Something Cool, Something Not
What’s cool?
It’s awesome to see La Chambre Que Dewey A Construite is becoming an international favorite.
What’s not cool?
Buster Olney.
Sure, it’s fun to be anti-intellectual when it comes to such cultural pursuits as trivial as baseball, though (DIGRESSION) I’ve yet to hear why Van Gogh’s talent with the paintbrush is more important or better than Honus Wagner’s with the bat. It’s even fun to blame Michael Lewis’ Moneyball for all the ills of today’s game. It’s most fun to blame Billy Beane.
It doesn’t make it true.
Olney is essentially trying to say that there are productive outs, and in doing so, takes a shot at the people who look at baseball through objectivity and concrete evidence (statheads…Which I have been accused of, despite playing more than a decade of organized baseball, most at a high level). Apparently, ’small ball’ is important when it comes to winning, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary. And we need something like Productive Out Percentage as a stat (heheheh) to show how teams need to make productive outs to win.
Of course, there is no evidence of any out being productive, save a sacrifice fly, with one out, and a man on third. Doesn’t matter. Jim Kaat said that Juan Pierre should have been the MVP of the World Series last year after all.
Nevermind actually. I haven’t read Olney’s piece yet. I wouldn’t want to make a whole argument against someone else’s without reading it first. That would be intellectually dishonest of me.