Add new comment

For SURE the guys writing these academic saber papers love baseball.  They also love a pat on the back for research done in "irreproachable" academic style.
................
For all that, there is a subtle-but-decisive difference in the way James writes.  His love for baseball is not implicit in his writing; it's explicit, directed to the game on the field tomorrow.
James' SSLI article, in the first paragraph, grounded itself in Kouzmanoff's and Votto's and Jones' prospects for this upcoming season.
He drops right down to age and he says "we know Grady Sizemore is likely to bounce back."  This gives the article color and readability.  Some other sabermetrician will AVOID that reference, because afraid that somebody will quibble about Sizemore specifically.  "Hm!  Am I really sure that Sizemore is a good example of this?  What studies exist that pertain to him?  Maybe I just better leave that out.... here's that R^2 graph again.  Isn't my research technique grand?"
..................
James' articles are not steeped in "gotcha games" and the anticipation of "legal review."  They're steeped in imagination.  James is writing SSLI, thinking about Grady Sizemore's liner into the right-center gap tomorrow night, not in whether another sabermetrician is going to protest his selection of Sizemore as an example.
James doesn't care whether his SSLI "points system" gets him a pat on the back from fellow postgrad students, and nods all around that it could be part of a master's degree.  He cares whether it tells him about Russell Branyan's 2010.  That's what I care about, too, as it happens...