From: dtate+@pitt.edu (David M Tate)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Value of Stats
Date: 21 Jul 92 19:36:38 GMT
Organization: Factors of Ys, Inc.

In article <BrquMr.27J@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> djohnson@cayley.waterloo.edu (David Johnson) writes:
>
>I will say this once again because it seems that people don't understand.  I
>think that statistics are very important to show a players ability but 

(The inevitable 'but'...)

>baseball
>is a TEAM sport and there are 25 men on a team 

Is baseball a team sport?  Don't laugh; this is a serious question.  There
are certainly 25 men on a team, and it takes all of them to do well in the
playoff chase, but does that make it a "team sport", in the way we normally
use that phrase?

Baseball certainly isn't a team sport in the way football, basketball, soccer,
volleyball, hockey, or lacrosse is.  You can see this easily by noting that a
new player, just traded for or brought up from the minors, can play for the
team *immediately*.  He doesn't have to learn a "system", figure out his
teammates' on-field foibles, or anything else more complicated than learning
a new set of signals for the same old things.  The only real team interactions
that have to be practiced together are double play pivots, hitting the cutoff
man, and pitchers covering first base.  Hardly a whole lot of teamwork.

As I see it, a "team sport" is a sport where the team's performance is more
than the sum of its parts.  And I just don't see baseball being very much of
a team sport, in that sense.  Not much more than Davis Cup tennis, in fact.

>and a player with a good 
>attitude and a player that works hard and enjoys playing makes the game more
>fun for both himself, his team mates and the fans.  

You say "works hard an enjoys playing" as if they were the same thing.  They
aren't.  What about the player who enjoys playing, as long as it isn't hard
work?  They exist.  Some of them are quite good, too.

>In anything that anyone
>does in life for any reason IF THEY ENJOY WHAT THEY ARE DOING THEY WILL BE 
>BETTER AT DOING THAT.  

As a general trend, yes.  What you seem to be overlooking is that major league
baseball players are *all* drawn from the extreme far end of the population
at large, in terms of ability.  None of them would have arrived where they are
today if they didn't love to play the game.  The differences among them, with
regard to love of playing baseball, are insignificant.  Furthermore, once you
get out to the far limits of what human beings are capable of, I deny that
being happy is going to make any kind of significant difference in what folk
achieve.  In everyday life, people who enjoy what they are doing study harder,
practice more, learn more easily, and thus do better.  In major league base-
ball, these guys have already done that, or they wouldn't be there.  The
returns on "attitude" diminish rapidly as you move toward the top of any
profession or activity.

>A player like Dave Winfield really like to play
>baseball and is a hard worker and thus in turn is a good influence on younger
>inexperienced players.  

This same Dave Winfield was called a selfish, lazy, disruptive influence by
his team about 10 years ago.  Same guy?

>This makes Dave Winfield a better player than another
>player even if thay have the same numbers because the other player doesn't
>create this good atmosphere in the clubhouse.  Not many teams win if there
>is no winning spirit and dedication to winning in the clubhouse.  

Not many teams win even if there is a "winning spirit" and "dedication to
winning" in the clubhouse.  Not many teams win, period.  The truth is that
we only label team attitude as good or bad *after* seeing whether they won
or not, which is hardly a fair test.

>Remember this is a team sport and the players should play as a team.

Just how are they supposed to do that?  The rules only let one of them bat
at a time, and rarely do more than two of them get to make a play on any one
batted ball.

>This may be my last post on this subject unless i feel that there is
>something that I haven't stated clearly and you don't understand.

Well, I still think there are a lot of missing links.  Who's the guy on 
"Night Court" who's always saying "What's your point?".  I feel like him.
Baseball is a team sport, you say.  What's your point?  How does this imply
preferring players with worse stats if they have good attitude?  How many
points of OBP is team happiness worth?  Don't laugh; if you can't answer the
question even approximately, then you can't use these criteria to evaluate
teams and players.


-- 
       David Tate        |"Out of the dugout endlessly swinging,
 dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu | Out of the manager's throat, the sound fundamentals,
 Prof. of Story Problems | Out of the six-month season..."            
 Member ORSA, TIMS, SABR | 	Walt "Lefty" Whitman
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball