Sabermetric Fatigue, part 3
=== Roll Call Dept. ===
Bill James, at 62 or something, loves sabermetrics more than he ever did. That is because baseball research was only ever there for one reason to him: to help him enjoy the game at 7:05 tonight. :- )
John Sickels, as I see it, has inadvertently studied sabermetrics for the wrong reason -- to keep his resume up-to-date. If he would simply return to the James orientation, his ennui would quickly vanish IMHO. Sickels himself put it, "I just wanna go see a game."
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Jeff Sullivan, IMHO, writes like a guy who loves baseball, as James does.
There's another pitcher archetype here, though. Sullivan does potentially have a future in baseball. When he squirrels away info-acorns, there is (subconsciously or not) the hope and cheer of someday perhaps using them as a hired baseball analyst.
Young guys are not bored by granular information. We older guys have given up on the dream of ever using that hair-fine information. We love knowledge, but you get to where you want universe-shaking insights. You get to where you want big ROI for your research minute.
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Tom Tango actually is a baseball professional. To him, every new thing he learns has an impact on his life. That's yet another pitcher archetype. An M.D. reads the JAMA with more interest than you or I do. He's liable to be able to use it the next day in his job.
Tango doesn't sound to me like he's competing with people. He sounds to me like he's enraptured with understanding baseball.
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Dr. Detecto long ago lost his 20-something academic orientation. He no longer cares whether his friends think that he's a shade the smarter, or a shade the dumber, than (say) Nick Steiner.
He wants sabermetric info that (1) relates to the Mariners, or (2) is so fundamental and fresh that it draws a smile. Such as James' SSLI, for instance.
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=== Have Sabermetrics Gone Too Far? ===
Per SSI's way of looking at things, this is absolutely the wrong question. There's no such thing as too much knowledge. Write a book on isolated Queen Pawns with same-color Bishops? Is that going "too far"? Somebody wants the information. Just don't tell me I have to have it, or I'm not a real chessplayer.
As Sullivan convincingly demonstrated, nobody keeps up with everything sabermetric these days. When a guy intones, "No evidence exists that.... ", know that he's bluffing you. Nobody reads comprehensively these days. Blengino's staff of interns couldn't possibly get it all.
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=== The Audition ===
You know, and I know, that a lot of blogs and articles are written in the hopes that somebody up there will hear the author. Maybe even discover the author. There are quite a few internet saberdudes who do get discovered through their writing.
Is it okay, per SSI, for the 20-something "academic" to write his articles as work samples? Sure. If that's what a guy wants to do with his baseball time, dream of working in MLB, there's not a thing wrong with that.
As you know, academia itself (say, the little committee that will judge your work on 19th-century Belgian weaving) is very competitive and often unpleasantly political. I don't personally care for it when writers sniff at each other's work in quasi-academic tone. But, whatever. The goal of working in MLB, or for Baseball Prospectus, what's wrong with that?
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=== While We're Soul-Baring, Dept. ===
We've been asked quite a few times whether we have any "aspirations" to advance in baseball.
1) Dr. D is a 47-year-old man with a family and three different jobs, none of which pay the minimum wage. :- )
2) The typical 'net rat like me, if he ever gets hired into baseball, does heavy sabermetric lifting either for (a) the minimum wage or (b) free.
Dr. D couldn't possibly intern for ESPN, or the Oakland A's, for $20 an hour. My budget literally couldn't take it. I'd lose my house.
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Needless to say, it would be pretty cool for (say) the Angels to spot my blogwork, go, "hey, write us some POTD's at $200 apiece," and bring me down for a couple of series a year, sit in the boxes and bounce ideas around, something like that. Everybody would enjoy that gig.
But as you know, the saber market is completely saturated at this point, with 100's or even 1,000's of writers who are VERY good at what they do. It's like Samuel L. Jackson told his basketball player. "I said dream, not hallucinate!" The $200-an-article writing work is realistic if you're working outside baseball.
... Dr. D's aspirations on the internet go towards getting a book published, mostly non-sports-oriented. Auditioning against 1,000 Ph.D.'s to get an internship with the Cleveland Indians is no longer appealling.
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And as it turns out, the benefits associated with writing baseball have turned out to be quite a ways in advance of what we ever expected. :- ) The freelancing work, America's free-market economy, will usually reward you to the extent you deserve.
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=== Dr's R/X Dept. ===
Research can't go too far, but it can become divorced from baseball enjoyment. As you know, SSI seeks the path less travelled -- the Bill James path.
Baseball is a game, not a religion, and not a science. If we read and write baseball purely for fun, the rest will take care of itself.
See you at the ballpark,
Dr D