April 30, 2004
Productive Outs
Daniel Shamah writes:
Hope you're enjoying the game. Buster Olney posted another article on ESPN.com about so-called "productive outs." I've noticed in every game ESPN calls, they not only talk about this bogus stat, but they make a point of talking about the Marlins won the Series with "productive outs." John Kruk went so far as to say he thinks Juan Pierre is MORE valuable than Bonds, because he starts rallies with bunt singles. Nevermind that Pierre and Castillo combined for a whopping 3 runs scored in the Series, and two of those came in the first game; Jeff Conine outscored them himself. Their bias against the patience/power combo that the A's and Yanks employ is ridiculous; you'd think they could find one analyst who disagrees. Or at least give Neyer some airtime on BBTN.
Anyway, I vaguely remember you had a posting on productive outs when ESPN first released them a year ago. And if I remember correctly you shredded their value as an offensive metric. Think you could post it again, or at least email a link to the piece? I remember enjoying it a lot.
This is the Olney article to which Daniel refers. The basic argument is: here's a stat, this team is good at it, this team won, so it must be important to be good at that stat.
My previous posts on this subject:
Outs, Productive Outs and the Unproductive People Who Write about Them
Productive Outs Definition
Significance
Posted by David Pinto at
10:16 AM
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David -
Great analysis, and I completely agree with you. However, I wonder if we're just doing what the Elias folks would want by read Buster's article, talking about it, and talking about the merits of "productive outs."
Maybe if we would all ignore analysis and propaganda like this it would eventually just go away - particularly if you're right that Elias's services could be replaced by others for less.
Elias and ESPN can keep pushing this stuff on us (online, during broadcasts, on Baseball Tonight, etc.) but we don't have to keep buying it.
i wish the marlins had more productive outs and less productive wins last ws. ;-)
when your system holds up detroit and pittsburgh up as teams with better plans than oakland, ny, and boston then something has gone terribly wrong.
I have a question not a comment. When a infielder holds the ball in his hand and tags the runner with an empty glove, is this an out ? Remember the infielder has the ball in his bare hand andf tags the runner with his empty glove. Is this an out ?.
