THE BOOK cover
The Unwritten Book is Finally Written!
An in-depth analysis of: The sacrifice bunt, batter/pitcher matchups, the intentional base on balls, optimizing a batting lineup, hot and cold streaks, clutch performance, platooning strategies, and much more.
Read Excerpts & Customer Reviews

Buy The Book from Amazon


SABR101 required reading if you enter this site. Check out the Sabermetric Wiki. And interesting baseball books.
MOST RECENT ARTICLES
MAIL : You ask | We say

Advanced


THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Filter posts by...

 

Friday, August 01, 2008

Lazy assumptions or lazy research?

By Tangotiger, 02:54 PM

Christina:

I know, sabermetric orthodoxy insists that lineup order doesn’t matter; I guess I keep forgetting to drink all of my Kool-Aid, especially when lineup-related research depends on so many lazy assumptions and/or involves redoing some of the same Markov Chain analysis that’s been done for decades, all of which ends up suggesting that… well, that Joe McCarthy or Earl Weaver or Casey Stengel or Bobby Cox are smarter than the models (or the modelers). Consider me a firm believer in the proposition that much of sabermetrics is about the documentation of already-observed phenomenon, and that the best-placed observers did not and do not need sabermetric re-educations, they need to be learned from to create historically-informed sabermetrics.

If Christina has read The Book, I am annoyed.  If she hasn’t, then she is as lazy a reader as she claims the researchers are.  And since most of The Book in fact documents empirical (i.e., real-life) data, satisfying her vision of sabermetrics, then Christina should be one of the biggest vocal supporters of The Book.

Hat tip: FifthOF

(13) Comments • 2008/08/02 • SabermetricsData
Page 1 of 1 pages

Latest...

COMMENTS

May 26 03:03
Pete Palmer’s new book: Basic Ball

May 26 01:11
Largest demonstration in Canadian history?

May 25 23:40
“Why Kickstarter works”

May 25 19:41
What sabermetrics is NOT

May 25 16:59
Howard Stern

May 25 15:12
Do pitcher’s reach back for velocity when needed?

May 25 12:51
Chad Curtis

May 25 11:26
Lack of hustle during a game

May 25 10:58
Rooting for laundry

May 25 02:38
NFLPA lawsuit against collusion

THREADS

August 01, 2008
Lazy assumptions or lazy research?