[Red Blow]

Jason, it is obvious you believe what you are saying. The thought that a person can track every aspect of the game with numbers does more than confound me. I know there is a huge following of the Sabermetrics and Bill James types. Numbers and mathematics can prove a lot of things. Me, I like the human aspect of the game. The part that will absolutely never translate into whatever the latest acronym is. A person could go over the numbers all day long to tell me which player is better, but even those numbers are nothing more than an opinion when used in the context of baseball.

4+4=8 is a mathematical fact
40 win shares > 35 win shares is also a mathematical fact

Trying to state that the player with 40 win shares is better than the player with 35 win shares is, as you put it, folly. Numbers are static. Baseball, in the myriad of events than can happen each time a ball is let fly by a player, is not.

Statistics are useful, but can only go so far. They cannot tell you the importance or the impact of chemistry, grit, smart baserunning, clutch hitting (I like to call it smart hitting), luck, contract years, divorces, deaths, hot streaks, turf, baseball intelligence, preparation or the hundred or so other factors that do not come to mind while I write this.

If baseball, players or managers (that is what started this string) could be quantified like Bill James and the rest wish they could be then baseball would not be the great sport it is. It is the human side that makes baseball great. That side will never fit into a neat little equation.

The only way it could is if the players resembled your avatar.