What Baseball Players (Don't) Know About Baseball
SI players poll: "Which pitching statistic is the most meaningful"
Earned Run Average: 33%
WHIP: 18%
Wins: 13%
Inherited Runners Scored: 6%
Innings Pitched: 6%
46% of starters chose ERA while relievers' top choice was WHIP (23.5%)
You really have to wonder why the worlds' sports leader keeps making their top analysts former players, and also why baseball organizations value minor or major league experience so much.
Personally if I was running an organization competing in such a complex sport I'd pick college educated statisticians, game theorists, and math majors to make up the general management team, rather than a bunch of guys who spent their teens and 20s fielding grounders, shagging fly balls, taking BP, lifting weights, and drinking. I can see why it's such a difficult choice though.
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Minor league flameouts can handle the player development. Hitting grounders with fungo bats is all they are good for.
posted by John at
10:00 PM
5 Comments:
Do you really think college-educated people can accurately evaluate a player's "grit factor"?? I think not.
actually those numbers seem a lot better than I thought they'd be.
especially from the relievers, i wonder if they spend more time learning out there in the pen?
I think a starter would probably be conditioned to think that ERA is most important, because that's what they're judged on. Relievers are judged by it too, but I'd argue to a lesser degree than starters. Doesn't make starters correct for picking ERA, but it's certainly the most meaningful toward their next contract...
yeah that's how we go in circles, pitchers are judged by the old stats, so they concentrate on them, then they work in baseball after retiring and keep reinforcing it. baseball definitely benefits from third party analysis.
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