..................

=== A-Ha "Take On Me" Dept. ===

There are a couple of different ways to present baseball "science," as it were.

The first way is to emphasize tone.  The person publishing the article uses a format, a presentation structure, that reads as if the article were a "study" to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.  He uses jargon that emphasizes the fact that he is speaking to fellow grad students, not to baseball fans in general.  He use the most advanced math necessary to make the point.

Dr. D believes that there is a lot of good work being done in baseball.  Don't get him wrong.  I don't object to the "normal scientists" who grab Newton's theory of the electromagnetic spectrum and begin cataloging the phenomena that associate.  It's necessary work.

.....

But the second way to read baseball "science" is to look for A-HA! moments.  Wow!  I didn't know that about baseball!  

Here the emphasis is on insight, vision, penetration into the deep workings of baseball ... those insights that will change the way we do business.

.....

I'm not a Bill James sycophant.  He's been a little too sharp with me a few times, and it's not like we'd be friends if he lived in Seattle.  But!  As you flip through James' work, you're reminded (page after page) of the difference between (1) creative genius and (2) humdrum research and cataloging.

Take Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP), just as a f'r instance.  For at least five years, Baseball Prospectus emphasized PAP as, probably, its pride and joy cutting-edge statistic, the one that most heavily underlined its place in influencing MLB executives and managers.

This went on for, I dunno, five, six, eight years, and then Bill James published a very polite refutation.  "Um, guys, had you noticed that the pitchers with the most PAP points stay the healthiest in future years?"  (Here is this year's list.  All of the leaders are the healthiest pitchers in the game.  Or, here is 2009's list.  Verlander, Jackson, Lincecum and Halladay led that one.)

I don't hear much about PAP any more, do you?

Now, here's the question.  Baseball Prospectus now employs what, 30, 50, 100 people?  As a group, these BP employees are obviously recruited with a very biased eye toward scholastic achievements and SAT/IQ.  Many have Ph.D's and M.D.'s.

The question:  why didn't any of these 30, 50, 100 people -- over a 5-year scan -- notice that PAP was busted?  Why was Bill James, with his modest academic achievements, the one who understood PAP best?

..........

Trust him:  Dr. D doesn't have anything against a Ph.D. degree.  But he does like to read baseball research that gives him A-HA! moments.  And he does resist the arrogance of youth, the 15-year-old high school chessplayer who thinks that Jose Capablanca (1921) was a weakie.  Dr. D will continue to opine that --- > far from being naive, the sabermetric work of 1975-1989 was often the most inventive and incisive to date.  The cars get sleeker and more powerful, but Henry Ford is the man with his name on them.

"Grant that I might behold beautiful things out of thy temple."  In this regard, there are a few writers that have towered above the landscape.

Even now, those 1982 Analysts vibrate with the liveliness of discovery and insight.  Huh, maybe 20-year-old rookie starters do actually hold up well; we read it in a 1982 rag someplace.  

Bring on Taijuan, then.  I'm game.

Happy reading,

Jeff