Royals Monday Notes – A Gore-y Weekend

Lets Look At Sabermetrics (I know you guys are just gleaming with excitement)

“SABR nerds don’t understand the speed and defense factor,” is a very common narrative. As a SABR enthusiast myself, I’d like to deny this claim, and I’m going to use Terrance Gore’s ridiculous 10th inning on Sunday as a case study.

Here is the tweet that really started this crap

First of all, this tweet really encompasses a misguided interpretation of metrics in general.

Fanning went on to tweet this as well.

I responded with this thread, which really explains the common misinterpretation of metrics.

Here’s the deal. I get the angst against sabermetrics. They don’t like the Royals, and we are all Royals fans. We want people to love the Royals.

The important thing to realize is this: Metrics do not define success, as much as they evaluate it.

This is why Fangraphs came out and owned their Royals projections, saying this:

"Since the Royals keep beating their projections, there’s definitely an increasing belief they just do something the numbers struggle to detect,” Jeff Sullivan said. “The Royals are the controversial team, as projections go, and evidence suggests people came here just to vote on them. To do that implies you have a strong opinion, and the strong opinions were overwhelmingly that the Royals are being badly under-estimated.”"

I love metrics and believe strongly in their ability to diagnose real success. However, as they say, that’s why they play the games. More often than not, the numbers are right. There are times that they are not, and woudn’t you know it, the Royals are the team this happens with most, as a team and individually.

With that being said, the original tweet is totally bogus because, just to remind you, Moneyball does not define SABR.

I know Brad Pitt told you not to steal bases, but we metric lovers find real value in speed, whether it be on the bases or defensively.

Next: A Gore-y 10th Inning