THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Only use shortcuts if you are in a hurry

Patriot on James’ Gold book.

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On a related note:

I worry about the future of Sabermetrics and it’s appeal to the masses. It seems that much of what I see today is 1 of 2 things. First, something like pitch f(x)where it seems like an attempt to impress a MLB team into a job. Or second a mathematical exercise, binomial distributions, Bayes, regression etc. Most of these things are god awful boring.What happened to asking an interesting question, and then figuring out how to study it?
Asked by: rempart
Answered: June 11, 2011

Well. . .I’m boring enough myself; I shouldn’t talk.  It was my theory, in the 1970s, that since sabermetrics could not sustain itself with academic funding, for the field to succeed it would have to speak directly to the public, therefore would need to avoid the kinds of language and expression that are common in academic circles.  I’ve done all that I could to discourage sabermetricians from talking to one another in a way that shuts out the public, but honestly, I don’t know that I have reached a lot of people on this point. 

Reader rempart says “god awful boring”.  Well, I agree, some of it is god awful boring, which is why I don’t read those.  (Anything with regression as the piece de resistance is god awful boring, and I will skim that article.) But, rempart, why do you read those?  I am overwhelmed by the number of interesting questions being asked and the research to support it.

I also don’t accept Bill’s conclusion.  There is tons of great articles that are public-accessible.  There’s no reason all of it has to be, but there are enough saberists out there that do a good job of reaching the public.  I personally don’t try to do that, but sometimes I will try (like the ESPN articles).  And, I hear from more than one person how they prefer that I do NOT try to do that.

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Then another reader noted in an article:

By: ‘Monahan’
The recent question in “Hey Bill” by rempart concerning the future of sabermetrics helped me recognize how I’ve been following this discussion on both sites.  It simply boils down to… Bill’s explanations are both simpler and clearer.  I certainly respect the work put in by Tango (whose pedigree is unquestioned), but I find his explanations to be inaccessible-- I’m not a mathematician, I’m a baseball fan. While Phil seems able to fully square the two viewpoints, I see one that makes sense to me and another that does not.

This was in reference to this article I wrote.  I responded:

Bill has a different audience than I do.  Bill writes for himself (and whatever readers he wants to reach), and I write for myself (and whatever readers I want to reach, which is smaller than Bill’s audience).  And I am quite content with whoever I happen to reach.  The way I see it, I’m inviting people into my world, rather than going out to the world of others.  If that means I get 10 people, then that’s 10 more than I had a minute ago.

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We all have different objectives.  Some write for clarity, some write for precision, some write for accuracy, and some write for entertainment.  Some write so we learn, and some write to inspire.  There’s a whole bunch of reasons.

And whether we get paid or not is a huge reason for what and how we write. Patriot in the above expected more accuracy from Bill James, especially since he paid for it.  He doesn’t want a tidy clean mess that he has to clean up (even though we are all actually better off for it).  Monahan however prefers that tidy mess, because he prefers clarity to accuracy.  Bill has often said he simply puts his ideas out there, and they live or die on their own.

Me?  I’m just a caveman.  I’m scared and frightened of cleanliness and regression.  These things confuse me.  But, if you have a chance to use Bayes theorem with a valid prior (or PythagenPat), so we can bypass the shortcuts even if it will overwhelm the reader, you do it.