THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

John Sickels on sabermetrics, or, How the road less travelled is the road not taken

The blogosphere is all atwitter by John Sickels speaking his mind:

I got sick of grad school when the things they wanted us to study (19th century Belgian weavers for example) became so granular as to become meaningless. I’m starting to get the same feeling about sabermetrics sometimes.

Note that this is John talking about how he feels about sabermetrics.  In my case, the granularity is where I find the education. 

The interesting thing is that after I quit grad school, my love of history returned.  I now wonder if a similar process is underway in my baseball mind. I still love baseball, and I still love studying, analyzing, and projecting minor league players. It doesn’t put a bad taste in my soul the way history did from 1994 through 1997. But when it comes to the most advanced sabermetric stuff regarding major league players. . .that old grad school feeling is returning.

But, what granular things is he talking about, since those things that are getting granular, he shares my general opinion:

The newest stuff is becoming so granular…

I don’t think this is true on defense, where genuine ground-breaking progress is being made. I’m paying close attention to the new defensive metrics, even when I don’t completely understand how they are derived.

I agree that the new data generated by Pitch F/X promises a revolution in our understanding of the game. However, (putting on my historian’s hat here), we are very early in this process. We still need to see which paths are blind alleys and which ones will lead to actual results. Revolutions seldom turn out the way you expect them to.

So, exactly what is John talking about?  I have no idea.  I’m 41 and sometimes I have the same feelings as John, but this is not a sabermetric issue, but a presentation issue:

I’m 42 now and starting to feel my age. Perhaps this is all part of that process. But I’m finding that as I read the most advanced sabermetric stuff regarding major league players, my eyes glaze over and I start to get the grad school feeling again: why am I reading this? I’m not enjoying it. I want to watch a baseball game.

Indeed, his last line is really the only question that needs to be asked, and it has nothing to do with sabermetrics itself, but of anything in any field that is being presented to anyone:

So am I just entering my dotage prematurely? Or is advanced sabermetric analysis becoming so specialized that no one but physics and math majors can understand it, leaving us humanities majors behind, let alone the average fan? If that is true, what can be done about it? I don’t mean stopping research; obviously it needs to go forward. But I mean, how do we find ways to disseminate the new knowledge and make it comprehensible for the non-math folks among us? How do we integrate and explain the new knowledge?

Basically, if there’s no Picasso to present something for everyone, if there’s no Bill James, then how much effort do I REALLY want to put in to understand this thing that I have at least a passing interest in?  I read anything that has any sort of sabermetric bent.  And I mean anything and everything.  But, sometimes, the writing style simply doesn’t match my reading style.  (And I am sure that there are PLENTY of people that have a hard time reading what I write.) It’s not a granularity issue, but a presentation issue.  I think John asked the right question: How do we integrate and explain the new knowledge?  But, it has nothing at all to do with his angst toward sabermetrics.

I’ll still go and read everything, because I look forward to finding those many diamonds in the coal.  If it hasn’t been fun for John, then he’s been going down the wrong roads too often.  Don’t blame sabermetrics.  Blame yourself.