverence for the local sports hero is that sense of small-town or collective pride in community. Nothing wrong with that, but if cynicism does the trick for you, why not.

As for the post, if that's the way he likes it, great. Frankly, more people are like him than people might care to admit. I think what a follow-on issue to this is that people perceive modern statistical analysis of baseball telling them how to like the game and if they don't castigating them as philistines. I, for one, could give two hollowed-out rat shits one way or the other, but being told repeatedly how to measure success and failure is annoying. From both sides.

Back in the Orioles newsgroup on usenet, the non-stathead side received the term "Dugout Boyz." I sometimes still use Dugout Boyz before remembering that Nieporent, Shea, Johnson, and maybe Dial are the only guys who would remember WTF I'm talking about.

There's very little interest in football in suburban Baltimore high schools, at least when I was that age. It was *all* lacrosse.

HS sports was always pretty big in Chicago, certainly covered pretty heavily in the papers, not so much on TV news. But you didn't become a "citywide" phenom unless you were Isaiah Thomas, Mark Aguirre or Kevin Garnett. Even Terry Cummings didn't get much exposure. And I don't recall any "big" HS football players in Chicago but maybe there were.

And I'm a bit tickled that somehow references to Minnesota and Indiana are supposed to counter the idea that HS sports are a rural phenomenon. This too was evident in Illinois -- the state basketball tourney was always on TV in Chicago but 90% of the ads were for John Deere, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and feed. They did not seem to be targeting the, how shall we say, Mark Aguirre demographic.

EDIT: Also the early 80s versions of the Minnesota HS basketball tourney were a hoot. Man that was some bad basketball being played mainly by the 22nd to 26th best hockey players in the school.

Isn't that becasue, in the case of hockey, the best players aren't playing for a high school team but rather for a youth or club team? My recollection of the Gretzky story was that he was routinely playing in front of lots of people before he was even old enough to attend high school. Obviously, he's a unique case, but I thought youth hockey was pretty big up there- just not organized by high school as youth sports tend to be in the US. I would think a similar dynamic exists in the big soccer countries such that your "average" 15 year old prodigy finds plenty of people who come to watch him play- even if it's not on a high school field.

This is true. Junior hockey is pretty huge in many of the cities that have teams. Nobody gives a #### about high school/college other sports.

There's very little interest in football in suburban Baltimore high schools, at least when I was that age. It was *all* lacrosse.

Dan: out of curiosity, was that during the Colts-Ravens interim? I lived in the DC area for about 8 years, and I can remember reading in the Post about HS games from at least as far north as Columbia or Glen Burnie. So I always assumed that someone was interested.

OTOH, there were plenty of lacrosse articles, too.

Well so be it, but I am too old to change now and I am not going anywhere for awhile so if any of you Stat-Geeks happen to be offended by my post or the one by Whitlock you may need to go read one of the Blogs that delights in always proving how superior they are with their new calculations and formulas. I love this game too much to reduce it to a mere science.

I wonder if Mariners fans like this were complaining about the stat geeks last year when King Felix won the Cy Young award? It is precisely because of the growing analytical influence in MLB that Felix even had a prayer of winning.

The Mariners say in Hernandez's 12 losses, the team scored a total of seven runs while he was in the game.

I accept that those figures represent terrible run support and would make it difficult for any pitcher to win.
But not impossible. I have long believed that good pitchers find a way to win.

The above is yet another typical quote from BTF's favorite pinata, Murray Chass. He, of course, was horrified that Felix with his 13-12 record should win the Cy Young over CC Sabathia with his 21-7 record. After all, you could "see" just by watching the games that CC was the much better pitcher (I still hear people say the same thing all the time about Catfish Hunter vs. Bert Blyleven, yes, even after Blyleven was elected to the HOF).

Never mind the fact that when getting less than 3 runs of support in a game, CC went 1-5 in 2010 for a 0.167 winning %. Felix, when getting the same level of run support, went 2-10 - for a 0.167 winning %.

Uh, Murray, CC was no more likely to win when getting poor support than Felix was. That's not an opinion - that is a mathematical fact. Just like 2+2=4. Cannot be argued. Well, except, maybe in Murray's world 2+2=18, I have no idea.

At any rate, the difference between the W-L records of CC and Felix may have had a little something to do with Felix getting the poor run support twice as often as CC did.

Now, regular readers on this site don't need to be told stuff like this - you already know that run support has a huge impact on a pitcher's W-L record. Here's the thing, though - I admit it, I'm a stat geek - but it is precisely because I know things like this - and other things I've learned from the SABR crowd over the years - that I specifically look for talent like Felix has. I want to watch him pitch. I want to watch Troy Tulowitzki's career develop because I know I'm watching more than just another player.

I love watching baseball when I know I'm watching great baseball. I'm old enough to tell you that watching Bill Mazeroski turn 2 was a thing of beauty, as was watching Clemente throw a runner out at the plate from the right field wall or watching Yaz play a drive off the Green Monster perfectly and nailing a surprised baserunner coming into second. I've seen Rickey drive pitchers crazy and create runs out of nothing. I've seen Maddux paint the corners and Ryan blow it by batters who only heard the pitch 'cause they sure as heck couldn't see it. I've seen Blyleven's curve fall off the table and Gibson's slider actually back righties off the plate only to see it catch the corner at the knees. I've seen Gwynn poke balls through the 5.5 hole with such regularity he had "5.5" written on his shoes. I've seen Bonds and McGwire force a pitcher to come into their "happy zone" and then absolutely crush the offering. I've seen Mariano and Trevor make hitters look silly trying to figure out what to do with that damned cutter or changeup.

I love the psychology and the strategy of the game, trying to outguess the opponent. Hey, the home team's up and the batter who led off the inning "roped" a double down the line (yes, I love the lingo, too). Man on 2nd, nobody out. Next batter up is a lefty and he's not named Bonds (if Barry's up all strategy is pretty much removed from the equation). What's the score? Is the home team down by 1 or 3 runs? What inning is it? Is the team clinging to a slim lead? All of these things can impact the strategy the batter tries to employ or what the pitcher tries to do to offset it. Need multiple runs in a hurry? The batter can look for a pitch inside and try to pull it for a 2-run HR. Even if he doesn't get all of it he may hit a flyball to deep right that can still advance the runner from 2nd to 3rd. Do you just need one run to win in the bottom of the 9th in a tie game? Then we're probably looking at a bunt to move the runner from 2nd to 3rd. Maybe the opposing team is going to bring in a lefty to pitch to the batter. All of this stuff is "point-counterpoint" and I love it.

So don't tell me that having additional knowledge about a player or team's performance patterns takes away from the beauty of the game. You can truly appreciate what you're watching when you have a better idea of what to look for.