The 5.5 Hole

The battle lines have been drawn. Opponents are choosing sides And it is a choice. Unlike true wars that are dictated by geography, race, political affiliation, religion, or vengeance, this is a war in which intelligent people must make a choice between two completely pointless, but equally fascinating, lines of thought.

Traditional, historic baseball statistics are in the blue corner.

Sabermetrics, advanced statistics are in the red corner.

Get your ring-side seat because this fight could be epic. In no other sport, in no other time, has there been a debate about statistics like the one currently raging in the baseball nerd community. The traditionalists feel baseball is being killed and cheapened by these new statistics, while sabermetricians feel stats should carry relevant meaning and those that they decide don't should be done away with.

On one side, Joe Posnanski wrote about wins, It's About Money, Stupid talked about RBI and WAR, and there are also those who wish they could be fence-sitters only to passively attack advanced metrics. (looking at you Buster Olney)

On the other, sites like Fangraphs and The Hardball Times dedicate themselves to the advancement of the new metrics. There are others like Jason Wojciechowski, who wrote a wonderful rebuttal piece to Joe Posnanski and inspired this rebuttal to all other rebuttals.

I wrote a piece a couple days ago, like a prophet preaching peace before an impending battle that no one knew was coming, and tried to remind us all that baseball is a game to be enjoyed in many ways. So I write again, teetering on the fence between tradition and the future. If forced, and that time will surely come, I know I'll fall on one side over the other, but until then I am simply looking for a balance.The complete irrationality of the debate between what's best, or what should be used, is what sports are built on, so I'm not surprised.  Debates have raged over equally inconsequential ideas throughout time, but to allow this debate to let us lose track of the beauty of the game would be a mistake. 

I am a fan of advanced statistics.  I readily admit that.  But I can see the line of thinking many of the biggest proponents seem to take.  Baseball is a numbers game, a numbers business, and the details of what actually happen in the game don't seem to matter.  This is what we risk in this war of statistics.  We risk the loss of joy.  We risk the loss of art.  The game that we loved as young boys has not changed, we have.

We've become smarter, more observant.  We've become cynical, more stubborn.  We've become everything baseball is not.  The game has ceased being a game to some, but we can bring it back.  The two schools of thought can co-exist and have intelligent conversation.  Wars fought on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and ESPN should be forgotten.  The media we use should be a forum for the advancement of a game falling dangerously far behind football in popularity.  This forum, used properly, can foster both the debates we grow to love, and the passion we need to keep this game amazing.   

Anyone who has ever watched, listened to, or even heard of the game of baseball knows it's a sport driven by statistics. From Ty Cobb's hits to Cy Young's wins to Nolan Ryan's strikeouts to Babe Ruth's home runs, statistics have been as big a part of the game as the game itself. And statistics are constantly evolving. With the introduction of "sabermetrics" in the 1970's the world was introduced to the advanced metric, but the way we have evaluated the game has always been changing. So really, when walks were recognized as a stat, that was an advanced metric at the time. The same is true with saves and holds, or hit-by-pitch. The desire to find value in statistics is nothing new, but as technology grows and allows for deeper analysis, have we lost sight of the game itself?

Watching a baseball game is a wonderful thing. There is so much intensity and passion crammed into a few short moments in the game. If you blink you can miss it. A suicide squeeze or a stolen base can bring fans to their feet, but these are two big no-no's if we look at stats alone. A lot of us no longer see the player getting a jump from first and dashing madly to second. We no longer see the batter squaring around to bunt and angling his bat to poke the ball in just the right direction. Instead we see percentages and numbers churning out in the dust left behind the base stealer. We see calculations and probabilities littering the barrel of the bat during the bunt. And that's fine, but remember to enjoy the game itself.

I love advanced metrics. I am fascinated by the power of numbers in evaluating players and finding value that has previously gone undiscovered. But these stats are not the definitive answer to anything. They are an experiment in science. If Dave Roberts was guided by advanced metrics in the 2004 ALCS, he wouldn't have stole second and it's very likely the Red Sox would have been eliminated.

The point is this; baseball is a game. We are all fans. Sometimes it's fun to put down our excel spreadsheets and calculators and watch the game like we did as kids. Sometimes it's fun to let ourselves be amazed by what these athletes can do. They can hit balls farther than we'd ever dream, they can control a baseball like there's a string attached, and they can chase down balls in the outfield like a gazelle. Analyzing baseball by the numbers is wonderful, but every now and then we should evaluate a player by the way they look. Use the eye test. Don't get lost in the numbers and remember to love the game as a fan too.