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Q.  Are we going to argue about John Jaso all year?

A.  No, we're going to argue about WAR all year.  If we are sabermetricians, we quite literally have no choice about that.  Allow Dr. D to explain.

Bill James Online follows on SSI -- inadvertently -- in the way it blends discussion of life and baseball. Some amigos find it distracting to think about anything that is very far removed from AVG, HR, and RBI.  Others find it stimulating, the way that baseball teaches us philosophical lessons that benefit us in real life.  

For both parties, the internet has provided the ultimate Everybody Wins Solution:  the option to click through.

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In Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Science, Kuhn pointed out that scientific models are updated only after deep crisis.  Malcom Forster summarizes,

4. No Paradigm Change without Crisis: Nevertheless, a paradigm (though resisting change) is playing an essential role in allowing a scientist to recognize something as anomalous, as contrary to expectation, and this is an important precondition for discovery (p.65). However, the process of improving fit between fact and theory is a part of normal science, so an anomaly, a failing of expectations, presents just another puzzle to be resolved by the construction of improved models. That is the standard fare of normal science. The point is that an anomaly is not by itself sufficient for paradigm change (that is the falsificationist’s folly).

     For example, Ptolemy’s system of astronomy certainly faced discrepancies, but it was only when those discrepancies built up to crisis point that the conditions were ripe for change (p.68): "Given a particular discrepancy, astronomers were invariably able to eliminate it by making some particular adjustment in Ptolemy’s system of compounded circles. But... astronomy’s complexity was increasing far more rapidly than its accuracy and that a discrepancy corrected in one place was likely to show up in another."  Notice that Kuhn mentions complexity as requisite condition for paradigm change in this example. It is a necessary part of what defines a crisis in normal science. For, a sufficient number of compounded circles would provide perfect fit with the data at any one time. That Ptolemaic model would provide no discrepancies with existing data. But the crisis is revealed by the way it changes over time, for as Kuhn puts it, the "astronomy’s complexity was increasing far more rapidly than its accuracy and that a discrepancy corrected in one place was likely to show up in another."

     On the other hand, Kuhn presents the Copernican revolution as an example which the crisis in the reigning Ptolemaic paradigm was almost the only reason for the change  (pp.75-6): "Copernicus’ more elaborate proposal was neither simpler nor more accurate than Ptolemy’s system. Available observational tests, as we shall see more clearly below, provided no basis of a choice between them."

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Scientists are, as a group, MORE closed-minded than you are.  Not less.  The more educated a person gets, the more ego'ed out he gets.  And the more he hates somebody telling him he's wrong.  There are exceptions.

Ptolemy had the solar system revolving around the Earth, and the Sun as the 3rd "planet" out.  This explained a huge percentage of the observable data at the time.

A good, but flawed, scientific model like Ptolemy's serves an INDISPENSIBLE function -- you find bits of data that CANNOT fit the model, "anomalies," and that's how you can understand the fact that you've made a discovery.  

It's because the old model exists, and fails, that a light bulb comes on.  If you didn't have that old model, you couldn't possibly have known that you were even looking at anything.

Sincere scientists like it when models fail.  That point registers a very high "Leverage Index" on the discovery meter.  You're about to understand something very important.  Isn't that why we're here?

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There are two competing models in pop sabermetrics right now:  

• WAR explains everything (or 98.7% of everything)
• The other model (used by Zduriencik, James, and SSI denizens)

At the very moment that Jack Zduriencik was (hopefully) making a contending 2013 season possible -- trading John Jaso for Michael Morse -- our good friends at LL were chanting "Please find the least painful method of mass suicide, somebody."  This doesn't have to be a lasting embarrassment.  It should be a source of good-natured amusement.  But see the last paragraph, below.

It is because of the WAR Explains Everything model that we are able to identify the Jaso vs Morse data as a clear anomaly -- something very important to learn about baseball.  

The LL and USSM mass hysteria obviously presented its analogue as the scientific "crisis" -- we have hit the point at which it becomes so painful to believe in Ptolemy's outdated system, that leading scientists are forced, kicking and screaming, to begin defecting en masse to the new model.

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In every scientific revolution, there's a sector of people who claim that the real problem is the social impoliteness of the Copernican defectors.  It's bad form, don't you know, to point out that Ptolemy was less than brilliant.  Have you no regard for our dignity?

Have regard for your own dignity.  Simply issue a statement that you were mistaken, and that you're glad to have the use of a superior model now.  Your new mission: to get on board and help educate the public that Copernicus is the way to go.

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SSI is an e-zine that is designed to be fun to flip through in the morning.  We like to keep the squabble factor low.  We'll continue to do that.  At certain points, the subject matter is just too important to ignore.

Do we have to argue about John Jaso all year?  No, but it's going to be a whale of an Exhibit J that the Fangraphs model needs updating.  

From time to time you will hear references to Ptolemy vs Copernicus; how would you be an astronomer of that time and refuse to address the models?  Nah, I don't wanna talk about whether the Sun revolves around the earth; I just want to catalog stars and be the greatest astronomer in the world.  I don't want to talk about whether WAR captures everything or whether it doesn't; I just want to talk about whether we should re-sign Michael Morse....

Our need for a better sabermetric model outweighs the need for bloggers to save face.  Real scientists prioritize truth.  I'm going with Copernicus here, a/k/a Jack Zduriencik.

Your friend,

Jeff