Posted by Bill Baer on Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 3:03 pm

Sabermetrics used to be a niche segment of the baseball fan population. This was back before Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs and Beyond the Box Score. Number-crunchers would take to newsgroups and hypothesize and research and debate with like-minded baseball fanatics. Their findings would, generally speaking, produce but a faint echo out of mom’s basement. Hardly anybody in the mainstream media even knew about these innovative thinkers, much less accepted their paradigm-shifting maxims.

In the years since, however, Sabermetrics has spread like wildfire. Myriad books have been written, movies have been written (e.g. Fantasyland and the yet-to-hit-theatres Moneyball), and the mainstream has begrudgingly learned to cope with its new bunkmate. ESPN now regularly displays OPS with the traditional hitter’s line of batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. ESPN has even launched a stats-heavy blog called The Max Info.

The Worldwide Leader is getting its mittens on Sabermetrics? You know it’s hot!

Still, there remain some in the mainstream who remain obstinately opposed to accepting the new and improved ways of thinking about the great game of baseball. Murray Chass has been attacking Sabermetrics like it is his job (it’s not anymore):

The stats freaks who never saw a decimal point they didn’t worship were ecstatic last year when Zack Greinke won the American League Cy Young award while winning only 16 games.

Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe:

It looks like those sun-deprived stat geeks eating pudding in their basement (the same nitwits who insist that homers and RBIs are overrated) outsmarted themselves in assessing this unit.

Steve Cameron of the Merced Sun-Star:

So why am I revved up today?

Well, I suppose it’s because a very talented sports columnist, Bill Simmons of ESPN.com, seems to have sold himself out to the humorless number-crunchers who have buried baseball in something called “sabermetrics.”

With some light Google searching, one can easily come up with literally thousands of articles written by well-known baseball writers expressing their opposition to Sabermetrics. Most of us number-crunchers have read these articles and either ignored them or scoffed at the writers. For good reason: it is the very definition of close-mindedness. But I think it is more interesting to delve deeper into the issue and ask why there are still so many in the mainstream who remain stubbornly opposed to accepting Sabermetrics as a viable method of analysis in baseball.

From my experience, the opposition in the mainstream will fall into various groups. Forgive the generalizations, but I do think you will find that they will mostly hold true.

The Intellectually Lazy

Those that fall in this group may actually have some justification. Not everybody has the time to sit down and immerse themselves in the world of Sabermetrics enough to fully grasp the concepts. It does take some time and honest effort to truly understand Sabermetrics.

However, there are those that do have the time and the resources to learn about Sabermetrics and simply choose not to do so. One would think that, as a writer covering the sport of baseball, learning about these new stats would be part of the job requirement. Instead, these people remain unabashedly and willfully ignorant, and it shines through ever so brightly in their complaints. In the end, they do their readership a disservice but journalism seems to get further and further away from serving the reader anyway.

The Drama Queen

Talk radio hosts will make up the overwhelming majority of the population of this group.  The goal of talk radio is to rev the engines of the listeners, so to speak;  to create drama even when there is none. Most baseball talk on the radio consists of arguing about batting order, pitcher use, and inconsequential issues like a player’s intangibles. Why accept Sabermetrics and be friendly with another group of people when you can instead oppose them and create controversy? Ratings!

The Old Fogey

Some in the mainstream have been around for a long time. They have seen the game evolve, from desegregation to a lower pitcher’s mound to smaller ballparks to steroids… and to Sabermetrics. At this point, they can see the finish line of retirement or death and have absolutely no motivation to immerse themselves in such a deep topic such as Sabermetrics.

The Skeptic

If you have ever seen a poorly-executed religious argument between a theist and an atheist, you know exactly who “the skeptic” is. In logical arguments, the burden of proof tends to fall on the person making the positive claim. In this example, the theist has the burden of proof because he is stating that God does, in fact, exist. The atheist simply refutes this claim due to lack of evidence.

For a related example, if I said that an invisible dragon lived in my garage, you would not believe me because you have not seen ample evidence, which I am expected to provide.

The burden of proof often gets misplaced. The theist will, by default, assume his theistic beliefs are correct because the atheist has not presented evidence that God does not exist. Of course, the theist is mistaken because it is extremely difficult and oftentimes unrealistic (but not impossible) to prove a negative.

A similar tactic occurs in the Sabermetric debates. Despite the newer stats providing more and more light on the great game of baseball, some people will simply never accept its findings until it has answers for everything. Oftentimes, this conclusion is reached when the baseball traditionalists demand the Sabermetrician account for “intangibles”. No, Sabermetrics cannot measure a player’s desire to win but that does not alone invalidate the numerous findings since its undertaking.

The Contrarian

Some people will disagree with you on everything… just to disagree with you, or to set themselves apart from a crowd. This is commonly seen in music circles, which is why we now have so many sub-genres of music.

Playing contrarian gives one instant article fodder, which instantly makes up for an inherent lack in creativity. You will typically see this from journalists with non-traditional responsibilities, including the task of covering multiple sports. Thus, their knowledge of baseball issues is weaker.

