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October 4, 2014

Brandon Moss: "I'm A Big Sabermetrics Guy"

In a lengthy and fascinating chat with Fangraphs' Eno Sarris, Oakland's Brandon Moss calls batting average "one of the worst statistics to judge a hitter ... It's the stupidest stat!"

Let's say you have 4 quarters, 3 dimes, 1 nickel, and 2 pennies in your pocket. Someone asks you how much money you have. You tell them: "I have 10 coins". That's batting average.

Example

Alex Speier, WEEI: "Ready To Go To Market: A Look At Red Sox's 2015 Payroll And Spending Power"

Joe Posnanski, Hardball Talk: "The Beauty Of Belief"

Joe Distelheim, Hardball Times: "1951: The Year Baseball Really Integrated"

Bob Hohler, Boston Globe: "Tommy Harper Still Haunted By Time With Red Sox"
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6 comments:

  1. allanOctober 4, 2014 at 4:11 PM

    Issues with batting average aside, this is pretty impressive: "In his 65th career plate appearance, Wade Boggs singled to center, raising his career average to .328; it would never fall below this mark."

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  2. johngoldfineOctober 4, 2014 at 5:30 PM

    I didn't know or had half-forgotten a lot of that terrible Tommy Harper stuff.

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  3. FenFanOctober 6, 2014 at 9:05 AM

    Tommy Harper deserves sainthood for putting up with so much garbage from the Red Sox ahead of the change in ownership. The fact that he remains connected to the organization says a lot about his character and his willingness to forgive.

    The Sox should change the name of Yawkey Way to Dick O'Connell Avenue -- someone from the team who actively promoted integration -- or back to Jersey Street.

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  4. laura kOctober 6, 2014 at 5:42 PM

    The Sox should change the name of Yawkey Way to Dick O'Connell Avenue -- someone from the team who actively promoted integration

    ...or have a big plaque in his honour in a good central place at Fenway, explaining his role in integration.

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  5. johngoldfineOctober 7, 2014 at 7:59 AM

    Interesting that at TSW's HOF induction speech in 1966, he mentioned Tom Yawkey gratefully but in his next paragraph said, "I hope that one day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren't given the chance."

    Not given the chance, quite notably, by Tom Yawkey....

    1966 was right around the time when Louise Day Hicks' racist demagoguery was finding a lot of resonance in Boston's white-ethnic neighborhoods, so there must have been serious cognitive dissonance when some people opened their Record-Americans at breakfast to see what Williams had said, only to find out that he was a traitor to his race.

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  6. johngoldfineOctober 7, 2014 at 8:01 AM

    "...or have a big plaque in his honour in a good central place at Fenway, explaining his role in integration."

    Right next to the plaque for Tommy Harper, explaining his role!

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