Bad Blogpost!
Read this post, and you’ll find yourself saying “Huh?!?”
Part of calling this space the “Sabermetric Soapbox” is to enable critique of other people’s work. I read a plethora of sabermetric blogs, too many to count some days. Sometimes, a post just makes me scratch my head and say “Huh?” So with that, on to the lambasting!
The post that inspired this post was from Beyond the Box Score’s R.J. Anderson. He asked a scout friend about which teams were “saber”, or statistically oriented. He compares the winning percentage of the 10 saber teams to the 20 non-saber teams, and comes to the conclusion that the saber teams have done better. How much better? Well, the saber teams have a whopping .501 winning percentage, the non saber teams a .4998 winning percentage.
WHAT!?!? The difference is so close, it probably means the saber teams won at a rate equivalent to a mere 1 game better. And, in case you missed White Sox-Rays on Sunday, you know how luck can play into that. Additionally, he made this in critique of another post!
I won’t debate the point of his article, which actually seems to be a decent analysis otherwise, but his presentation detracts from his main point.
28 August 2008 09:52
I would have expected more from Beyond the Box Score. This is such a small sample size to begin with when talking about one season, and then to point out that the list of ten teams are the ones that a scout KNOWS are “Saber-oriented”. There are likely more than that I would tend to believe, as statistical studies have transformed how everybody looks at players. I certainly would think that more than 10 teams have latched onto these ideas.
Anyway, great article to bring up, I enjoyed reading it.