As my friend DR continues to blab away at how statistics tell everything when it comes to the game of baseball, I'm going to try and convince you otherwise.
As a person who has been around the game of baseball since I was literally one year old(Grandma threw tiny fruit at me and I hit it with a bat), I reserve the right to say that I know what I am talking about when it comes to the national pastime of America. I've played on travel teams, high school teams, college teams and I coach a 16 year old team now. Safe to say, baseball has and will always be my life. I've watched countless amount of major league baseball, along with some minor league and way too many little league/young people baseball games.
My problem with all these statistical approaches to the game is that some of the people using these stats and coming up with them, have never seen more than 5 baseball games in their lives. BABIP, WAR, VORP, or WPA are all stats that you might or might not have seen before. I will admit that some of these stats work and they have been proven to work. But in sports, and ESPECIALLY in the game of baseball, stats don't tell the whole story.
As an aspiring General Manager/scout/ whatever, I am fully aware that I have to know these new statistical approaches, in order to have an eye for talent. But let me say this, if I see a pitcher who has movement, can change speeds and gets people out, that means a lot more to me than dumb stats. If the guy can get a win and pitch his way out of trouble rather than having a 900 to 1 K/BB ratio, I'd take the guy who wins.
Hitting wise, I understand the point of BABIP, batting average for balls in play. It is very useful and has its positives. However, as a player I always tried to hit a line drive. I didn't want to hit the ball in the air or on the ground; I wanted to hit a liner. Unfortunately, you cannot do that every time you get to the plate (or at least I couldn't), and so you end up hitting it in the air or on the ground. Major league baseball players do the same thing, and the old adage of "it all evens out in the end" is true. Line drives get caught, grounders and bloopers fall in, that's the nature of the game. Who cares if somebody has a high BABIP! Their average at the end of the year will reflect how well they hit the baseball for the year, but it will also take away some hard hit liners and add in some bloop base hits. That is the nature of the game, a .300 hitter will be a .300 hitter, no matter if there BABIP is .450 or .200. At the end of the day they will be what they have always been. Granted, players get better, mature, work on their swings, these are all things that help raise the BA, not if their BABIP is .200 for the month of July.
As the saying goes after getting a bloop hit, "it looks like a liner in the box score" is very true. Who's to say next time you don't hit a line drive base hit? Why, because your BABIP is at .400? No, its all mental, every sport is mental. If you think good things will happen and you think you can get a hit 100 times out of 100 at bats, then you can. That would make your BABIP 1.000, so essentially you shouldn't get a hit for the next 200 at bat's to bring it into a normal BABIP area? WHAT? Does that make sense, the answer, clearly here, is no.
Players should be scouted on how well they perform on the baseball field, if they run hard on the field and off it, if their teammates like them, if they get along with their managers. Stats mean nothing when it comes to going out on the baseball diamond and leaving everything you have out there. BABIP SHMAPIP, is what I say, play hard, hit hard, field hard, run hard, pitch hard and good things happen.
God Bless the game of baseball and everyone who has played it.
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