While tooling around ESPN.com the other day, I came across this - a poll designed to help figure out how most of the general public is evaluating baseball players.
So I took the poll... and for the first question I characterized my knowledge of
Sabermetrics as "Familiar", meaning to me that I at least know of most of those stats and have vague ideas of how they work. Turns out only 1.1% of people that took the poll are familiar, 96.7% of people are "experts". Shit, I'm behind. Also, I said I trust old school stats more when evaluating a player, because I do, that's just the way I roll and that's the information that's readily available. Only 1.8% of people do that anymore I guess, meaning 98.2% of people trust sabermetric stats more to evaluate. It's a fucking anonymous poll, nobody knows that you took it. I think people need to get over themselves.
Do you use Fielding Runs Above Average more when evaluating fielders? Well, you are part of the 97% of fans that do I guess. I use errors. Only 1.8% of people use errors anymore. I'm a simple minded idiot.
I guess I better start boning up on my sabermetrics if I want to have a conversation about baseball with anyone, whether it's Rob Neyer, my mom, teeblah's nephew, Lavelle E. Neal or Blade. I suggest that all of you do the same.
So I took the poll... and for the first question I characterized my knowledge of
Sabermetrics as "Familiar", meaning to me that I at least know of most of those stats and have vague ideas of how they work. Turns out only 1.1% of people that took the poll are familiar, 96.7% of people are "experts". Shit, I'm behind. Also, I said I trust old school stats more when evaluating a player, because I do, that's just the way I roll and that's the information that's readily available. Only 1.8% of people do that anymore I guess, meaning 98.2% of people trust sabermetric stats more to evaluate. It's a fucking anonymous poll, nobody knows that you took it. I think people need to get over themselves.
Do you use Fielding Runs Above Average more when evaluating fielders? Well, you are part of the 97% of fans that do I guess. I use errors. Only 1.8% of people use errors anymore. I'm a simple minded idiot.
I guess I better start boning up on my sabermetrics if I want to have a conversation about baseball with anyone, whether it's Rob Neyer, my mom, teeblah's nephew, Lavelle E. Neal or Blade. I suggest that all of you do the same.
posted by f theb at 8:46 AM
3 Comments:
This poll must have been taken by 30 assholes living in a dorm on the St. Paul campus whose only dream is to get one of the fat ag girls to give them a "dome dog". At that point ESPN employees took down the poll as the validity of it was beyond questionable and the only way you can access it now is via hyperlink. If anyone ever told me with a straight face that the stat they used most office when evaluating a pitcher was strikout to walk ratio - I would immediately punch them in the penis/vagina.
And - I don't know this for a fact - but isn't Billy Bean behind sabremetrics? I just found out via the article on that gay basketball player that Billy Bean A) Played professional ball; and, B) Enjoys balls on his chin. I'd like to see the poll on the avg fan awareness in those regards.
Actually, when I took the poll, there were around 387,000 other people who had taken it as well. I initially thought that maybe I was really early to take it, but I was sorely mistaken.
And Billy Beane did not invent sabermetrics, he's just a higher profile GM that was one of the first to actively use them to evaluate talent. I'd recommend the book Moneyball for more info, if you can get past the author's (Michael Lewis) homoerotic crush on Mr. Beane.
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