A comment in the RAB Open Thread from last night caught my eye, particularly this part:
Then Mike Lupica comes on and opens with a segment on Jeter which was probably the dumbest of the many Jeter segments I’ve heard so far this season. Don LaGreca cited OPS and Lupica was like “don’t get started with the OPS” basically saying stop it now! that’s way over my head!
I’ll readily admit I didn’t listen to the show, but I’ve got no reason to distrust the RAB commenter. If Lupica said that (and is it really a stretch?) or something like that/along those lines, that’s just straight up, flat out embarrassing. I can’t say I’m surprised or anything, but things like this get under my skin. There’s a decent segment of mainstream media guys who are willfully ignorant of “new” tools for baseball analysis. That Lupica wouldn’t want to get into something as simple as OPS is just scary. But, this mini-example is not the worst anti-”saber” comment I remember.
The worst I can remember was in the winter of 2009, right after the baseball awards were announced and beat out for N.L. Cy Young despite receiving fewer first place votes than Waino. I was driving home from something, listening to Joe and Evan on WFAN. They (well, mostly Beningo) were ranting about how some voters, particularly Keith Law, based their votes on non-traditional stats. Evan Roberts admitted that while he didn’t prefer to use advanced metrics, he was willing to learn and listen on them. Joe Beningo, on the other hand, flat out said he did not even want to learn about them. Again, that’s embarrassing. This is a man who’s dedicated his professional life to studying, analyzing, commenting on, and broadcasting sports. A huge part of that is going to be baseball, simply because of the amount of time the season takes. Baseball is a sport that lends itself to a lot of analysis and that world has certainly exploded over the last few years, and this very blog is proof of that. We have decided to, more or less, embrace advanced metrics in our analysis of the Yankees and it’s made us, in my estimation, better fans. That a man who is paid to analyze the game does not even want to LEARN about advanced metrics is borderline heartbreaking.
I’m not expecting Beningo or Lupica or anyone of that ilk to suddenly begin using solely advanced metrics, but I’m asking that they at least EDUCATE themselves on sabermetics. Whether they like it or not, it’s a field that is gaining mainstream popularity (finally). For example, just this past Sunday, David Cone spent the better part of ‘s third inning at bat talking about fWAR and he regularly references FanGraphs and cites its stats during his game broadcasts. Hearing that is encouraging. Let’s bring it back, though, to those who refuse to get to know these stats.
Put yourself in their shoes for just a second, if you will. Imagine that at your field of work, there was something new and up-and-coming that was different from what you normally did, but would likely be helpful in making your performance better. If you didn’t at least learn about that thing, wouldn’t your bosses get pretty pissed? Wouldn’t you feel the professional responsibility to look in to what this new method was? To make this personal…as many of you know, I just finished student teaching at a high school. This high school happens to be considering a rather major curriculum overhaul. I may or may not get a job at this school or in this district, but over the past few months, I’ve taken it upon myself to learn as much about this new curriculum as possible, simply because it MAY impact my career. If you were a surgeon and a new variation of a surgical technique was developed, wouldn’t you study it? If you were a carpenter and a new version of an old tool came out, wouldn’t you want to tinker with it? If you were a sportswriter/broadcaster, and there was a new way to look at the National Pastime, wouldn’t you want to, at the very least, scratch the surface of that perspective?
If you don’t want to use sabermetrics or advanced stats in your every day analysis of baseball, that’s fine with me. But do yourself a favor, even if you fall into that category: research advanced stats. Take them for a test-drive. They won’t bite you and there’s no obligation to keep using them. Don’t knock ‘em until you’ve tried ‘em. The best thing to do is the same as it is in any other walk of life: be open minded. Do not pull a Beningo or a Lupica and become willfully ignorant.
Totally unrelated: Happy birthday to my late grandfather Louie. He would be 84 today and he is a huge reason that baseball is as big a part of my life as it is. When he died in the summer of 2006, I took solace in baseball and the Yankees; since then, I don’t think I could fill two hands with the amount of games I haven’t followed in some capacity. Every time I watch/listen to Yankee games or sit down at my computer to write these articles, a part of my grandfather is with me.
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Everything you said is true, although I’d say we as fans need to remember that people like Lupica and Beningo aren’t much different than us. They never played the game, and them having the ability to write or talk at advanced levels definitely doesn’t make them experts on the subject.(esp Beningo who if I recall correctly was a regular WFAN caller that eventually got brought on board at a late time slot to do a show). And don’t get me started on Lupica who appears to be as ignorant and negative a person as you can find.
Anyone who follows these two for sports information needs to have their head examined. Listen, read or watch them for entertainment (if you find them entertaining….may God have mercy on you).
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Ops? Really lupica? REALLY? I dont trust the fielding metrics and the fip component of war bothers me (thise should be judged on what happened, not what woulda happened if whay shoilda happened happened) but ops, ops+, war, era+, iso, woba etc. these are simple, highly useful stats. Ops????? For gods sake its two normal stats added together.. Inexcusable. Also lupicas prose style is obnoxious and cliche ridden, I cant read it. As s writer of fiction and a careful reader I find his prose dripping with arrogance
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Matt Imbrogno Reply:
May 10th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Remember that FIP does measure what happened; xFIP normalizes for HR rate, but FIP measures what what happened in re: HR/BB/SO. But, yeah, the rest of your point is well said.
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Are these luddites aware that Street and Smith’s listed OBA and SLG in their pre-season mags 50 years ago? (They also included GIDP and a bunch of other fairly interesting things in those great magazines.)
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Right but there are more than three outcomes. I, like fip alot for forecasting future performance but runs allowed per 9 is s more accurate stst for telling me what the actual outcome of a starters appearance was. But its nitpcking yhe point is why on earth would u cut off any info? Snd I did play dI baseball not all players are meat head jock types. Lupica must know thst bih league gms and scouts all use these metrics. Does he know more than them? Plus lupica is the “intellectual“ sports writer, he should know better. Beningo plays a role as the fans voice and thats fine
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I don’t know Lupica, but I suspect him and other baseball “analysts” are making a smart decision by expressing their derision to advanced metrics. There’s definitely an audience out there who wants to hear about batting average, wins, RBI, etc. They don’t want any one messing with the cherished stats of their childhood. So surprise, there are sports writers who cater to those customers.
We should always remember that for the most part, sports writers aren’t there to tell us what happened, or to provide analysis. They’re just there to provide an entertaining narrative. Lupica does this for some chunk of baseball fans. If fans demanded a more rigorous analysis, then surely Lupica would have to shape up. Too bad that is not the case.
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I also have to say one if the saber problems is the gnostic secret knowledge insular arrogant attitude of many oof its top analysts and definately of the average poster who cites them. There it’s a fanaticism thats off putting. If all fangraph commeters were like circlechange it would help stathead image
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What bugs me is when they try to argue against them without knowing them. If they don’t want to learn them, fine. But don’t then argue that they’re no good. Admit you don’t know enough to judge them.
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