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You hit the nail on the head there. It is the "certainty" of the USSM-style analysis that is amateur hour IMO. "Jaso was better than Morse in 2012, case closed, this trade is obvious garbage and by implication I'm smarter than Jack Zduriencik + all of his staff".
This is a central theme of Nate Silver's book (which I recommend, fun read) - that the very best forecasters still barely beat a coin flip, and that probabilistic / scenario-based / multi-disciplinary thinking (with a heavy dose of humility) is the best way.
I think you and the crew here are usually putting things in terms of, here are the possible outcomes, here's what I think is most likely, but if I was wrong here's what it would look like. And that's just a far more productive way of analyzing problems. I like the 1,000 lightbulbs analogy you often use, but also the point is there are a lot of lightbulbs that NOBODY has on...because dynamic systems (like baseball) are impossibly more complex than we 2013 humans are capable of predicting. Hey how are the Red Sox doing lately with a huge budget and the best baseball analyst ever on payroll?
LL I see as more of an entertainment site for a certain type of fan to have a place to bs about the M's on game day. Never been especially impressed by the analysis, but at least Sullivan's a funny guy and a good writer.