Joe Posnanski gets bugged by a Harold Reynolds blog post about OPS. There’s an old saying about writing about what you know, and statistics aren’t Harold’s strong suit. Like Joe, I like Harold Reynolds a lot. If I’m looking for an explanation of how to turn a double play or how to decide to go from first to third on a single, I’ll ask Harold. If I want to know about the usefulness of OPS, I’ll look elsewhere.
We were in a Baseball Tonight production meeting one day, and Harold wanted to talk about lead-off hitters on the show. He started listing the important qualities of these hitters. The first was speed. I groaned internally. He kept the list going, and all the while I’m thinking, “Say OBA!” He lists about five more things without mentioning getting on base. He looks like he’s searching for one more thing, so I pipe up with, “The abilility to get on base.” Harold echoes that, and goes on.
The list Harold gave were qualities that helped you get on base, or helped you score once you got on base, but he didn’t pull those together into a stat that explained most of it.
Posted by David Pinto at 12:55 pm | Statistics | Permalink | 2 Comments
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June 19th, 2009 @ 2:45 pm
links not working, will have to do it the old fashioned way and google it.
June 19th, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
You don’t get high quality statistical analysis from Harold. If you understand that going in, you like what Harold brings.
It is like reading war stories. I can only read so many “Why Hitler Lost” analysis. But I’ll read just about everything I can get my hands on from the grunts taking the beaches at Normandy.
Harold is the soldier giving us eyewitness opinions about baseball. It might not be 100% accurate when looking at the big picture, but it is far more interesting than hearing statistical breakdowns of why David DeJesus should be batting leadoff over Coco Crisp.