THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

As a Brewer fan, I don’t mind that he assumed he “invented” total average.  It’s an honest mistake.  It’s the fact that he still uses it that bugs me.  Darn pride.

You are right, that there is no justification for using Total Average (or Runs Created or OPS for that matter) as part of your decision-making process, if you have a computer.

Now, if you are “using” it to simply get a quick read, that’s ok.

Interesting interview.  The guy “writes” well.  I have not seen anything particular to suggest that the Brewers are a “sabermetric” organization, but, one, you never know, and two, it’s not like I devote a certain amount of time in my schedule to see if I can figure out which teams are sabermetrically inclined, and to what degree…

I think the Brewers are somewhere in between.  You have to remember, Doug Melvin is the GM who was willing to give Russell Branyan a job… twice. As the interview suggests, Melvin seems to be willing to listen to advice from all sides when he’s making a decision.