Stat Haters

[ChrisLDuncan]

Why are there so many stat haters?

[Captain Cold Nose]

Why are there so many stat haters?

It's not so much the hating of the stats themselves, but the attitude of some that a few simple numbers can perfectly define a player, and the players have been reduced to little more than blips on a computer screen or lines in a book somewhere. There's nothing dynamic about just numbers, which can easily be manipulated, and people are dynamic. More than just base accomplishment.

Stats are great at interpretting, that is something that cannot logically be denied. But they're not the rule by themselves. I think some people's issues with them is based on how something that seems so complex can be seemingly summarized so switftly and coldly. When some see "So and so is this because of this and that's that" they take offense because it reduces something that is endearing to them. Number's aren't endearing.

[Tango Tiger]

What some people do at their real job in corporate America, how they do it, and how well they do it, is very complex, unique, and hard to really pin down. But, that doesn't stop their boss from giving him a single overall performance rating, and a single annual salary.

There's nothing wrong with a single number, as long as you explain the conditions and assumptions of that single number.

[digglahhh]

What some people do at their real job in corporate America, how they do it, and how well they do it, is very complex, unique, and hard to really pin down. But, that doesn't stop their boss from giving him a single overall performance rating, and a single annual salary.

There's nothing wrong with a single number, as long as you explain the conditions and assumptions of that single number.

Well said, Tango.

Stats are never that black and white. People accept general economic indicators as representative of our growth and prosperity as a nation, though those numbers often discount important contextual considerations. It is myopic and naive to believe that all sorts of complex issues, and human behaviors aren't broken down into cold, hard, data and interpreted as simple binaries for all kinds of purposes. For some reason, this gets people worked up when it comes to baseball, more than, say, market research.

Part of the issue is the propagation of this false jock/geek dichotomy. Macho jock types don't want to accept the notion that the geek with the pocket-protector can interpret with very accurate value that which he is entirely incapable of performing. Researching, academic types don't want to think that their brains and tools are incapable of understanding something because they brutish jocks involve claim otherwise.

Of course, this dichotomy based on the anomalous caricature of either camp. Stat heads DO care about the game, and athletes DO value advances in the tools by which their performance can be measured. I blame much of the polarizing effect of the sabermetric movement on a immature, cultural and intellectual turf war over the "understanding" of the game.

[redoct11]

There's nothing dynamic about just numbers, which can easily be manipulated, and people are dynamic. More than just base accomplishment.

Couldn't the same be said about opinions or memories? Yet I've seen no one acknowledge this.

[Captain Cold Nose]

Couldn't the same be said about opinions or memories? Yet I've seen no one acknowledge this.

You just did.

Bear in mind, I am not a stats-hater. I was only stating why (I feel) so many people don't like them. Tango, you stated the very reason why so many don't like them, because so many throw the numbers out there without explanation of them. One reason why you're such a valued member (at least by me) is you have the numbers and can discuss them and their validity. And Derek better-cpatured the feeling, the dichotomy, than I sure did.

I work in Quality. I know full well the importance of stats, and the importance of defining them and what they mean. But stats without definition, which we see plenty of, give that side a bad name to the average fan. That's the biggest issue.

[ChrisLDuncan]

I've heard people say things like "I don't need a stat to tell me who's good" well, yes that is usually the case...however to decide who's "better" you usually need some measuring stick to decide this. I find the stats that are official to be often misleading and taken out of context...so I'll usually visit someplace like The Hardball Times or Baseball Prospectus and use one of their advanced metrics.

[KCGHOST]

Until one grasp that the importance of modern statistical work is to give us a proper context to compare/evaluate players you will never understand why this work is importance.

And to many people it is a simple matter of "I know what I saw". To them a hit-is-a-hit, "productive outs" is a valid concept to build an offense around, and Joe Morgan knows what he is talking about.

[Ubiquitous]

In light of the recent surge in similar posts and threads I have posted a sticky (and I hate stickies) for this forum. Please everyone if you have a moment check out the sticky and also please keep in mind that I am not making this thread the discussion of that sticky either. Questions or concerns PM me.

thanks

[Xeifrank]

In light of the recent surge in similar posts and threads I have posted a sticky (and I hate stickies) for this forum. Please everyone if you have a moment check out the sticky and also please keep in mind that I am not making this thread the discussion of that sticky either. Questions or concerns PM me.

thanks

That was long overdue.
vr, Xei

[jalbright]

It's not so much the hating of the stats themselves, but the attitude of some that a few simple numbers can perfectly define a player, and the players have been reduced to little more than blips on a computer screen or lines in a book somewhere. There's nothing dynamic about just numbers, which can easily be manipulated, and people are dynamic. More than just base accomplishment.

