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Douglas Marolla's avatar

I got the baseball stats bug reading Bill James' first Historical Baseball Abstract in the late 1980's. Since then I've seen the "metrics" ruin much of the sport. Watching them ruin Strasburg's career by 'protecting' him has been awful.

Great essay. Extremely enjoyable.

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Ross Barkan's avatar

thank you! new rule changes, my hope, will counteract some of the analytics influence

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Douglas Marolla's avatar

There's an essay in James' Historical Baseball Abstract from 2000 called "The Perfect Machine". MLB has chosen a less efficient, more clunky answer to the problems they're trying to solve.

It's a great essay if you haven't gotten to it.

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KW's avatar

I'm all for the new rules too. I always point people to this chart: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml

Games averaged 2 1/2 hours in the 1970s versus more than 3 hours in the past decade. The new rules seem radical but they're really a return to what baseball used to be.

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Kevin C's avatar

Very nice

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