Does the ridiculously good quality of baseball stats detract from the fan experience

[kidbourbon]

I am not a baseball fan. I used to like the sport when I was youngster, but then at some point in high school I stopped liking the game and that has never changed. But y'all are baseball fans, and so I'm posing this question to you simply because I'm curious what you think.

I read Moneyball back in the day and found it fascinating on several different levels, and I know that the metrics since the season discussed in that book have improved drastically, and are only going to continue to improve.

On some levels this has to certainly be considered a good thing. I mean, I was smart enough as at age 10 to realize that the existing baseball statistics that appeared in the morning box scores were highly flawed and in some ways rather useless (e.g. pitcher wins and losses, RBI, etc.). It made comparisons between players difficult and subject to somewhat uninformed argumentation.

Fast forward: current baseball metrics* (especially those related to batting) are objective, quantifiable, reliable, and useful.

And so....
Does this make the game less interesting to those that follow it? Is it annoying that you can't have an argument about who the best hitter is, because -- with the quality of the metrics -- this would be akin to arguing about who the fastest man in the world is? Stated more generally, is it less fun to follow baseball now that you can't really have opinions because everything can be objectively proven in a pretty irrefutable manner?

______________________
*They are far and away the best statistics available in a team sport (which is because baseball is really an individual sport). And with the exception of track and field, they are even better than stats in individual sports (tennis statistics, for example, are horrendous...and will never be great even if they're improved substantially...just the nature of the sport).

 

[whocaresgobobcats]

Nope! Makes it even more fun and interesting. For me at least.

Then you have a whole section of fans who hate and/or don't understand the advanced metrics.

However, don't buy into the theory that you can build a team off stats.

 

[kidbourbon]

Nope! Makes it even more fun and interesting. For me at least.

Then you have a whole section of fans who hate and/or don't understand the advanced metrics.

However, don't buy into the theory that you can build a team off stats.

What, then, do you believe are the limitations of the current metrics? Where are they not telling the correct tale?

 

[whocaresgobobcats]

Most are pretty accurate, other than defense metrics which are still being worked on, but are still flawed. WAR still needs some tweaks as well, but over they paint a pretty decent picture of a player.

However, you have to use stats with scouting to get the complete picture of a player. Billy Beane tried building a franchise on stats but that got him nowhere, except in a movie.

And they still have to go play the game of course. The team with the best statistical players don't always win.

 

[govols120]

Nope! Makes it even more fun and interesting. For me at least.

Then you have a whole section of fans who hate and/or don't understand the advanced metrics.

However, don't buy into the theory that you can build a team off stats.

This. I agree with essentially everything I've seen from you ITT

 

[Vercingetorix]

Fast forward: current baseball metrics* (especially those related to batting) are objective, quantifiable, reliable, and useful.

And so....
Does this make the game less interesting to those that follow it? Is it annoying that you can't have an argument about who the best hitter is, because -- with the quality of the metrics -- this would be akin to arguing about who the fastest man in the world is? Stated more generally, is it less fun to follow baseball now that you can't really have opinions because everything can be objectively proven in a pretty irrefutable manner?

The vast majority of average baseball fans don't know about or are contemptuous of advanced metrics. If you read down into any of these threads, people still talk about batting average way more often than even something as basic as on-base percentage.

It's true that you don't really see many massive arguments between fans who understand and use the advanced metrics, but there are still so many people out there who judge players solely by batting average, RBIs, W-L record, etc. that we're a long, long way away from not really being able to have opinions anymore.

 

[zjcvols]

Nope. I actually love the game more since I got started in became a "saber nerd".

 

[GAVol]

Anytime you change the metrics, it causes people to shutdown. OPS+, WAR and VORP are neat to look at, but you can't win many arguments with them because for most it sounds like something developed at NASA.

 

[zjcvols]

Anytime you change the metrics, it causes people to shutdown. OPS+, WAR and VORP are neat to look at, but you can't win many arguments with them because for most it sounds like something developed at NASA.

True. I think the casaul baseball fan, it freaks out. Mostly because you don't watch sports for the math equations. Which I understand. America likes to shut down it's brain when it comes to sports. Most people don't want to talk about how we can improve FIP when watching a game. They want to talk about Dan Uggla's streak, or who is better, Sabathia or Verlander. It's human nature.

