As the saying goes, when they argue that you’re taking over, that’s when you know you’ve won

Hey, here’s a book I’m not planning to read any time soon!

As Bill James wrote, the alternative to good statistics is not “no statistics,” it’s bad statistics.

(I wouldn’t have bothered to bring this one up, but I noticed it on one of our sister blogs.)

8 thoughts on “As the saying goes, when they argue that you’re taking over, that’s when you know you’ve won

  1. Games are decided by bad hops and bad calls, broken bats, sun and wind, pigeons in the outfield, and fans who obstruct players, among other unforeseeable contingencies That may seem obvious (apart from the pigeons), but not to the folks who increasingly run the show. Rather than celebrating baseball’s delightfully spontaneous quality, sabermetricians deny it or rebel against it.
    So their models don't have residuals?

  2. "More importantly, the saber-obsession with numbers occludes a major aspect of baseball’s beauty – its narrative richness and relentless capacity to surprise. Baseball, thank goodness, transcends and often defies quantitative analysis. Games are decided by bad hops and bad calls, broken bats, sun and wind, pigeons in the outfield, and fans who obstruct players, among other unforeseeable contingencies"

    The statisticians are denying the pigeons agency!

  3. Kyle:

    I don't remember but it's probably from one of the mid-80s Abstracts. It's not an exact quote, either. I'm really just paraphrasing a point that James made many times, that those people who say they hate statistics end up relying on unadjusted batting averages etc to make their arguments.

  4. Eric:

    It's not really a review battle until Mary Rosh gets involved. But I don't know if she's a baseball fan.

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