Let Einstein Be Einstein

Albert Einstein said that not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts. Albert was a genius.

Baseball "analysts" are not geniuses. Most of them aren't even Bill James, Rob Neyer, Joe Sheehan or Keith Law. They (the "analysts") have taken Einstein's tenet and distorted it into nonsense. Like this: The Twins have an advantage over the White Sox because there's no pressure on them.

I actually heard this morsel of twaddle from a supposed baseball expert on the radio. He was postulating that Minnesota could "play loose" because there were no expectations of a division title. I will leave to your imagination the many ways in which this twist of logic fails to dignify a response. But what particularly intrigues me is the way baseball people throw around these kinds of theories precisely because they're unknowable, unprovable and unreliable.

If I told you that the Twins had the edge over the Sox because they have a weaker schedule from here on in, you could check my information. But no one knows what makes teams feel pressure or how teams react to pressure. In fact, just yesterday Leo Mazzone asserted the very opposite theory. He noted that Chipper Jones would have trouble focusing on the batting title because his team is out of it, whereas Albert Pujols has the pressure of a Wild Card race to focus him on every at bat.

Who's wrong? No one can know; isn't that great! Because if no one can know, we can continue to make these irrefutable comments without fear of contradiction.

Consequently, you regularly hear and read accepted wisdom about the quality of some player's leadership, or of the need to have veterans who know how to win in the lineup, or of the importance of chemistry in the clubhouse or of doing the little things that don't show up in the box score. (Or this one I heard on the same radio show -- the importance of playing well heading into the playoffs, which is provably stupid. Did these guys not watch the World Series two years ago, which pitted the two teams playing the worst heading into the post-season?)

And because these things don't show up in the box score, and can't be measured or counted, the theorists feel free to assign value to them. That's why a weak-hitting, shortstop with average defensive skills gets MVP votes on the premise that he knows how to win and is great in the clubhouse and really shows the young guys how the game should be played. It's surprising that sportscasters and sportswriters have so far failed to credit players for liking dogs and children, long walks on the beach and peace on earth.

Certainly, leadership has value. So does team camaraderie. Being able to get down a bunt, or hit to the right side with a runner on first, or hit the cutoff man are important. I can't prove it, but I think you'll agree, that none of these things as is valuable as a three-run homer.