 

[Vercingetorix]

OPS+ is about as far as I'm willing to go, because I think that's about as far as you can push the level of abstraction before it becomes meaningless. Once you get into something like WAR, which claims to be able to say something as specific and granular as "Ryan Braun has been worth 5.5 wins more than a replacement-level player," then I think you've wandered too far off into extrapolation. A lot of the new stats try to say more than I think is possible.

 

[volfanbill]

I'm not as sold on the all the new stats for hitting, it still comes down to a good overall batting average, a good average with RISP, and having at least a couple guys on the team that put up a good number of jimmy jacks. It's baseball, it's still a relatively simple game if you know what you're looking for. I love my A's, but Billy Beane is the most overrated person the game has ever seen. Pitchers are a bit of a different breed, but hitting is hitting.

 

[zjcvols]

OPS+ is about as far as I'm willing to go, because I think that's about as far as you can push the level of abstraction before it becomes meaningless. Once you get into something like WAR, which claims to be able to say something as specific and granular as "Ryan Braun has been worth 5.5 wins more than a replacement-level player," then I think you've wandered too far off into extrapolation. A lot of the new stats try to say more than I think is possible.

I agree. You have to take these things with some grain of salt. UZR is not a good defensive measure in my opinion. I don't really use it that much. I think you can tell who is a good defender with your eyes for the most part. WAR just measures defense and baserunning, and how much more value you provide (or don't provide) with your position. Go look at the top 20 WAR and those are about the top 20 players in baseball this year.

I do love +wRC, because, for someone like an Adrian Gonzalez who could barely put up 100 RBI's, you can actually see how good he has been with such a crappy offense. I also like it because just because someone is driving in runs doesn't mean he isn't getting on base and helping get a run. That's where the flaw of RBI comes in.

 

[kidbourbon]

Anytime you change the metrics, it causes people to shutdown. OPS+, WAR and VORP are neat to look at, but you can't win many arguments with them because for most it sounds like something developed at NASA.

Well maybe they can't derive the formulas themselves, but the idea of VORP, for example, is completely intuitive. I actually find it to be s helpful way of framing arguments in many different sports, and even just generally. Like do a value over replacement program analysis to compare south park and it's always sunny in Philly.

I don't know a great deal about the other two but WAR sounds a bit like what Bill Connelly does with his PPP in college football, which is basically every single play in a drive is worth a certain amount of points based on starting and ending yardage, And they will add up to 7 if it is a scoring drive. So he's trying to figure out who contributed to the end score rather than in fantasy football where a goal line back is worth way more to your fantasy team than he is to his actual team. At least this is what I gleaned about WAR from a cursory glance earlier. Again, baseball isn't my sport.
Posted via VolNation Mobile

 

[kidbourbon]

True. I think the casaul baseball fan, it freaks out. Mostly because you don't watch sports for the math equations. Which I understand. America likes to shut down it's brain when it comes to sports. Most people don't want to talk about how we can improve FIP when watching a game. They want to talk about Dan Uggla's streak, or who is better, Sabathia or Verlander. It's human nature.

But ideally it isn't about having to think hard or understand the math. What I'm saying is that the numbers are only useful to the extent they are telling me a story about what is happening in the game. And if OPS tells me a lot more about what is happening in the game than RBI, then it probably HELPS me shut off my brain.

Simple basketball example: tell me a team's rebounding numbers and I might actually get angry because you have filled my brain with a meaningless number. But if tell me offensive rebounding percentage, I will broadly smile because it is immediately useful and tells me something significant.
Posted via VolNation Mobile

 

[whocaresgobobcats]

WAR all comes down to assigning a dollar value to runs. That's the whole point of sabermetrics, to figure how much runs are worth and see how the market is responding.

When sabermetrics first came around, they were used to look for market inefficiencies, but now that they are used throughout the industry, it's harder to get that advantage. But teams still use them to figure out a players value, look for possible regression candidates, look for guys who might benefit in a new ballpark, league, situation, etc.

 

[kidbourbon]

Most are pretty accurate, other than defense metrics which are still being worked on, but are still flawed. WAR still needs some tweaks as well, but over they paint a pretty decent picture of a player.
However, you have to use stats with scouting to get the complete picture of a player. Billy Beane tried building a franchise on stats but that got him nowhere, except in a movie.

And they still have to go play the game of course. The team with the best statistical players don't always win.

