On Baseball and the Reds doesn't like the term sabermetrics.

While I know this is probably a minority opinion, I really dislike--almost despise--the term "sabermetrics." Maybe it's just because I didn't grow up with Bill James. But that term has always sounded both pompous and half-baked to me--like we're trying to claim some kind of grand authority or officiality by coming up with an official-sounding name for what we do.

I think at least part of the backlash against "sabermetrics" has as much to do with that name as anything else. I've occasionally interacted with a local reporter in Cincinnati for some stat-inspired articles on the Reds over the past year, and one thing I've tried to stress (as have the other folks like me who have contributed to these articles) is to try to avoid calling us sabermetricians. I don't want to give people that as a reason for ignoring some of the ideas we advocate.

I'd much prefer it if everyone just called what we do what it is--baseball research. There's nothing really special about it...we're just searching for better understanding of how the game works.

I used to work for a company call Dragon Systems, Inc. The name came from the owner's hobby of collecting Chinese Dragons. You can see the logo here. The company built the best speech recognition software available, but other business people would constantly complain about the name and the logo. They'd tell us no one knows why you do by the name. They'd say the logo looks like you're a Chinese restaurant. They were probably right, but the owners kept the name and the logo and built a very successful business because they built a damn good product.

The upside of the name was that when you said, "I work for Dragon Systems," everyone had to ask what the company did. If I said, "I work for Voice Products of America," they'd say that's nice and move on. The same is true for sabermetricians. Baseball researcher, big deal. Sabermetrician, what's that about?

My good friend Jim Storer is married to a doctor at Yale Medical School. She was at a reception for new fellows, and the various new doctors are being introduced. The MC notes that one is a sabermetrician, and asks, "Does anyone know what that is?" Linda raises her hand and answers, "Sadly, yes." That great bit of comedy doesn't happen if he's a baseball researcher.

So Justin, if you don't like the term, don't use it. Be a baseball researcher. But don't deny others the fun of being a sabermetrician.