THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Total bases (TB) doesn’t already include walks and HBP?

Anyway, Messmer’s stat seems to be as good or bad as any other really dumb, fan-oriented, stat I have seen.  There are dozens of them, aren’t there?

I don’t know anything about Madden, but why should a MS sportswriter know one bad stat from another?

What is wrong with him?  He is a writer who doesn’t know much about how baseball statistics work and what they mean, yet he is allowed to write about them in a major newspaper (albeit a tabloid).

This comment says it all:

And in Scioscia’s case his team has somehow managed to not only sustain itself in the midst of all its injuries but actually thrive, pulling away in the AL West and winning on the road. (How much more evidence do we need to call him the best manager in baseball?)

While I agree that Scioscia is probably one of the better managers in baseball…

”...one of the most logical systems for rating players...”

I’m curious what those other stats are that he considers highly logical.

Let us not forget that “winning on the road” is the sign of a good manager…

Gotta love it when a writer inflates the importance of his source to lend his article more credibility.

Who knows, maybe he actually did read Stat One. But I kind of doubt it.

Matt, well-said. 

Not to pick on Nate, but I was thinking the same thing when the writer wrote the article in Newsweek.  He trumped up Nate by inflating PECOTA by not citing anyone about it, nor researching it oneself.  Seeing that the writer was not a baseball person, I dismiss the claim.  But, that’s exactly what these writers are doing.

But, that’s a great way you put it.  From now on, when I see a writer trumping up his source, I’ll look to see whether he had any basis at all in making his statement.