turftoad
09-22-2011, 04:16 PM
Thought this was an interesting article and agree with it.
"They unwittingly conspired to remove much of the magic and mystery from baseball. They reduced the game to a statistical bore. It’s no longer enough to be down with OBP (on-base percentage). To talk the game, you now must understand OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging), VORP (value over replacement player), BABIP (batting average on balls in play) and on and on.
There’s a stat for nearly every action in baseball. Little is left to the imagination. Sports were never intended to be a computer program, stripped to cold, hard, indisputable, statistical facts. Sports — particularly for fans — are not science. Sports, like art, are supposed to be interpreted.
It’s difficult to interpret baseball these days. The stat geeks won’t let you argue. They quote sabermetrics and end all discussion. Is so-and-so a Hall of Famer? The sabermeticians will punch in the numbers and give you, in their mind, a definitive answer.
It’s boring. It’s ruining sports.
Sabermetrics or analytics are overrunning football, too. ESPN is pushing a new statistical way of analyzing NFL quarterbacks, Total Quarterback Rating.
The nerds are winning. They’re stealing the game from those of us who enjoy examining the gray areas of sports. We’re about 10 years away from a computer program that will write stats-based opinion pieces on sports.
The rest: http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/sabermetrics-moneyball-stat-geeks-are-ruining-sports-092211
"They unwittingly conspired to remove much of the magic and mystery from baseball. They reduced the game to a statistical bore. It’s no longer enough to be down with OBP (on-base percentage). To talk the game, you now must understand OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging), VORP (value over replacement player), BABIP (batting average on balls in play) and on and on.
There’s a stat for nearly every action in baseball. Little is left to the imagination. Sports were never intended to be a computer program, stripped to cold, hard, indisputable, statistical facts. Sports — particularly for fans — are not science. Sports, like art, are supposed to be interpreted.
It’s difficult to interpret baseball these days. The stat geeks won’t let you argue. They quote sabermetrics and end all discussion. Is so-and-so a Hall of Famer? The sabermeticians will punch in the numbers and give you, in their mind, a definitive answer.
It’s boring. It’s ruining sports.
Sabermetrics or analytics are overrunning football, too. ESPN is pushing a new statistical way of analyzing NFL quarterbacks, Total Quarterback Rating.
The nerds are winning. They’re stealing the game from those of us who enjoy examining the gray areas of sports. We’re about 10 years away from a computer program that will write stats-based opinion pieces on sports.
The rest: http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/sabermetrics-moneyball-stat-geeks-are-ruining-sports-092211