The Useful Journalist

Traditional media outlets, particularly newspapers, are dwindling. Those that are still fortunate to have their jobs are always aware that the rug can be swept out from under them, thus they are constantly making strides to ensure job security. Bloggers, who do a lot of the same work that traditional baseball journalists do (besides holding a microphone under a player’s chin), are making traditional journalists increasingly irrelevant in a media scene that has quickly shifted online.

Most bloggers accept Sabermetric theory or at least respect the viewpoints of others that do. If someone from the mainstream outright supports Sabermetric analysis, they implicitly state that the services they provide are less valuable. If Joe Schmo blogger in mom’s basement can correctly analyze the faults of a team, then what value does the professional journalist have?

That’s why you constantly see caveats such as this, found on Todd Zolecki’s blog:

If you’re not into sabermetrics — if you think these crazy new stats are the work of the devil — then clicking the link probably is not for you. If you love sabermetrics — if you think they explain everything in baseball — then Lord knows what your reaction will be after reading Dewan’s take on Utley vs. Albert Pujols. If you’re like me and in between on sabermetrics — they’re valuable to use, but they’re not the Gospel — you should find it interesting.

It’s an interesting piece of writing, for sure. First, he welcomes the non-Sabermetric crowd into the discussion with a folksy overstatement of the new scientific viewpoints with clear undertones. Next, he exaggerates the beliefs of Sabermetric supporters and explicitly states that he has no idea what they could draw from the article to which he links (in other words, “I’m not part of that group at all!”). Finally, he places himself in the middle of a self-created controversy (Sabermetric vs. non-Sabermetric), slightly slanted to the side of traditional baseball evaluation.

Less commonly, you will see a direct attack by a mainstream member to make himself stand apart from the pack. A great example of this came after Ryan Howard signed his five-year extension with the Philadelphia Phillies a few weeks ago. ESPN’s Keith Law, a former scout and member of the Toronto Blue Jays front office and one of the faces that has helped bring Sabermetrics into the mainstream, did not view the Howard extension as a positive move for the Phillies. He even went so far as to argue with a Philadelphia-area host on ESPN radio about the merits of the extension.

Ryan Lawrence is the Phillies beat writer for the Delaware County Daily Times. Lawrence did not take kindly to Law’s analysis, writing the following on Twitter:

God forbid anyone criticizes Keith Law. I’m sorry if he’s your twitter pal, but he’s kind of a clueless clown regarding the Phils [link]

he’s a scout? Uh, I don’t think so. I believe he’s an ESPN writer. [His] commentary on the Phillies is consistently awful. [link]

Lawrence received some not-too-friendly responses from Sabermetric-friendly Tweeters and ever since, he has been taking veiled swipes at Sabermetrics and its users when an opportunity arises.

Fun Ryan Howard fact: of his seven home runs this year, more than half (four) are against left-handers. #Phillies [link]

[A blatant metaphorical middle-finger to stat-heads who have repeatedly pointed to Howard's declining production against southpaws]

[After receiving some responses from Tweeters who didn't take kindly to the information he provided...]

Knew that would bring the crazies out. I was just pointing the HRs out is all. Go back to saying he sucks (and, thus, sounding ridiculous). [link]

I think the Useful Journalist is the most populated group among the anti-Sabermetric crowd in the mainstream media. They realize that is increasingly harder to stand out and desperate times call for desperate measures.

Additionally, Sabermetric analysis has a tendency to be more negative than positive. More often than not, you will see articles discussing how overrated a player is or how little he has contributed to a team as opposed to an underrated player or one who has been a surprise contributor. This is not in and of itself bad analysis, but it does provide an opportunity for the Useful Journalist to make a stand. If a Useful Journalist comes out and defends Ryan Howard against these negative claims, and Howard learns of this, Howard and others in the Phillies clubhouse (looking to earn Brownie points with the public, particularly free agents-to-be) are likely to treat Lawrence better and make his job easier. It is classic human interaction.

Jay Mariotti provided a real-life example of that interaction:

Everyone has a voting story that reeks. Mine involves a Chicago baseball writer, Joe Cowley, who cast a 10th-place MVP vote four years ago for White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski, one of his closest sources on the beat. He also left Joe Mauer of the rival Minnesota Twins completely off his ballot, even though Mauer enjoyed an MVP-caliber 2006 season. Can you say homer? I told Cowley’s boss at the Sun-Times that he should be removed from the Sox beat and reassigned. “Why?” he wondered. Because Cowley compromised his integrity as a thank-you gesture to Pierzynski, who received no other top-10 MVP votes that season. If a writer would go so far to make a mockery of an official balloting, what other stunts might he be pulling on the beat?

You can’t blame the Useful Journalist from being decidedly obtuse. If you give me the option of possibly securing my job (and thus securing food on my table and a roof over my head) or joining a niche group of baseball fans, I will choose the former every single time. It is a great career move to oppose Sabermetrics. Sure, you draw the ire of stat-heads but they make up a small percentage of the readership anyway and they’re not the ones signing the paychecks.

Do you think the anti-Sabermetrics crowd can be further classified? Do you disagree with my classifications? Let me know in the comments!