Nanny Nanny Boo Boo
I have a dear friend from Baltimore who now lives in another state. We’ve been close since the 9th grade, and as much as I love him, he has a really annoying habit. He likes to argue every fine point about the Orioles with me, even though, a) I watch every game and he lives in a desolate place without MASN and b) Hello!
At the beginning of this season, he made some snide remark when Olson was brought up to the Os, “Isn’t he the one you hated last season?” “One of the ones I hated,” I corrected. In another conversation last year I was complaining about Hernandez’s lack of success in throwing out base stealers, “I miss Dempsey. No one stole a base on his watch.” My annoying friend promptly looked up statistics to prove to me that Dempsey was just average. Average my tushy.
This is how some people go wrong. They think they know the game or can predict a team’s success just by looking at the numbers. I’ll say it again, numbers only paint part of the picture. There’s much, much more to the game. For example, statistics don’t tell you when a play that was scored as a hit could have been a double play if your fielder had been a little faster, or when a reliever prevented the runners he inherited from scoring. (Well, I’m sure there is some statistic like that, it is baseball after all, but hopefully you know what I’m saying.)
Anyway, the whole point of this post is to point everyone to this wonderful post at Roar from 34, in which my whole point about Dempsey is confirmed by someone who is smarter and less biased than I.
In my usual mature way, I virtually stick out my tongue to my know-it-all friend. 