Yuku free message boards

I appreciate those on the board who spend far too much of their free time breaking down statistics, probabilities, and critically overananlyze everything under the baseball-related sun - the data that are compiled and presented often do a great job of summarizing what has happened.

In the reality of baseball, all of that analysis is about as useful as a knowledgeable baseball fan's gut when it comes to predicting outcomes of specific events within the game. Here is where I have a big disconnect with statheads - I feel that there's a "chicken or the egg" dilemma with statistical analysis. What I mean by that is there's always going to be a stat that points to why something happened - and when there isn't it gets grouped into the 'sample size' or 'statistical outlier' category. While that's valid statistically, it doesn't explain why such an outcome occurred - that's where I think some of the condescension and smugness occurs when the statistically inclined butt heads with others who are looking to quantify something that doesn't fit well on paper (health, momentum, heart, guts, clutch, winner, etc). The fact is the events that are statistical outliers in baseball are among the best (and worst, depending on what end you're on) moments in the sport.

Statistical analysis is completely vital in personnel evaluation, building a major league roster, and putting players in positions to succeed - understanding the nature of a relatively simple game that is easily the most unpredictable in all of sports on a game-by-game basis is hopefully something everyone can agree with.