Lyons falls into some of the same damn traps that every jock-who-hates-stats ALWAYS fall in to…

#Talks about not-liking numbers, but then goes on to say he likes traditional numbers.
#The phrase “these numbers don’t tell me who has heart/grit/toughness/whatever…”
#I don’t know what that means, but it’s stupid.

If he would have said “…clogs the bases” he would have pulled it all off.

I’m going to look at some of my favorite bits…
bq. See, that’s why I gloss over it, because I don’t know what 1.300 means. It’s a number.

As your peer explains later, it’s OBP plus SLG. If you don’t know, you could, um…read about it? It’s pretty simple, and not as good as wOBA, but it’s all over the place, Steve. And we’re not into anything complicated yet!

But without going through the gyrations of OPS and the 1.300s, can’t you just look at Raul Ibanez, your boy Zobrist, and just say, “Those guys are pretty good players.”

I mean, theoretically you could. But how do you determine HOW good? I mean, I played 4 years of college baseball and watched a lot of freshmen come in who had great talent but never did anything with it because, well, they weren’t very good. I mean, they’d hit balls 415 feet or whatever, but the fact that they didn’t produce with those abilities means they weren’t good. I’m not really sure where Psycho is going here.

It’s fictional. [in response to Collins’ mention of UZR]

Steve, could you even explain the biggest, most obvious part of UZR. Like, what is it? I mean, you’d probably say it’s fictional, but what does it REALLY mean? Lyons probably has no clue. “I don’t know what it is…but I hate it!”

There is a place, a very small place, for the computer geeks that are now taking over the game of baseball. There is a place, but it’s a small place. We’re seeing way too much of it.

I see it now. Paul De Podesta, laptop in one hand, graphing calculator in the other, ready to pounce and invade baseball. Not the business, but the concept of baseball. Right behind him is Neil Huntington, and Manny Acta is there too. How? No idea. But it’s happening.

Stupid. Doesn’t tell me if the guy is a player. Doesn’t tell me if the guy can play. Is he a gamer? Does he get dirty? Does he go out there and play hard? Is he a good teammate?

Nope, doesn’t explain any of that. You are not wrong. But it is a way to measure if a player is getting lucky or not. I mean, that’s something worth looking at right? Unless Youkilis can grit the ball through the infield or Eckstein can try so hard that his flairs fall in; or in reverse if Adam Dunn shows so much baseball-hate that he makes his line drives go at people, or maybe ManRam’s umm…trots to first base actually stop the ball midflight so some one can catch it.

Actually, there IS a way to measure a player’s grittiness…LINKY HERE!!!

Now I will give you that in the game of baseball, down through time and part of the great history in the game of baseball, is based on its numbers. No question about that, there’s no getting around it, there’s no getting away from it. I’m kind of the traditional number guy.

He then goes on to talk about batting average and some weird discussion of how guys who stink at hitting can still be good because they get RBI’s because their managers put them in spots in the lineup where they’ll get more RBI, and RBI is good even though what he just said counters that and oh my god I wasted 45 minutes on this I’m going to bed…