Re: Albert Pujols - Greatest first 5 years in history?

In rec.sport.baseball on Mon, 5 Dec 2005 16:58:42 -0700 Perry Sailor wrote:

>
>"Wunnuy" <wunnuy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:1133825748.587086.188180@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> Realto Margarino wrote:
>>> RLM <raj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> trolled:
>>>> Beam me up, Scotty. But there is no such thing as WARP1 in
>>> baseball. Not a single player in the history of the game tried to
>>> maximize his WARP1, so why on earth are you wasting our time ranking
>>> players by this equation?
>>>
>>
>> Neiropoint can tell you all about Warp1. I believe he has the card
>> where James T. Kirk lead the league in Warp1.
>
>Just a general question for the floor: Football uses a quarterback rating
>system that I'll bet not one fan or sportswriter in a hundred could explain
>or calculate, and yet as far as I can tell everyone seems to accept it just
>fine and nobody complains. But introduce something beyond batting average
>or ERA in a baseball discussion, even metrics that have *proven* valid and
>that are gaining currency in the mainstream media, and some people reject
>them and even ridicule people who use them. Why is that? Why are football
>people seemingly more accepting of new metrics? Or am I wrong about this?
>Does this kind of stuff go on in the football groups?
>

The obvious difference between QB rating and, say, WARP is that the NFL
itself promotes the metric, while WARP is ignored by MLB.

I don't think football fans are any different than other fans when it comes
to accepting new, more accurate or useful metrics. If MLB started handing
out awards for best OPS, we would stop having these dumb arguments ? at
least about OPS.

The psychology, I think, stems from the deep resentment found among many
people to quantification of any kind ? perhaps a fear of becoming "just a
number." That these same people will happily use metrics endorsed by people
they find compelling (the league, say, or maybe a sports writer they like)
shows that they accept those numbers not as quantification, but as an
opinion from an authority. I believe these people don't trust themselves to
study the evidence and come to an informed opinion, they need to rely on the
opinion of someone they trust. Witness Wunnuy asking if Win Shares (or
something) was "mainstream," as if the accuracy or usefulness of something
was determined by popularity.

There aren't many people here who truck much with that kind of attitude, but
it certainly exists among the great majority of fans of all sports.
--

all the best,
ed

Epitome:
Nice kid, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
Email:
edkupfer. It's a gmail addy.
NBA Stats:
http://ca.geocities.com/brothered@xxxxxxxxxx/NBA/Teams/Front.html
.

Relevant Pages

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