Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro suggested, to writer Bob Brookover, that scouts shouldn’t rely too much on statistics when scouting the minors:
Amaro said statistical analysis should not be a big part of minor-league scouting.
“It’s just too difficult to really project what the numbers will say,” Amaro said. “I lived it myself. I [...]

There is nothing wrong with a fan expressing admiration for Chipper for staying away from PED’s, for playing baseball on a Hall-of-Fame level or for staying with one team his entire career instead of chasing more money from another team. But none of this makes him any more or less admirable as a human being, overall.

The Cubs are giving Bryan LaHair, 29 and a career minor leaguer, his shot as a major league regular in 2012. The first base job is LaHair’s to lose going in to the season. What are reasonable expectations for this minor league journeyman with only 65 major league games under his belt?

Tim Wakefield wasn’t the best pitcher of his era nor is he very likely to make the Hall of Fame. But Wakefield is one of the most interesting players of the last 20 years.

Last year, Author Alan Hirsch was kind enough to answer and respond to questions and criticisms of his book, The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball. Alan co-wrote The Beauty of Short Hops with his brother, Sheldon Hirsch.

This is not a replacement for watching and scouting, in addition to looking at the statistics. This is merely a way for fans—who often don’t get to see their team’s minor-league players and the minor-league players everyone is raving about—to eyeball some numbers and get an idea about what their team has in the organization.

The reason sabermetrics (as generally defined) exist is because there are people out there who want to take this scientific approach to understanding baseball. They do not simply blindly trust what they think they’ve observed or what someone who seems knowledgeable tells them. Sabermetrics is essentially about finding the answers regarding baseball knowledge for yourself and not relying on what seems right or what tradition tells us.

Many members of BBWAA view the game as a contest in artistry rather than as a game and a sport.

Coming into the American League Championship Series against the Yankees, the Texas Rangers were undersold. They were undersold because of their starting pitching. Their second- and third-best starting pitchers (C.J. Wilson and Colby Lewis) are almost as good as the Yankees’ best starting pitcher (C.C. Sabathia), or at least they are in 2010.

There is a striking lack of context here, for those who want to read into the Pirates making profits while losing.

Too often fans want to put too much emphasis on results, which is understandable, particularly in the case of a team that hasn’t won anything since Boyz II Men topped the charts. The point is to win, after all. But, especially in the early going of a new regime taking over a franchise in pitiful shape, we must remember to look more at the philosophical direction of the franchise and what the front office is doing to set the team up for success.

Would it change anything, besides some pages in a baseball’s official record book, if Bud Selig decided to overturn umpire Jim Joyce’s missed call that costs Detroit’s Armando Galarraga a perfect game? Is it worth it if it doesn’t change anything besides some pages in the official record book?

It seems most Major League organizations are always looking for ways to improve and at the same time save money, so most have grasped that a more statistical/scientific approach to evaluating players is extremely helpful. But there are some out there, and maybe a few within the game, who still think it’s an issue worth debating.

Yes, it was a fluky win for the Braves. But it’s hard to imagine that Dusty Baker made the best move in that situation. He simply made the conventional move, which also happened to be the wrong move.

Making outs obviously kills rallies and getting on base keeps them going. So you want to bunch your best on-base guys together. Also, you want your best on-base guys to come up to the plate more often than other hitters. The best way to make sure they come to the plate as often as possible is to put them as close to the top of the order as possible.