Stats are great at interpretting, that is something that cannot logically be denied. But they're not the rule by themselves. I think some people's issues with them is based on how something that seems so complex can be seemingly summarized so switftly and coldly. When some see "So and so is this because of this and that's that" they take offense because it reduces something that is endearing to them. Number's aren't endearing.

I might add that, unfortunately, some of the people called "stats geeks" don't have a proper understanding of the tools at their disposal, and use them in ineffective (or worse) ways, often while loudly conveying a "know-it-all" air. That kind of combination is bound to cause some resentment.

Jim Albright

[sds416]

Stats are great....for trivia, for late night baseball discussions after a few too many beers, etc.

I've been blessed to talk to probably 100 major league scouts over the years and I am proud to say that one of them was my grandfather. And in general they all had the same conclusion...that stats were nowhere near the be all or end all when it came to judging a player. They felt (and I agree) that it took an insiders understanding of the game in order to accurately observe the the game for the purposes of scouting. Generally speaking you needed to play at a high level or have been taught to view the game a certain way by someone who did in order to accurately understand what is needed to succeed at that level. How many times have you heard the story of a major leaguer who was "found" by a scout who was going to see another player, but ended up finding him? Quite often, and the reason why is because that person wasn't statistically better, but they were actually better. Therein lies the subtle but important difference and to me the #1 reason why stats are far too overstated in terms of their importance.

[PopTop]

I'm in agreement with the good Cap'n and sds416 on this. To Cold Nose's initial post, I would add that it's not just the attitudes of stat heads, but the attitudes of both camps who believe, as sds put it, their way is the only way.

Haven't met near as many scouts as sds, but I have had the privilege and pleasure to meet a few and chat with them about their craft. One of them was an MLB advance scout and two others were scouting at the 'beat the bushes' level. One of the guys was an absolute stats nut. He quantified every little detail he could find about a player's ability, from speed times to on-base to, well, everything. He'd have pages and pages of info on a particular player. Another scout would have one little 3x5 index card with something like, "Quick first step, strong arm, uppercut swing, instinctive" written on it, and that was all. The thing is, the way they went about their jobs seemed to work well for all of them.

We have bloggers and mainstream media folks out there just looking at boxscores and reading stats pages before making their minds up about a player. They rarely sit and actually watch an entire game. When all they can spout are numbers, it generally raises a caution flag to me. You've got to have the numbers, no doubt, you have to know how frequent a guy gets on base, hits for power, how a pitcher fares against a particular batter and vice-versa. But if you don't really understand how those numbers correlate to the action on the field, you're only batting .500, in my opinion (thought I'd end the post with a stat )

[Ubiquitous]

Okay but how many players did a scout sign and then never have amount to much? Tons right? For every success story there is probably 1,000 failures. That is simply the nature of the business. Secondly how many players make it that some scout writes off? Well if your success stories are "quite often" then so too are the players who make it that scouts write off because they don't look like ballplayers or project to be ballplayers. Scout vs Stats isn't an either or. It should be both. Stats just like scouting needs to be understood and have it put in its proper context. If I go to a game and then write a letter to Cashman saying I scouted Frank Smith and he is great will that letter be valued? No, because I am a nobody. But if Cashman sends out John Jobe out to Peoria and sends back a letter in which he hails a pitcher named Johny J and Mr. Jobe has been scouting for 20 years and has scouted and recommended many pitchers who have made it to the bigs that would certainly carry a lot of weight wouldn't it? Same thing applies to stats. If I say Frank Smith the high school kid is great because he has a .320 batting average and 25 homers it is meaningless without the proper context. It could turn out that his High School division has a league batting average of .310 and his home park has a unique layout due to space restrictions and has an extremely short porch and as a result 23 of his homers were at home. Or it could be the other way around it could be that his league batting average is .210 and 4 of the high school fields have deep fences. That is just explaining it in its simplest form. All stats are is a quantifiable set of data that helps explain what is going on on the field and what potentially will happen in the future. Really it should simply be another tool in a scouts bag of trick in regards to scouts specifically. Not saying that is all stats are good for period.

[PopTop]

Okay but how many players did a scout sign and then never have amount to much? Tons right? For every success story there is probably 1,000 failures.

I'd venture to guess your stat on success stories to bust stories is very accurate.

[Tango Tiger]

I believe in scouting, which is why, for 5 years now, I've been running the Fans' Scouting Report:
http://www.tangotiger.net/scouting/

The question is always about sample size and regression. If I have 1800 PA by Albert Pujols at the MLB level, I don't need much of a scout, since I would regress his actual performance just 10% toward the mean... UNLESS... there's been an undocumented injury or change in approach. The human observer will add considerable insight here. At the same time, a human observer can very well be tempted to look at the stats I'd implore him to NOT look at.

