The end is Neyer

Neyer goes to SBNation. Title on his byline = National Baseball Editor:

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2011/2/1/1967537/rob-neyer-joins-sb-nation-becomes-part-of-us-not-them

I always liked Neyer, more as a trensetter than as a writer. He was a must read back in the day when he was showing the enlightened masses that the conventional wisdom of baseball wasn't all that wise. I thought his great strength was in making things easy to understand. I didn't read him to revel in his great turns of phrase or his strong wordplay. And I haven't been reading much of him at all since he started focusing almost exclusively on his ESPN.com blog. It seemed like most of what he did on there was pick out something in the news and say, well isn't that interesting. So I don't know if I'll be following him to SBNation. Especially if his columns are like his first for them.

I certainly hope he doesn't become the Mr. Rogers of sportswriting, as this article suggests. "I'm no better than anyone else," he writes. Rob, maybe you're not better than EVERYONE else, but you're better than plenty of anyone elses.

And for those who wonder about his importance or influence ... his bio on SBNation does say he has written more words for ESPN.com than anyone else. Bill Simmons might need to say a word of 500 about that. But I'm sure Neyer's up there.

 

I'm 52. He's of absolutely no importance to me, although I recognize that he is a Bill James disciple and among the leaders in advanced statistical analysis.

 

That's what's wrong with sports. Too many egg heads trying to micro everything about a simple freaking game.

 

Neyer's columns on sbnation are worth .7 of his ESPN columns

 

And here I thought it was rapists like Ben Roethlisberger and dog killers like Michael Vick. Damn egg heads!

 

i liked that.

 

Should teams not have statistical analysts in the front office? After all, it's a "simple freaking game," right?

Yes or no? Should they?

 

Hilarious.

You know, it's really not that controversial or silly.

Between 60 and 70 percent of the time, a walk serves the same purpose as a single would have served.

The other 30 to 40 percent of the time, a single is better than a walk (ex. Man on second or third base).

 

Or when the runner on first goes to third. Rarely happens on a base on balls.

I'm less bothered by the slide-rule set in baseball than I am by its burgeoning brethren in other sports. Football and basketball are much more sequential or interdependent, so using stats to separate out each player's contrbutions is much trickier. As usual, when the numbers crunchers then heap scorn on those who rely on their eyeballs, they have gone too far.

The stats worship loses so much of its potential audience when it drips the "you just don't get it -- the new way is the only way" attitude.

 

Now that every team and every serious fantasy player is up to speed on the heretofore hidden values and patterns, to me the real battle ground now is the traditional scouting departments (and, for fantasy players, contextual knowledge - which is very, very tough to come by because of all the misinformation that comes out of media reports).

But, back to Drip's post: It is not a "simple freaking game." Nor is basketball. Nor is football. Nor is hockey. None of them. Last night, I chided my wife for watching soap operas, because I told her it was "mindless."

She shot back, "A lot of people would say the same about sports."

I said, "Not the way I watch them."

 

Absolutely agree with this.

Statistical analysis is often objectively correct. If you want to tell me your eyes see something in a prospect that the stats don't see, that's fine. If you want to contradict a principle that has a scientifically analyzed statistical study behind it, and all you've got is your eyes, then here comes a heaping of scorn.

 

A lot of the basketball analysis I see in that vein is about teams rather than individuals, i.e. things like offensive efficiency per possession (as a better measure than scoring per game or field goal percentage, for example).