Quote:
Originally Posted by tomwolf2008
Most sabermetricians believe (and have tangible evidence to show) that having a designate closer or not do not impact your ability to hold lead in the last inning, yet all teams, even the most sabermetric-inclined, still have someone designated as closer.
Not a perfect example, I know, but my point is just because "every team is doing it" doesn't make it an evidence that such thing is needed and make a real impact. And, unlike things such as "team chemistry“，"leadership ability", or other supposed intangible aspects, base-running success is something that we can measure, so I would prefer to have evidence support that base-coaches make a difference in base-running successes if this is a feature that is included and will impact the base-running success in the game.
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I'm quite a saber guy, but in the end, when it comes down to a choice between guys who merely look at things theoretically and those who look at things both theoretically and practically, I'm going to go with the opinions of the latter, especially when those guys also have as good or better credentials as the purely theoretical guys.
Sure, some old school baseball guys may lack the knowledge and education to make analytically sound decisions. But you can't say that about guys like Friedman, Epstein, Luhnow, Alderson etc, who have both the academic credentials with their degrees from Ivy League schools, as well as a wealth of practical baseball experience.
That's not to say they can't be wrong of course, or that an outsider can't be right, but overall I don't see any reason to
automatically assume it's the outsiders that are right on some of these questions.
As for base coaches, I'd say some of what they contribute is certainly more in coaching and intangibles than simply in quantifiable baserunning gains or losses.
In the end, as you fairly allude to, the problem I have with a lot of the arguments against chemistry, leadership etc. is that there seems to be an assumption that because something is difficult or impossible to quantify, that it doesn't matter or doesn't exist.
Whereas the much more intellectually sound approach is simply to admit that the issue is with our inability to find a way to measure certain things, more than to assume that something we can't measure simply doesn't exist.
Hundreds of years ago we had no way to measure the effects of gravity, yet that didn't make it any less real or less vital. It's doubtless the same with a great deal of things we're currently unable to quantify or at least to quantify accurately.