from Amazon
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Neutralizing Data
The best baseball stats site around continues to add feature after feature. Let this be a listen to corporate America. The best websites are not created by middle managers who self-annoint themselves with the pulse on America. They are done by creative, intelligent people. Imagine if Picasso worked at GE today.
Anyway, Sean allows you to set players as he says “into a neutral setting or any setting you chose from Coors circa 2000 to Dodger Stadium in 1968.”. On its face, this is pretty cool. In reality, it is of course b.s. To get technical, he allows you to see how a player’s stats changes if the *run environment* changes, and not if he moves into that particular year/league/park. After all, Coors/2000 and Dodger Stadium/1968 doesn’t affect everyone the same way. To say nothing of the actual timeline adjustment itself. So, I don’t really get why he bothers to let you choose something as specific as that. Why not just let you put in a run environment, say 4.31, and be on your way? I think it gets people excited to present it the way he does, because, on its face, it looks cool. But, it pretends more than it shines. I wouldn’t have a problem if he says “6.39 RPG”. I have a problem if he says “Coors 2001”.
The programmer acknowledged/clarified this in the BTF thread, that it’s not to the park per se. Given that it’s ‘simply’ adjusting to such-and-such run environment, what do you think of the method by which it is doing this? Pretty reasonable? Any missed boats? If you see any mistakes or ways to improve it, give Sean and the programmer a pep talk to upgrade it. (Or heck, if you know of a way to do the park environment thang… But I reckon I’m quite delighted with what it’s trying to do.)