More nuanced approaches in sports that aren't baseball

I was at a high school playoff soccer game last fall and was checking fantasy football stats at halftime and said aloud, "Wow, Andre Johnson had a huge day" after he caught like 10 passes for 140 and two TDs.
Old-time reporter next asks me what the score was and when I told him the Texans lost, he said something along the lines of "That's what's wrong with this generation; a guy can't have a good day if his team loses."
I was baffled at his reasoning. Andre Johnson put up the kind of numbers that should help lead his team to a win, but because his team's defense sucks, that means he doesn't have a good day?
I hate people who, the second they hear talk about stats and how players performed well in a loss, start whining about how great everything was back in the day when winning was the most important thing.

 

It's a dated mentality, one that I feel has no place in modern media. We should be informing the public and creating a more intelligent fan base, not regurgitating cliches. Yet it seems like half the NBA fans and writers I know don't think LeBron James is a better player than Kobe Bryant at this moment because Kobe Bryant wins championships and LeBron James doesn't.

Beat writers and journalists in general are supposed to be experts on their topics. If not, why should anyone trust their analysis? That kind of dated mentality has many hard-core fans turning to bloggers outside of the mainstream media, many of whom are very intelligent people with nuanced grasps of the sports they write about, for more intelligent thoughts on their favorite sports.

The readers are getting smarter. If the writing doesn't, we all lose our jobs.

 

Ah, the smug is strong in this thread. Tangent out of the way first: There are plenty of reasons, including stats, that one could reasonably use to say Blyleven didn't belong in the Hall of Fame. But, oops, I forgot, true baseball knowledge is only like five years old or something.

And the NFL is the worst sport to try to apply saberpap to. Numbers are totally dependent on a team's offensive philosophy and defensive philosophy, and to game situations. For example, in baseball, you have your basic hitter vs. pitcher duel, no matter if the score is 1-0 or 11-0, and very few situations where a pitcher or hitter would change the dynamic based on the situation. But in football, there are many times when a team is behind and the opponent is giving up short passing opportunities by the bushel, making a good deal of the stats from that game irrelevant, or a team is protecting a lead and passing less. And some teams have a great running back who dictates less catching opportunities for receivers and fewer passes by the quarterback. Dan Fouts wouldn't have been Dan Fouts if he had been on the Bills of O.J. Simpson. Having said that, I would agree with your narrow point that saying White is better than Johnson based on win-loss record is pretty silly.

And I would love to hear the standard by which James is clearly better than Bryant. Bryant has been around longer than James, so he had a head start on titles. Then again, Bryant won titles with Shaq and without Shaq, so that's pretty compelling there. But I would have to say Bryant has had better supporting casts, up till now, than James. But I think I can clearly say James is nowhere in the league of Jordan yet; Jordan won titles with supporting casts not terribly much better than what James had till now, and perhaps a little worse. And of course this doesn't compute, but James' choke job in the playoffs make one want to watch that trend as far as a place in the pantheon. Because there are some games that are clearly bigger than others, and how stars perform when the stakes are clearly the highest has to be figured in. Figured in, so to speak, I guess I should say.

 

Point-by-point:

1. I don't disagree. I am a believer that statistics paint a very unclear picture. But what IS clear is that wins and losses were the primary metric used to suggest Blyleven didn't deserve a place in Cooperstown, and that is very poor logic on all fronts, particularly since Ralph Kiner (among others) is in the Hall and no one ever mentions him on the list of "guys who shouldn't be in the Hall." (To clarify, in my opinion, Kiner is one of the all-time great hitters and absolutely should be in the Hall, alongside Blyleven.)

2. I agree. But my point was that a more nuanced approach should be taken, which doesn't mean a statistical approach. It means that you should be capable of understanding that a wide receiver doesn't have the opportunity to impact a game enough to be considered. Jerry Rice never deserved an MVP award (and didn't win any because he didn't deserve one). No wide receiver has been picked No. 1 since 1996. So how can you argue that Andre Johnson is a lesser receiver simply because the Texans as a team are mediocre?

3. I'm making no argument that James has had a better career than Bryant, nor that he will unquestionably have a better career when all is said and done, nor that he's better now than Bryant was when he was in his prime. I'm simply stating that, as of this very moment, LeBron James is a better basketball player than Kobe Bryant. If you disagree, then you're simply wrong. And maybe that makes me smug.

 

It wasn't passer rating, flubber. It was a comparison of a team's yardage gain on rushing and passing plays.

 

No offense, but that's dumb. So there's no allowance for a DE who benefits from being lined up on the other side of someone like Charles Haley?

Let me guess -- this analysis also would send up a red flag for a CB with few INTs, even though that CB is a great cover corner with few passes thrown his way.

Stats are great when they are used properly and terrible when they are misused.

 

It is nothing like sabermetrics. To go with that all argumented, passer rating is contrived and a good saber stat is derived.

 

*something clever about how awful this is goes here*

 

I wasn't referring to the statistic you mentioned, dummy.

I was referring to passer rating. You know, the sabermetric stat that is the gospel for ranking NFL QBs.

 

I don't think any self-respecting saber-geek would say that "passer rating" is in the same universe as the kind of statistical evidence they use.

Sabermetrics isn't about throwing a bunch of numbers into a stew and cooking them up. It's actually the opposite: Eliminating random number play in favor of meaningful data strongly anchored in rational methodology.

 

True, it is a lot of gobbledygook thrown together, and out comes a number. But its the same concept as sabermetrics.

 

As Dick explained, it's not the same concept. Contrived vs. logically derived is a huge difference.