from Amazon
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Mike Silva Chronicles - Part 7: Salesmen
Why is there the appearance of “hesitation” (April of ‘09 SI article seemed to indicate that) with embracing advanced metrics? Would it be fair to say the community has done a bad job selling their ideas?
Yes, the community has done a bad job of selling their ideas. This is because they don’t have it as part of their objective. Their objective is enjoyment, and so, they proceed on introducing and discussing their ideas on that level. If their goal was something more, they’d sell their ideas on that basis.
For example, The Book had to be “sold”, literally. So, The Book was written with a differnt slant in order for the reader to buy into everything that was said. So, we went out of our way to have a targetted focus on the material and presentation. And, most people who read The Book seemed to enjoy the book… they were sold on it. But, it’s not something I particularly care to do all the time. I prefer just putting my ideas out there, argue them to some extent, and then let whatever come of it.
I don’t know if there’s “hesitation”. It might be because we haven’t rallied around things as a community. But, the sabermetric community doesn’t really rally around things, because they are constantly challenging ideas, and then coming up with their own. It’s a dynamic community, with dynamic ideas, and everyone is always moving forward, just not all in the same direction. As well, being on the cutting edge means staying on the cutting edge. We’re not always looking back to see how can we get the mainstream to take those 3 extra steps forward just for them to try to catch up.
As Bill James once noted, if it seems you are in the middle of a conversation, that’s because you are. And in some cases, we may be speaking a different language. To those of us knee-deep in this, it all makes sense, and we are able to move forward because we have logical basis for what we do.
I think the hesitation comes from the same hesitation there is in embracing evolution or global warming. People want to believe what they want to believe.
If you want to believe that Mike Cameron is a bad player because he hits . 230 and Derek Jeter is a good defensive player because he wins Gold Gloves then you aren’t going to want to look at something that says otherwise because it might tell you something you don’t want to believe.
Plus, it’s damn complicated and people prefer baseball to be kept simple where all .230 hitters are bad players.