What else do you have off the top of your head?

“I’m only interested in WINNING, an RBI or HR in bottom of the 9th WINS. Not a walk.”

Wait, who said anything about a walk? I’m talking about a high OBP.

BA is not important by itself. no more so than OBP. A team of .300 hitting Castillos from 2009 still won’t score any runs, with no power. same with his .387 OBP.

no one is arguing that OBP is all that matters, but it has been proven that if you can increase the OBP of the whole lineup, including the sluggers, the team will score more runs. And without having to depend on HRs.

wonderful if your #4 hitter can hit .300. But if he has a .400 OBP instead of a .320 OBP, the #5 hitter is going to have way more RBIs, and the team will score more runs.

late 90s Yankees perfected this. Not a big HR hitting team (individuallY, but they all worked counts, and had high OBP. wore out pitching staffs, kept the line moving, and score a boatload of runs.

High OBP players with little power up top, and in the middle power guys is obvious. But the superstar middle order guys (Manny, Bonds, Pujols, etc.) were special not just from their HRs (Kingman could hit plenty) but because they also had huge OBP.

RBIs is the thing. Off the top of my head Joe Dimaggio & Yogi Berra would probably come close to HRs and BBs being equal.

I’m only interested in WINNING, an RBI or HR in bottom of the 9th WINS. Not a walk.
You can have an 9 innings leave the bases loaded all 9 innings, do that 162 times a year, not score and have the highest team OBP in history.

Give me one hit a game, a HR against that team and my team wins with the WORST OBP in history.

Those are extreme examples but it’s to drive a point home.
Back to regular baseball give me the HR guy, RBI guy, or high AVG guy anytime of the high OBP guy

That’s if you want to WIN. That’s what i’m interested in more than statistics.

But i concede to you this – if they one day have an awards night for Most Bang for the Buck…you’ll probably be nominated.
I dont’ think that will have anything to do with winning though.

One of the key changes he has done so far is implement MORE scouts, and having scouts spread a lot less thin.

seems a saber only guy would have less, not more!

there are plenty of quotes from the big saber fan FO guys that it is another tool in the toolbox. Not a replacement for scouting, not an end all be all, just one more thing to look at.

the whole point of talent acquisition is getting an edge over the 29 other guys doing the same thing. Any possible edge you can come up with is huge. so hell yeah, a GM is smart to look at advanced statistics to try and identify trends that lead to more wins.

and bottom line, all a GM wants is wins. Not saber #s, not accolades for being smart. And the core goal of sabermetrics is to try and analyze thousands of games, millions of ABs, to try and figure out what has the highest correlation with generating those wins.

but it makes no difference if you know what makes a player good if you can’t find those guys. meaning scouting.

Everyone knows that Werth is good. and Crawford is good. But no one, eyes only, can really say which one (given a choice) is likely to lead to more wins.

and why get so upset if all the saber analysis says that defense is worth spending on, or power is worth more than OBP, or whatever it shows? The GM still has to go out and find players, not numbers.

scouts look at tons of guys that put up showy BB card #s, and don’t consider them to be good future players. and other that they project to be better. based on experience, and that isn’t going to change.

He can win a game in the bottom of the 9th with a HR and nobody on base.

You can have 3 guys walk, have a great OBP inning…and lose.

Baseball knew what was most important right from the beginning.

Eddie Gaedel has a career 1000 OBP – but he wouldn’t be able to drive in runs.

Oh, and if all the HR/RBI guys were not hurt? The team OBP would’ve been higher too.

It’s been that way for over 150 years.

Let’s put Canseco & MacGwire up 1&2 and put Ricky Henderson & Carney Lansford in the middle….Henderson may actually pull it off a little but still that’s not how it works. You’ll score less runs.

The RBI guys are more important than the OBP guys. That the point.
It will ALWAYS be that way.

i’ll assume u never coached so……..

hey, being involved in the game for many years doesn’t hurt and gives you a good perspective as long as your smart.

The guys on base depend on the RBI guy.

Again, a team of table setters with allegedly high OBP will score less than a team of sluggers. Your middle of the order guys are good hitters anyway.

The RBI guy can do the table setter’s guy but not the other way around.
If you switch the lineup up and led off with Texeira and A-Rodz and put the top of the order guys in the middle – you will score LESS RUNS

If i said 2010 it was a typo. The 2009 Mets led the league in hitting – tied with LA I believe.