An Epoch Ended in 2012 and We Might Not Have Noticed

In 2009, with the sting of the Killer Bees a mere pinprick and Roy Oswalt three years from MLB irrelevance, Astros GM Ed Wade signed a pair of middle relievers to hefty contracts and horded his aging stars in an effort to ... well ...field a respectable team, but not a contender. Predictably, the Farm atrophied and the team finished a combined 79 games under .500 from 2007-2011. When new ownership bought out the regrettable Drayton MacLane, nanoseconds passed before Wade was mercifully jettisoned.

And with Wade, went an epoch, never to be seen again.

Starting in 2012, God has bestowed the general manager position upon no more dolts or Luddites unable to discern what every other GM understands. There exists in 2016, no general manager, or VP of Baseball Operations, upon whom opposing clubs can giddily dump their problems. No one is as patently without a clue as Ed Wade anymore.

Every club in Major League Baseball employs an analytical department that complements the scouting department with statistical analysis, psychological profiling and who knows what else. There is no one left to get fleeced of, for example, a low batting average/high on base guy, because every team understands his value.

And the days when front offices debated the value of analytics is long gone. Every front office appreciates the competitive disadvantage attendant to knowing less than what a dozen websites (one one third-rate blogger from Charleston) know about players' true value. 

A decade ago, I could wring a column a week out of reviewing major transactions and identifying the patent lunacy of half of them. Signing a player after a good season without accounting for his ridiculously high BABIP. Valuing a pitcher with a nominally good W-L record without accounting for the conditions under which his team won. Spending money on declining veterans when it's time for a rebuild. And so on.

It just doesn't happen anymore.

Ironically, the last obviously head-scratching trade was made by the Grand Wizard of analytics himself, the guy who made his name bamboozling his counterparts a decade ago. Last winter, Billy Beane flipped star third-sacker Josh Donaldson, a seven-win player with five tools, for three-win third baseman Brett Lawrie and some spare parts.

All Donaldson did was win the MVP Award for a nine-win season in which he paced the league in total bases, runs scored, and RBIs while slugging 41 homers and 43 doubles/triples for Toronto while Lawrie backslid a win.

But even then, there might be extenuating circumstances. Lawrie is four years younger and can play other infield positions. Two nearly Major League-ready hurlers accompanied him to Oakland. And there were reports that Beane and Donaldson weren't gracefully co-existing.

The point is, the days of the doofus GM are over. Now even Billy Beane can get jobbed. And all I got out of it is one column.

The Dying Gasp of the Luddites

If you're wondering what kind of impact new analytics are having on the baseball landscape, I commend to your attention this dying gasp of Luddite literature from Paul Daugherty of the Cincinnati Enquirer. His half-hearted attempt to wish away knowledge is an ode to new analysis in its way. So tepid and conditional are his objections that we're left to conclude the argument may finally be over.

You can read his diatribe yourself, but I'll summarize it here:

• Baseball stats can't measure professionalism. No, they measure results.
• Some new stats, like Deserved Run Average, are complicated and I don't understand them, so they must be useless. When's the last time you measured ERA yourself?
• The number crunchers think digits can replace eyeballs. Show us the guy.
• A new measuring tool only measures what it measures, so it must be useless. There go all stats.
• If a new measuring tool tells you what you already believe, who needs it. If it contradicted what you believed you'd similarly scoff.

This is now the state of discourse from the hidebound. Notice that Daugherty admits new numbers have their place. Notice that he recognizes all front offices have had to adopt advanced metrics or preside over withering franchises.

But also notice that old false dichotomy between measuring performance and watching games. Would the seamhead who disputes the value of visiting the ballpark please identify himself, because I can't find him. This straw man argument forms the bedrock of most anti-progress rants, as if SABR rattlers are walking the countryside like Johnny Saberseed planting the notion that numbers can capture all the nuance of the game.

But numbers can tell you this: for all his professionalism, Marlon Byrd is batting .212 and playing a low-value defensive position (left field). We could watch Byrd and agree that he's a good guy, a hard worker and a positive influence on his teammates. But we'd also notice that Father Time has taken a chisel to his skills, and left the Reds with an out machine.

His objections amount to a surrender, really. It's like the last wail of an infant before they go back to sleep. The innumerate want to register their discomfort one last time before the next BABIP discussion.

Sorry, Paul, to burden you with added insight into the game, with better predictive tools, with interesting information about plays and players. You're free to ignore all that while you watch a .212 hitter hustle. Say hi to Fred and Wilma for us back in Bedrock.

Thankful

On Thanksgiving, it is proper to take a moment to ruminate over our many blessings, such as that we're not a turkey, or a Royals fan. Anymore.

My gratitude to others:

I give thanks for the "traditionalists" who claim to hate baseball statistics and then misuse them to justify foolish positions. They make possible the endless arguments that bring joy to the interstitial spaces between pitches, at bats and innings.

I give thanks for the Luddites who refuse to learn anything new about baseball, as if willful ignorance is a life strategy. A weak beam like me positively shimmers in contrast to dull mattes like that.

I give thanks for the innumerate journalists who assume that if analysis is beyond their understanding it can't be valuable. They allow a third-rate amateur blogger to produce more insightful opinions in his spare time than they do vocationally.

I give thanks for the slow learners who aren't prepared to rush into the embrace of new statistics developed just 33 years earlier and tested rigorously since, the kind of examination that exposes the irrelevance of RBIs and pitcher wins. They allow a new breed of open-minded fans to converse at a higher plane than they can fathom.

I give thanks for the robotic seamheads who forget that real humans play the game. They give cover to lunkheads still dog-paddling in the shallow end of the knowledge pool and spur the debates that I so enjoy.

But mostly, I give thanks for being born rich and free in America where I have the luxury to waste time on frivolous pursuits like this with a full stomach and the security that it will all be there tomorrow.