January 18, 2009
Ignoring Intangibles
Lone Star Ball links to a story summing up the Michael Young situation in Texas. I love description of seamheads (emphasis added):
One side held that the Rangers owed Young more respect than to simply order him to move. The other said Young is a highly compensated employee who needs to simply do what he's told. That group was bolstered by the "seamheads" -- ardent fans of baseball statistics -- who judge things almost strictly by the numbers, and thus tend to disparage Young because of his lack of range at short, and ignore the intangibles he brings to the organization.
Maybe seamheads should take a course is quantifying things that aren't capable of being appraised at an actual or approximate value. Here's the syllabus:
- Guessing.
- Defending the guess with anecdotes.
- Adding smugness.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Posted by David Pinto at
11:04 AM
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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?
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.