Thursday, February 7, 2013

This Week in Off-Topic: Shut Up About "Watching the Game"

SOCK A FEW DINGERS, MARK
Sports are weird, man. They're supposed to be the catch-all for fun in life, an outlet where we, as amateurs, either play the games to let off steam, or to watch grown men get paid gobs of money while living vicariously through their efforts. Both are healthy, no matter what anyone says about the latter. One might think that watching a game however someone wants to watch it is cool and all, but there are all these fights about how to watch sports and what etiquette is at a game. It's maddening when it's drawn out at a national level, and even worse when the worst extremism in shock media is drawn out into the everyday discourse by fans.

Of course, there's no right way to watch sports. There is a wrong way to discuss them intelligently, obviously though. For those who are new to the blog, I am a supporter of using advanced metrics to paint the entire picture of how well or poorly players play in any sport, baseball especially (because of its extremely compartmentalized nature). I don't expect everyone to care either way about statistical analysis. There are people who go to the ballpark just to watch people play, to watch guys make diving stabs and basket catches or just to watch Mark McGwire sock a few dingers.

However, when you enter into the arena of analysis, I'm not sure that logic or intellectual honesty need to take a holiday. This isn't meant to be an endorsement of dogmatic adherence to one code of advanced metrics. Hell, if the people who espouse them can't even agree on a consensus way to tabulate player value, then how can it be expected everyone to fall in line to one way of thinking? Even if people want to continue to go by the old, severely flawed way of going by pitcher wins and runs batted in, it would be kinda okay. I mean, I disagree with that line of thinking SO HARD, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

It's when people start building straw men and misrepresenting arguments where I draw a line in the sand. It seems like sportswriters can't stop scribing pieces about how stat "geeks" don't get it because they don't watch the game, and why they trust their eyes. I'm sorry, but I don't have a pithy comeback for that, because it's fucking 100%, unequivocal bullshit.

People, by and large, don't come into baseball because it fits their mathematical models. Of course, some of them do; anything's possible. However, why is it so hard that people who became statheads in baseball grew up as baseball fans and just found a better way at analyzing what happened or predicting what will happen? Why do the Luddites who exist in sports media want to create a rift? Well, I know why they do, and the argument could be fitted into any environment, whether it be wrestling talk or even in high school hallways.

There are scant few people I know or know of who watch more baseball than folks like Bill Baer, Ryan Sommers, Jonah Keri, or other stats-minded baseball fans. The thing is that there are only so many hours in the day to watch the actual games of interest. Unlike in basketball or hockey, where there are sometimes two to three days between "home team" games, baseball goes from April to September with maybe one day off a week, so there's no way for guys to watch EVERY minute of baseball. This goes for the Luddite jerkoffs who use the "watch the games, NERRRD" as much as it does statheads or even regular fans.

The reason why stats are so useful is that they oftentimes tell a more complete picture and are results of people trying to find out deeper truths that may not be evident on just watching. If you're going to analyze something, don't you wanna get the best picture possible? Why do something if you're going to half-ass it?

The idea that advanced metrics are for people who don't find baseball fun enough to watch is the worst thing ever, and people who blatantly espouse are awful, exclusionary assholes either looking for page hits or thinking that it'll somehow make them popular, whatever the fuck that means in a post-high school society. Don't be that guy. If you don't like WAR or OPS, that's fine. Don't like them. Live in your bubble where RBI are the hot stat, and if you're going to argue me on it, find a way to do it without implying that I don't like baseball or that I don't like watching it.