So I think what you're saying is SABRmetrics is better at evaluating ordinary rather than extraordinary players.
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Replying to @Skubalon2 @EPoe187
What I'm saying is that the all-around baseball contributions tabulated formally by Wins Above Replacement were usually successfully tabulated informally by fans for generations before SABRmetrics came along. As Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot just by watching."
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Replying to @Steve_Sailer @EPoe187
A lot of stat induced blindness. Why did it take teams so long to figure out that getting on base via walks was not luck? But walks for decades were unappreciated because batting average did not consider them.
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Replying to @Skubalon2 @EPoe187
Who was the most famous and popular baseball player of all time? Babe Ruth. And who set the record that Barry Bonds eventually broke with 170 bases on balls in 1923? Babe Ruth. SABRmetricians have rewritten a lot of baseball history to make themselves look more valuable.
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I was taught at 8 that, especially when leading off, a walk is as good as a base hit. And, even with runners on base, only swing at strikes. Make the zone slightly larger with 2 strikes. Be patient, make the pitcher throw strikes.
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But the majors with the preoccupation with batting average devalued the base on balls, even though some players could draw walks consistently at much higher rates than others. BA qua stat implicitly assumed that the walk was epiphenomemal to batter's ability.
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And yet, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, and Mickey Mantle got huge numbers of walks and were superstars to average fans despite SABRmetric not existing yet. A lot of SABRmetrics is arguing with irrelevant old baseball intellectuals who preferred smart Cobb to vulgar Ruth.
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I dont think you've answered
@billjamesonline rebuttal though. Of course SABR didn't overturn all the historic popular evaluations of great players...but it did call into question many Cy Youngs, MVPs and just common judgments like Garvey over Cey that were just wrong etc.1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @Skubalon2 @FarmerIsidore and
I'd like to see a comparison of hometown fan votes for team MVP vs. national writers' votes. I wouldn't be surprised if local fans who followed the games on the radio or at the ballpark agreed more with today's WAR than national writers' votes.
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Replying to @Steve_Sailer @Skubalon2 and
My impression is that sportswriters in writing up games got too focused on featuring the guy who drove in 3 or 4 runs, since a big hit with men on base is the most dramatic event in a single game. But over the course of the season, runs scored more than equals RBIs.
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The cliche was that the MVP used to go to the player who led the league in RBIs - the most egregious example of which was in 1987 when Andre Dawson was awarded the MVP for a 130 OPS+ season when he wasn't in the top 10 in WAR because led the league in RBIs with a decent BA.
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