Goodby to Some Old Baseball Ideas

Goodby to Some Old Baseball Ideas

I know, I know, you’re preparing for your draft and you have no time to dawdle for nostalgia.

Well, my buddy Mark Starr, who has a story in this week’s Newsweek about Theo Epstein and the “stats revolution” in baseball, sent me the link to this 1954 Branch Rickey story. A reader of his named Cyril Morong sent it to him.

Everything Rickey thinks was proved true didn’t turn out to be true, but his vision of the game and our ability (immeasurably enhanced by cheap computing power) to model it statistically, is breathtaking.

I wish Rickey was around to help us sort out the various issues surrounding Defense Independent Pitching Stats.