A case in point is Mike Mussina:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi...=p#496:498:sum

In 3 straight starts in August, totalling 9 and 2/3 IP, he allowed 25 hits, 20 runs, 5 walks, and 3 K. That's a disastrous performance. But, is it predictive? Did his arm fall off, or what? He was sent to the bullpen, pitched 3 and 2/3 IP, allowing 7 hits. That was 8 days ago, and hasn't pitched since.

Purely from a stats perspective, it's a blip. It alters our forecast for him slightly, but not substantially. If we had better stats to look at (pitch location, fastball speed, pitch movement, etc), we'd know far more. Barring that, a human observer would be ideal. The key though is for the human observer to make his observations absent the stats information. He should not explain the stats, but rather explain the player.

The convergence of performance analysis and scouting observation is what sabermetrics is all about.

[SABR Matt]

I believe in scouting and believe strongly that tools scouts have a great deal of insight that I do not. I do, however, take offense at the notion that only a baseball insider can possibly ever understand the game deeply enough to contribute meaningfully to a team or to the greater study of baseball.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

Stats are great....for trivia, for late night baseball discussions after a few too many beers, etc.

I've been blessed to talk to probably 100 major league scouts over the years and I am proud to say that one of them was my grandfather. And in general they all had the same conclusion...that stats were nowhere near the be all or end all when it came to judging a player. They felt (and I agree) that it took an insiders understanding of the game in order to accurately observe the the game for the purposes of scouting. Generally speaking you needed to play at a high level or have been taught to view the game a certain way by someone who did in order to accurately understand what is needed to succeed at that level.

Of course scouts will say this. Just because scouts say this doesn't mean it is true. Why would they claim otherwise? Why would scouts claim that they often don't have a clue about a player. It is not in their best interest to claim otherwise. The history of scouting has example after example of drafts picks that went bust that scouts were drooling over. What do these players have in common?

Shawn Abner
Jeff King
Steve Chilcott
Danny Goodwin
Al Chambers

All these players were #1 overall picks. And all were complete busts. I can name several others as well. It's just not #1 picks it's other early round picks as well. Scouts claim that a person needs "inside" knowledge, or "baseball" experience to know what players to draft and sign. The problem is that much of this "inside" knowledge is based on precepts and assumptions that are illogical or make no sense or simply just wrong. But since that's how it's been done for decades so it must be the right way to do things.

One example is that scouts place way way too much weight on "tools". They see a young kid with a great body, great speed, and can hit the ball a country mile and presto you got the next Eric Davis or Bary Bonds. But how often to scouts ask themselves can this kid actually play baseball? I'll give you two more examples from the 1989 draft, Jeff Jackson and Earl Cunningham, both high school players. Jackson was billed as the next Eric Davis. He looked like an Eric Davis clone (Davis was 6'3" 185 lbs. Jackson was 6'2" 180 lbs.). Jackson was the 4th overall pick in 1989. And he was a complete bust. He played eight seasons in the minors and never got above AA ball. His career line was .225/.304/.328.

Earl Cunningham was the #8 pick in the 1989 draft. Here was a big kid (6'2", 225 lbs) with tremendous power. The scouts all loved him. Yet over an eight year career he never got out of A ball. In one season he had 108K with 13 walks and hit .216. In another season he had 145K with 10 walks and hit .239. Over his entire minor league career he hit .224/.283/.327. Here is where I have issue when scouts claim that one needs to be an "insider" to really know which players will be good major leaguers. Their "inside" information and assumptions are often wrong.

On the opposite side we have a player in which scouts disregarded, Mike Piazza. Here is a player that went undrafted out of high school and almost went undrafted out of college if it were not for Tommy Lasorda doing a favor. How can all the scouts miss out on the greatest hitting catcher in major league history? I simply have a hard time believing that the greatest hitting catcher in major league history didn't show at least some baseball potential in high school or college. That just doesn't make sense.

It may sound like I'm down on scouts. I'm really not. I love reading Baseball America's yearly Propects' Handbook where they rank the top 30 prospects for every team. Baseball America is hardly a sabermetics' oriented organization. But I love to read scouting reports to get a feel for these kids, their strengths, weaknesses, tools (yes tools), and other traits. I like when they describe a players actually playing abilities and personality traits. What I don't like is when scouts try to infer what an 18-20 year old player will be like as a 24-25 year old. This is where the scouting community gets in trouble. There is simply no way to determine with any accuracy how a player will develop. And I do have one small pet peeve with Baseball America in how they rank the top prospects. They place way too much weight on "potential". In the SF Giants' section they had Tim Lincecum as the #1 prospect. The #2 prospect was the 16 year old kid the Giants signed in 2006 out of the D.R. When the book was published he hadn't played any pro ball yet. So how could he be the Giants' #2 prospect if he hadn't even played any pro ball yet?

