[HibachiDG]

I'll put aside which teams are or aren't sabrmetrics oriented. For the most part, I'll stick with the best teams are using both, so when that happens, it can be interpreted several different ways. I certainly still think that the Rays are a product more of scouting than of sabrmetrics, so I'm not backing off that, it's just that we'd be getting into a discussion just on a matter of degree and that won't really get us anywhere.

And avoiding outs is the most important skill for a position player in baseball. It is not the only skill and poor ability can be made up for, but it's the hardest deficiency to overcome with proficiency in other areas. Batting average is a mostly useless statistic, so comparing two players with it tells you very little. And player A is almost certainly better unless player B has a ton of power.

Batting average certainly has flaws, no question, but the idea that OBP has passed it, I don't buy.

Situation: Runner on 2nd, tie game bottom of the ninth, 2 outs. Who do you want up? A guy with a higher average or a guy with a higher OBP? NO ONE is going to say the guy with the higher OBP. You want the guy who has the better shot at scoring the run up there.

First off, you don't understand OBP if you think it's only walks. It is, simply, how often a player avoids getting out.

I don't think it is only about walks, but, you bring up one of the flaws of OBP here. A sac fly hurts someone's OBP, but they just got a run home.

As outs are the only limited resource in the game THIS IS ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL. There's a reason it correlates much better to winning and scoring than batting average: preserving your outs is not the only concent, but it's the most important. Batting average tells you really little of importance that OBP doesn't.

What batting average does tell you that OBP does not is whether or not someone will be able to move runners more than just one base at a time. If a player has a higher batting average than someone, then it is more likely that they will be able to be more productive when they do get on base.

With certain hitters, you want to have a good OBP, but in certain spots of the order, if you rely on it, you might find yourself hurt by it. For instance, I don't really care about the OBP for a 3-4-5 hitter. The job of those hitters are to make sure that they get runners home. So, OBP becomes much less important to me there. It's all about lineup construction. I don't think I'm downplaying the importance of OBP, I'm just not choosing to rely on it in certain situations.

If your 3-4-5 guys have more emphasis on OBP than average, you damn sure better have a really good bottom of the order to make sure you get those runs home. Not all teams have that kind of consistency from the bottom of their lineup.

The point is that I don't think you have much of an awareness of what teams who build with data analysis are trying to do, or which teams do that. I emplore you to actually research the subject if you want to be an authority on it.

First, I don't think I want to be an authority on the matter, I just have my opinion on it. But, if you think I haven't actually researched the subject or that I need a place to begin reading on sabrmetrics, that's your mistake. Spending time learning about something and then disagreeing with the conclusions is a lot different from not knowing the subject.

My biggest problem with the calculator side of things is that there is so much out there that the surface hasn't really been scratched on the interpretation side of things. Like, relying on OBP in situations where average is still the stat that should get more emphasis.

Quick example, Raul Ibanez vs. Pat Burrell. The Phillies this offseason chose to go with Ibanez over Burrell. Burrell was a plague on the Phillies lineup, despite his high OBP. The addition of Ibanez will, hopefully, make their lineup more productive. The reason is because Burrell hit for a much lower batting average in spots where just getting on base didn't mean a whole lot.

The Indians were a game from the World Series with that approach, and they lost to the Red Sox: a team that has won two World Series with that approach.

I would argue that last season was the only year that Red Sox moved from scouting/traditional approach to the calculator approach. So, I would not agree that the Red Sox won two World Series with that approach. Trading Manny was something they did based on the calculator side of things, because they thought it would be easier to make up for his production. They found out that that really wasn't the case.

But, I just think the main thing here, on placing teams in certain columns, is that we're giving different weight to what teams are doing.

One thing I wonder if you understand is that all data doesn't tell you the same thing or look at the same things, and most teams who construct that way are looking at data that you probably haven't even heard of.

I'm not sure where you're going with the first part of this, but I certainly would admit to not knowing everything that goes into the statistical side of things and am still learning on it.