I’m not a statistics guy myself — math is hard, yo — but I’ve long considered myself a fellow traveler in much the same way that guys like Timothy Leary and Wavy Gravy hung around a lot of rock bands in the 60s without making any music. I’m totally down with the statheads even if I can’t do a thing that they do.
So I’m pleased to read that Max Scherzer — one of my favorite pitchers simply because he strikes out a ton of dudes yet doesn’t seem like a fascist — is a big stats geek. No, he’s not redefining the field or anything, but as a pitcher he’s really aware of the advanced metrics and has, to some extent, used them to refine his game.
Sure, he has struggled until recently and got sent down to Toledo, but that’s about talent — command is a talent, by the way, not an intellectual exercise — but any time I read about ballplayers who look at the advanced stats, I see a guy who seems genuinely interested in wanting to improve his game, and you have to dig that.
UPDATE: We write a lot of damn posts here at HBT. So many that I didn’t remember the fact that Aaron gave statty props to Scherzer just last August before writing this.
Crap. I shouldn’t have admitted that. If I had gone all day without anyone else reminding me that this is basically a repeat, I could save myself a lot of work in 2011 just writing what I’ve written in 2010. Of course, maybe by then people won’t remember this post admitting that either . . .
