No Debate Allowed

Zack Greinke overcame history, geography, and his own team to bring home the AL Cy Young Award for 2009.  Chris Assenheimer, Mark Feinsand, and Steve Kornacki overcame the on-going hostile takeover by the “Too Cool For You,” Saber-Masters out there.  I kind of like that at least three folks aren’t following like lemmings …

Those three were the only three writers of 28 who denied Greinke an unanimous selection as the American League’s best in ‘09.  They “ignored” that the righty collected 25% of the Royals entire win total despite appearing in just 20% of their games.  They “overlooked” that Greinke had quality starts in 26 of his 33 showings (although why do all other Greinke-celebrants fail to report that King Felix accomplished the feat 29 times in 34 starts?).  Oh, and I guess it means little to these three folks that the KC righty just didn’t make mistakes!  He allowed just two round-tripper’s with runners on over the course of nearly 230 innings of work.  In other words, they voted on an award the way that baseball folks have voted on awards for decades.

Greinke’s year was uncanny, great, phenomenal, overpowering, career-defining, etc.  Anyone who watched him for any extent of time could tell you that.  But, nearly every argument for him leading up to this announcement wondered if “those dumb sportswriters” would finally embrace a new age … an age where the old adage of a you can dream up a statistic to support or discredit any and all arguments has never been more true.

Notice how many stories about the Cy Young announcement mention that Greinke is a disciple of sabermetrics.  Why is this important?  I’ll tell you why – because just three years ago, no AP report or otherwise would waste their time on such things.  Now, the media seems to want to prove that they’re not a bunch of neanderthals.  To prove that they’re good enough for the “in group.”  Seriously, I haven’t seen a fresh baseball beat reporter/blogger in the past five years who doesn’t beat you over the head with sabermetrics.  It’s maddening … few original thoughts; instead, they offer a regurgitation of what 20 white coats who work for very entertaining/interesting sites are saying.

I love the numbers … as long as they’re coming from folks who understand them, have a sense of how to figure them, and understand that they are not fundamentally infallible.  Right now, we have the folks that are “in the know” getting everyone to think that their way is practically the only way.    A hundred years of baseball knowledge, perceptions, and gut-feelings have been leveled by people who haven’t picked up a bat since discovering “Magic: The Gathering,” and, of course, have never managed a game.

And, yes, neither have I.  And, furthermore, I admit that I’m mostly unqualified to use many of these numbers.  In fact, this seems to be a movement that has gained an inordinate amount of steam thanks to publicity from those who often have no understanding … TV announcers, columnists, bloggers, etc.

I’m just pointing out that there is devolution of knowledge right now.  We have so much at our finger tips, yet there often seems to be only one way to think, one way to build a team, one way to succeed.  All others are fools who are to be led away and spend a life doomed to ignorance and failure.

Greinke’s year was just plain incredible.  But, it was not near as incredible as the remarkable extent to which a certain cabal of people “outside the game” have taken control on developing baseball thought.  Again, it’s not necessarily wrong (after all, you’ll see these numbers passed along in this very forum), but it is quite amazing.