See, I stopped writing about baseball these past two years when the sabermetrics movement became too complicated for my liking. Did I respect the work of Baseball Prospectus, Bill James, Rob Neyer, Joe Posnanski, Jonah Keri and everyone else in that community? Of course. I just hated the finality of it, the concept that numbers could trump anything I was watching with my own two eyes. If numbers always prevailed, what was the point of watching baseball or having arguments about it? I longed for the old days when you could say things like, “I hate watching J.D. Drew — when is that contract going to end?” and there wasn’t some dude lurking behind me with Drew’s stellar OPS, VORP and WAR numbers saying, “Well, actually … “
Look at that last sentence again.
Fundamentally, it’s moronic. I just admitted I longed for the old days … you know, when we were poorly educated about what we were watching. Back in the mid-’70s, when I fell in love with baseball as a kid, we judged players by five offensive stats (batting average, homers, RBIs, steals, runs) and five pitching stats (wins/losses, innings, strikeouts, ERA, saves). You could fit those 10 numbers on the back of a baseball card. Everyone was OK with it. The numbers had simplicity and elegance, mainly because we didn’t know any better.
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