Bloggers' view of baseball

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Red Menace posted a report from the NYT about the TPM blog on the Politics forum. But one bit - not political - attracted my attention.

There are sports blogs devoted to single teams that are far more acute in their analysis than mainstream media (MSM) covering the same sport. This is particularly true in baseball, where statistically driven analysis has been adopted wholesale in the blogosphere while the MSM has been slow to recognize its value.

So, is it the case that baseball is not a matter of skill, strength, speed, spirit, stamina and strategy, but of statistics? If so, I may start to believe all sorts of things about Americans.

MG

[GloriousBlues]

No. Baseball is all about athletic ability: throwing, hitting, running, strength, etc.

But figuring out which baseball players are best--and more importantly which ones are likely to perform best in the future--is done most accurately with statistics. Scouts who judge players based on their athletic ability don't generally judge players as well as nerds with computers and lots of data.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Thanks - but I wonder about the role of interpersonal relations in team forming. Or is that less important in baseball than other team sports, such as basketball?

MG

[T.D.]

Yes, the interpersonal "team spirit" thing is less important in baseball than in other team sports.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Thank you, folks.

MG

[J Larsen]

To slightly expand on what has been said above, baseball is basically a series of individual accomplishments. It is this feature that makes it amenable to statistical analysis. In a game like, say, basketball or rugby, it is enormously difficult (some would say impossible) to put statistical weight on how much each individual player contributed to a particular success or failureof his team. In baseball, it's so obvioius how to do it that it practically begs to be done.

As far as how the teams view the statistical approach, it varies widely by team. For instance, Oakland and Boston have in-house statisticians. On the other hand, the general manager of the San Francisco team openly ridicules the approach - beyond batting average (basic measure of batsmanship) and ERA (crude measure of pitching ability) he claims it is a bunch of garbage.

[Van Basten II]

This thread is going to turn into a pro Bill James against Bill James haters, isn't it.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

(Quietly leaves the room.)

MG

[Dan Gould]

This thread is going to turn into a pro Bill James against Bill James haters, isn't it.

(Quietly leaves the room.)

MG

Hey, that dude who just left - he started it!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

MG

[JSngry]

Not so sure that you can say that "team spirit" is less important in baseball than in other sports. Not at all sure. Precisely because it is a game of such individual effort(s) within the context of a team, it's all too easy for individuals to play for their own statistical benefit at the expense of team strategy if there's none of that spirit.

We've all seen a runner steal second in a close game & take the bat ouf the batter's hands. We've all seen pitchers throwing heat attempting to get strikeouts when they should be trying to throw double play balls. We've all seen fielders not dive for sinking liners or chase deep flies to/into the wall for a fear of injury that far outweighs common sense about personal safety. We've all seen dumb and/or lackluster plays that come about from a player putting himself first and his team second. And let's not even talk about the rapidly disappearing/nearly lost art of the sacrifice bunt...

Are winning teams exempt from these type plays and players? Of course not. But a winning team will not allow such behavior to become the norm for too terribly long. If they do, they will inevitably diminish in effectiveness. Maybe "team spirit" isn't as obviously important in baseball as it is in other sports, but I do believe that over the course of a 162 game season the lack of it will manifest itself in a team's final record far more often than not.

[Dan Gould]

Not so sure that you can say that "team spirit" is less important in baseball than in other sports. Not at all sure. Precisely because it is a game of such individual effort(s) within the context of a team, it's all too easy for individuals to play for their own statistical benefit at the expense of team strategy if there's none of that spirit.

We've all seen a runner steal second in a close game & take the bat ouf the batter's hands. We've all seen pitchers throwing heat attempting to get strikeouts when they should be trying to throw double play balls. We've all seen fielders not dive for sinking liners or chase deep flies to/into the wall for a fear of injury that far outweighs common sense about personal safety. We've all seen dumb and/or lackluster plays that come about from a player putting himself first and his team second. And let's not even talk about the rapidly disappearing/nearly lost art of the sacrifice bunt...

Are winning teams exempt from these type plays and players? Of course not. But a winning team will not allow such behavior to become the norm for too terribly long. If they do, they will inevitably diminish in effectiveness. Maybe "team spirit" isn't as obviously important in baseball as it is in other sports, but I do believe that over the course of a 162 game season the lack of it will manifest itself in a team's final record far more often than not.

Equally important is the development of a team mentality in the clubhouse, because so much time is spent together in the course of a season. Not for nothing has the phrase 'clubhouse cancer' become commonplace. And while "team spirit" might not have been the only reason the Red Sox won in 2004, I came to truly believe that the "man hugs" they adopted over fist-bumps and high-fives truly showed that they cared about each other, and that was the polar opposite of the 70s Red Sox teams, which had great talent but never won it all and for whom the phrase "25 men, 25 cabs" was coined.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Ah, that's good - I really WAS on the verge of believing terrible things about Americans, you know.

MG

[JSngry]

Ah, that's good - I really WAS on the verge of believing terrible things about Americans, you know.

MG

Most of us are good people, you know. It's just that there's too many easy bad choices available to us and not enough incentive not to make them.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Ah, that's good - I really WAS on the verge of believing terrible things about Americans, you know.

MG

Most of us are good people, you know. It's just that there's too many easy bad choices available to us and not enough incentive not to make them.

Yes I know. The only nasty Americans I've ever met were three off duty cops in a bar in Newark. They had a big down on Amiri Baraka and, before I knew this, I'd mentioned his name.

They were still carrying guns.

I didn't stay long to chat, after that.

MG