I have thought from the get go that the defensive metrics were a tad contrived, had a much lower ceiling for usefulness, and were probably not even as good as a simple eyeball test.
Posted via VolNation Mobile

 

[whocaresgobobcats]

I have thought from the get go that the defensive metrics were a tad contrived, had a much lower ceiling for usefulness, and were probably not even as good as a simple eyeball test.
Posted via VolNation Mobile

Yea, that's my belief too. It's hard to replace the evaluation of a scout, coach, etc.

 

[kidbourbon]

Most are pretty accurate, other than defense metrics which are still being worked on, but are still flawed. WAR still needs some tweaks as well, but over they paint a pretty decent picture of a player.

However, you have to use stats with
scouting to get the complete picture of a
player. Billy Beane tried building a
franchise on stats but that got him
nowhere, except ina movie


And they still have to go play the game of

course. The team with the best statistical
players don't always win.

To me, that book wasn't really about the stats. It was about finding value. The stats were central because every Joe Morgan and their idiot cousin relied on 'conventional wisdom' which was often quite unwise, and the numbers were the means to the end of buying the most with their money. But everybody has statisticians now, and so I would imagine Beane has had to discover different ways to find undervalued value.
Posted via VolNation Mobile

 

[zjcvols]

But ideally it isn't about having to think hard or understand the math. What I'm saying is that the numbers are only useful to the extent they are telling me a story about what is happening in the game. And if OPS tells me a lot more about what is happening in the game than RBI, then it probably HELPS me shut off my brain.

Simple basketball example: tell me a team's rebounding numbers and I might actually get angry because you have filled my brain with a meaningless number. But if tell me offensive rebounding percentage, I will broadly smile because it is immediately useful and tells me something significant.
Posted via VolNation Mobile

You're not a casual fan then my friend.

Like I said, my dad likes baseball. He'll watch games. He watches most of the playoff games. He's a casual baseball fan. He cares about some stats. He doesn't care that Matt Kemp leads the NL in wRC+, or that Justin Verlander is leading the league in FIP-. He can just tell that by his eye (or so he thinks).

Like I said, I love sabermetrics not because to tell who stars are. Anybody can tell you Matt Kemp/Andrew McCutchen/Ryan Braun are great players. But I like it for the good baseball players. Mike Bourn is better than you think. Ryan Howard isn't as good as you think. That's what I love about them.

 

[kidbourbon]

You're not a casual fan then my friend.

Like I said, my dad likes baseball. He'll watch games. He watches most of the playoff games. He's a casual baseball fan. He cares about some stats. He doesn't care that Matt Kemp leads the NL in wRC+, or that Justin Verlander is leading the league in FIP-. He can just tell that by his eye (or so he thinks).

Like I said, I love sabermetrics not because to tell who stars are. Anybody can tell you Matt Kemp/Andrew McCutchen/Ryan Braun are great players. But I like it for the good baseball players. Mike Bourn is better than you think. Ryan Howard isn't as good as you think. That's what I love about them.

This post wasn't particularly responsive. I'm not a casual fan because I know that rebounding margin is meaningless but that rebounding percentage is meaningful?

And when it comes to baseball, I'm a nonfan, which is obviously something less than a casual fan. But if I'm gonna be cognizant of any stats at all, I might as well choose the ones that are somewhat meaningful, yes?

 

[Ohio Vol]

Billy Beane's problem was that he was willing to entirely forsake his competitive advantage in exchange for getting a book written mostly about him.

Michael Lewis' problem is that, as a generally sub-par writer, he oversimplified an entire movement in a manner more befitting what the critics of the sabermetricians had been doing for 30 years. I'm a combination of baseball fan, nerd, and competitor; the entire top shelf of one of my multiple bookshelves is nothing but sabermetrics and similar things. Yet "Moneyball" is nowhere to be found. It can be summed up thusly: "New thing good, old thing bad, OBP good". All that other stuff about "it's about a movement as a whole, and in particular a movement to find inefficiencies in a marketplace and challenge conventional logic..." just isn't there.

Outside of this, the rest of my feelings on the topic as a whole have already been summed up by others on this thread.

 

[zjcvols]

This post wasn't particularly responsive. I'm not a casual fan because I know that rebounding margin is meaningless but that rebounding percentage is meaningful?

And when it comes to baseball, I'm a nonfan, which is obviously something less than a casual fan. But if I'm gonna be cognizant of any stats at all, I might as well choose the ones that are somewhat meaningful, yes?

I misread your post. My apologies.

 

[kidbourbon]

I misread your post. My apologies.

No worries.