The Geek Shall Inherit … (On Baseball, Bill James, Storytelling & The Simpsons)

Geek met geek when Bill James’ animated self showed up on The Simpsons this weekend. While that was happening, I was at a baseball game.

It might surprise you to know Ryan Howard doesn’t know his VORP.

Roy Halladay didn’t know his xFIP.

Jamie Moyer doesn’t understand BABIP.

The Reds? You think I’m going to ask those questions in Dusty Baker’s clubhouse? Forget it.

While Bill James was drawn yellow and cynical, the Phillies swept the Reds. It was the last time I’ll ever see my name and Baseball Prospectus on the same line of a credential list. I’m okay with that for a lot of reasons. One of them was in the radio booth. Jon Sciambi works for ESPN, doing radio and TV play by play. I met him years ago, actually on the field at Wrigley before the “Bartman game.” He and Len Kasper were working for the Marlins. Broadcasters seem to “get it” more than most when it came to my stuff, so I gravitated to them in the early days.

Sciambi wrote a great article at BPro earlierREAD MORE

Stop Making Sense: Baseball Advanced Stats Thru The iTunes Catalog Of Stars

For the past couple days, I’ve been involved in an argument discussion about stats in the context of awards. Drew Silva of NBC has taken the position that any writer should have to take a test proving he has a grasp on the advanced statistics. I won’t bore you with the details of the discussion – you can find it on Twitter – but it reminded me of iTunes.

Like many, I’m a bit OCD about rating my music. My library is maybe half rated and while the other half bugs me with its incompleteness, it would take … 19 days to listen to half of it. (38 days of music? That seems excessive.) The thing that helps me is that the ratings themselves aren’t that helpful.

For a time, I unlocked the ‘secret’ feature that allowed 1/2 star ratings. In the end, having those available just complicated things. What’s the difference between a 3 star song and a 4 star song? Adding a half in just didn’t add much information.

One of the things I’ve been doing is going backREAD MORE

The Earth Is Round, Embrace It: A Metaphor For Baseball Writers, Wins

When Zack Greinke won the 2009 Cy Young Award, it felt like a sign of the times that people were starting to wise up to the traditional way of looking at baseball numbers that determined how good a player is. And yet, a year later, people like Rob Parker of ESPNNewYork.com are writing junk like this: “The stats geeks will win.”

Why will the stat geeks win? Well, it’s because CC Sabathia lost last night in a big game. Parker’s column points out that Sabathia may have lost the AL Cy Young last night, getting shelled in a huge game against David Price and the Rays. To Parker, wins matter. And wins in big games matter the most, so when Sabathia lost last night’s big game, he also lost the Cy Young.

He’s not wrong. I actually agree with part of that: big games do matter, and playing well against good opponents is an important factor in determining who should win an award like the Cy Young. But here’s one place where Parker is out-of-his-mind wrong:

Over theREAD MORE