How many times have you heard the story of a major leaguer who was "found" by a scout who was going to see another player, but ended up finding him? Quite often, and the reason why is because that person wasn't statistically better, but they were actually better. Therein lies the subtle but important difference and to me the #1 reason why stats are far too overstated in terms of their importance.

Since when do scouts look at stats? They often claim they they don't need stats at all to determine how good a player is.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

I believe in scouting and believe strongly that tools scouts have a great deal of insight that I do not. I do, however, take offense at the notion that only a baseball insider can possibly ever understand the game deeply enough to contribute meaningfully to a team or to the greater study of baseball.

Scouts have cool jobs and they know a lot. But I also take offense that only "insiders" really know about baseball.

[Chickazoola]

All of you should read a book called Dollar Sign On The Muscle by Kevin Kerrane. Basically Kerrane spent 1981 following various scouts around, mainly on the Phillies staff and learning their craft.

The book is very insightful, and quite objective I found, because it occurs before Sabrmetrics became commonplace. So what you have taking place is the dichotomy between the visual experience of the scout, and the attempt by more progressive organizations to use more advanced tools, such as a central scouting bureaus, computers, radar guns and advanced skills testing(both physical and psychological). What it demonstrates is that scouts in general have always been wary of new ideas, it's not a new thing.

Some of the scouts profiled border on self-parody, with their rugged, profanity ridden exteriors, and insistence on old time mantras like Branch Rickey's "a player who over-strides in his swing can't be corrected". Also a lot of scouts go on and on about what's called "the good face", which basically means the player has a square jaw and looks like a ball player should. Billy Beane talks a bit about it Moneyball, how he looked like a ballplayer and that really was his main asset. I don't know how much scouts rely on "the good face" today, but I would not be surprised to learn that some do.

It's really a good read and showed me alot about the scouting process. Scouts do have value, but the old time carny ones who refuse to adapt probably shouldn't be the ones that shape the field.

Even just doing fantasy pools this year and noticing the sudden midseason declines of Bonderman and Bay it makes me wonder what they are doing differently that is making them struggle so much, when their track record has been so good, and there is no reason why they should just start stinking. With some scouting reports the answers can be find. The numbers tell a story, but only part of it.

[SABR Matt]

Bonderman is hurt.

He's not telling anyone yet, but I'm absolutely certain he's hurt and it's going to be serious when the news finally breaks. I've read several scouts' takes on Bonderman's style of pitching mechanics...there seems to be concern over the way he hyper-rotates his pitching shoulder to get more torque.

[Chickazoola]

Bonderman is hurt.

He's not telling anyone yet, but I'm absolutely certain he's hurt and it's going to be serious when the news finally breaks. I've read several scouts' takes on Bonderman's style of pitching mechanics...there seems to be concern over the way he hyper-rotates his pitching shoulder to get more torque.

I know that Bonderman is hurt(I was thinking he was probably hurt), but for about 5-6 weeks now he has been pretty un-Bonderman like, and the stats don't explain why. A scouting report would have suggested a change in pitching mechanics or anything else different about him, and that was my point. The numbers don't always explain a change in performance, and without watching the games, you couldn't draw a conclusion just by looking at the numbers.

[SABR Matt]

I understood your point (and don't disagree), I was just attempting to prove to the folks around the web who think stat heads can't scout too that I am capable of making non-statistically-oriented judgments about the game.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

I know that Bonderman is hurt(I was thinking he was probably hurt), but for about 5-6 weeks now he has been pretty un-Bonderman like, and the stats don't explain why. A scouting report would have suggested a change in pitching mechanics or anything else different about him, and that was my point. The numbers don't always explain a change in performance, and without watching the games, you couldn't draw a conclusion just by looking at the numbers.

This is not the purpose of statistics. Baseball statistics are descriptive not prescriptive. They can describe an event but cannnot convey an abstract meaning. Also, in the modern game we can go geyond a "scouting report" to see if there is something wrong with Bonderman's delivery. All teams video tape every pitch of every game. Video analysis is how teams can evaluate a pitcher's delivery or a hitter's swing. If you read the intro to the Baseball Prospectus 2007 baseball book it talks about the how one can use modern video analysis to evaluate defense. They compare Adam Everett to Derek Jeter. It's really good article if you get a chance to read it.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

I understood your point (and don't disagree), I was just attempting to prove to the folks around the web who think stat heads can't scout too that I am capable of making non-statistically-oriented judgments about the game.

Matt,

Have you read the intro to the 2007 Baseball Propsectus book and its take on video analysis to evaluate defense? If so, what's your take on it?