Somewhere out there, dak, Coach, Matthew Murbles, Ken Tremendous, and Jr., are smiling.

Yeah, but what is Young' s ranking on the Eckstein grittiness scale?

Now you've done it, Mr. Pinto. Expect a visit from David Eckstein, Doug Flynn, and Rodney Scott--who will all smite you with Grand Slam Intangibles until you scream your love for the gritty little guys with 60 OPS+, and the shortstops who can't cover the ground concealed by Paris Hilton's swimwear.

Wouldn't he have the same intangibles at another position? Or are his intangibles a product of playing short?

Wouldn't he have the same intangibles at another position? Or are his intangibles a product of playing short?

(sorry)

Wouldn't he have the same intangibles at another position? Or are his intangibles a product of playing short?

You can ask the Cult of Jeter about that one, including why ARod--a vastly superior defensive shortstop to Jeter--ended up at third in NY rather than displace the Holy One.

Its funny that Dave mocks people who think about intangibles yet, like other stat-based baseball guys I read, is very quick to attribute results to "luck". Maybe luck can be quantified by you guys this season - call it luckyishness!!

We do quanitfy luck. We look at expected won-loss records based on runs scored. We look at expected batting averages based on BABIP and LD%. We look at fielding independent pitching and run support. We quanitfy luck all the time.

News flash: "seamheads" hate "intangibles" because they can't quantify them. Blah, blah, blah, rant, mouthfoam, repeat...

Oh, and one other thing: Unwillingness to cooperate with the organization, however justified, strikes me as an "intangible." When the anti-seamheads be willing to try to quantify THAT on behalf of their own (flawed) arguments?

Intangibles sound a lot better when your team wins occassionally.

Dave - You don't quantify luck, you identify it - and that idea is of luck is just as voodoo as intangibles. In reality (and in hard sciences), the difference between what you expect and what is observed = crappiness of your model. When you chalk that difference up to luck, you stop being as empirical as you think you are.

Phil: you're arguing over semantical differences. Luck is essentially what happens within margins of error. It's not crappiness; it is impossible to make a perfect model (unless you're Steven Wright and you have a map of the US that's actual size). Luck is quantified when it's identified, but it can't be modeled; otherwise, it wouldn't be luck.