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...who is rapidly losing any desire to continue terribly long with academia for the pleasure of doing the research (I have to stay in the "game" because to get where I want to go in 10 years, I have to have a Ph.D., but I *hate* the process and strongly dislike most ofd the people involved in this process)...I concur with your basic assessment that the reason some folks are getting frustrated with sabermetrics is that they're being done for the wrong reasons for most to relate to that work.
I don't think it's true that most sabermetricians are in it JUST because they want to prove they're smarter than 1000 others and have a career...I think sabermetrics is REQUIRED...by the amount of work you have to do to be a part of it and the lack of money coming in to justify said work...to be a labor of love.  I think most of us do it because we genuinely love baseball and want to see others come to an appreciation for the nuances that we've learned to spot while watching games and looking at the data derived from the games.  I think most of us do it for the same reason James does.
Perhaps the way we PRESENT the work is wrong (and I'm often included in this) because we attack it like we attack academic work in general...but I don't think the presentation is a reflection on the true motivation of doing the work.
I, personally, have made almost no progress in baseball research in the last 18 months or so, partially because grad school is very demanding on my time, partially because I am a little burned out on database coding in my day job and can't bring myself to dive back into baseball databases, no matter how much I want to, and partially because my personal life (specifically my drive to start a family some day) has overtaken my baseball life on the list of priorities...but when I was more active, I tended to present things academically because that's how I was trained in school to present work that I approached scientifically...but that never meant I didn't care about the games and it CERTAINLY never meant I didn't apply my knowledge to my own personal enjoyment of baseball games.