Can't we all just get along?

It may already feel like an eternity ago, but just last week Richard "Goose" Gossage was elected to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. As has become the rite of baseball muses every, they build up to the day of the announcement with arguments of who should be in, who shouldn't, and, if they are fortunate enough to be a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, who they voted for and why.

This exchange of words in the written public forums has ascended to a different level in recent years, correlating with the rise in many fan's appreciation of statistical methods used to analyze players in the post Moneyball world. I'll direct you to Rich Lederer's Baseball Analysts blog entries to see what I mean, as well my initial inspiration for this entries' topic. I'll pause here so you can read both entries, and then come back with the rest of the topic.


*musical interlude featuring Nancy Faust playing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" on the organ at Comiskey (no sound link, so use your imagination!)*



Ok, so now that you've read that (you did read, right), you may have noticed someone taking his Louisville Slugger of logic and sabermetric evidence to shred a well known writer at the Eastern Sports Programming Network (ESPN for short). This conflict is not a novel one, nor is it isolated. There are tons of words on various respected sites and in respected publications which detail this battle royale. Trust me, I spared you reading a sentence where every word was linked there it's that massive. But the conflict still seems to manifest itself in pieces like Mr. Lederer's and Mr. Olney's. And I, among others who have written well before me, can't understand why.

A little insight on my background: My day job is as a marketing statistician for a specialty retailer of outdoor gear. Besides the fact that I have no shame in plugging my company's website which you will hopefully buy from someday, my job isn't one where I get to look at numbers all day and tell people what my conclusions are and why they are right. It's a conversation between myself and whoever is the beneficiary of the analysis, be it a marketing analyst, product manager, or other person in the company. This provides valuable information that I cannot gather through the methods I use to analyze the numerical data as I am charged to do. Likewise, whoever receives my conclusions will be wise to incorporate them in with what he/she already knows from their job, and then use it to better their strategies.

At this point in time, many Major League organizations have accepted this idea (including some who seem poised to keep my Sox in a Cubs-like drought unless my team changes tactics), incorporating statistical analysis into their evaluation of ballplayers. And likewise, I believe many sabermetricians, including my amateur self, would love to incorporate a major league scout's report on a player into what we do. Heck, Tangotiger even set up a Fan's Scouting Report to try and provide this very type of insight, assuming that the population will average itself out into a viable scouting report on a player.

That leaves us one group that hasn't fully given in, but probably in part out of self preservation: the amateurish scouts known as professional baseball writers, who go to games and write about the teams. Now, you could say it is in their interest to keep taking a hard line on the scouting side since their profession not only favors that type of analysis, but also it makes for good copy in the modern environment. I, on the other hand, think that it is simpler than that conspiracy theory: some people just haven't thought it through, and a sizable number of them have a voice with this nation's newspapers, radio stations, and television networks. Rather, they see things in the following order:
- Find interesting topic for debate
- Pick a side
- Argue like hell for that side, occasionally disregarding logic in favor of meeting deadlines
- Repeat for next column/post/segment
Can anyone in the class tell me what's wrong with that?

Right-o kids, they make up their minds then find reasons to support their claim rather than inverting the process. Maybe that's why we have so many lawyers in this country. Or maybe that's why our narrow mindedness has lead us to where we stand at today. Statheads vs. Scouts may seem like a trifle debate, but it could very easily be a microcosm for our society, where we all need to show a little more thought and do a little more research before doing things and drawing conclusions.

Care to see the stats?