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Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Joe Cooter speaks
Joe Gray had an excellent book review of the 2003 Baseball Abstract. In the comments section, he is engaging with a fellow who says, among other things:
I honestly have to say, that as a fan of the game, I am no fan of Bill James or Sabermetrics. I believe that OPS, WHiP, Vorp, and other statisticals devices by this securtity guard from Boston have contaminated the way most writers analysize the game.
And he goes to the old standby:
This year in 138 games he did hit .365 and hit a career high 28 homeruns and drove in a carreer high 96 runs. Projected over a full season that would be 33 homeruns and 113 runs. Fairly good stats but for a clean up hitter they’re what’s expected. However, if you look at his full five year statistics, they’re not all that impressive in five years he’s only hit 72 homeruns (playing half his games in a homerun friendly park) and driven in 397 that’s an average of roughly 14 homers and 79 tunes batted in. For a guy hitting third in the batting order those are not the kind of production numbers that you want out of those two spots in the order. Those are the kind of production numbers you’d expect out of somebody hitting 6th or 7th in the line-up
What sabermetrics tries to do is make sure people are not hammering screws, or using a Philips screwdriver on a nail. Joe Gray, the book reviewer, engages with Joe Cooter. Unfortunately, Mr Cooter is not interested in education, but rather informing us of his uninformed opinion. The only way to handle guys like this is to ask them to ask you questions. Education is the key.
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