Sorry for getting to the party late.. And no, I won't be offended by what you said and start flaming you like others have.
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Originally posted by Plutoro
Why do people put so much stock in them? All of them have flaws and most (NOT ALL) are developed by likeminded individuals and the current ones will die off in a few years.
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But why are they so valued and taken so strongly, I mean why is the Winshare the choice stat when decideing the best players in the league by the "statheads"
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I think CP hit the nail on the head when he said that they are thought of as the best available stats out there. I agree, it would be oh so nice to have 1 all encompassing stat to compare players, but like TLBOrioles said, it is contrived, and like CP said, flawed when comparing players on other teams. IMO, it's garbage (yes, I have looked at it extensively) and I refuse to put any weight into it. However, I think the desire for this holy grail stat is so overwhelming that people can't help themselves from this poisonous fruit and so they look past its faults and use it as much as they want. That's fine though, others can use whatever stat they want, I'll just have to give their arguments less weight.
RC, although it is fairly accurate when compared to the most accurate run production stats, is similar to Win Shares imo. It is, to again borrow TLBO's perfect word for this, contrived. In fact, I find most things that James comes up with to be contrived. I'm shocked so many people put so much into his stats. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad James is out there to spur on controversy and to get others interested in coming up with better stats. But for people to look at him as the sabermetric savior as so many seem to is just silly imo.
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Originally posted by Plutoro
What makes stat A more valuble then stat B.
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The point of statistics is to predict the future. If stat A predicts the future better than stat B, then stat A should be given more credence, no? You'll often see sabermetricians test these stats against future data (comparing it against past data is faulty as you can make it "fit" the data as James apparently loves to do) and the one that has a higher correlation is assumed to be the better stat. However, the true test is time or sample size. If stat A is consistently better than stat B when compared against more and more data, then even more credence is given to it. By that time though, a stat C has usually developed that is suspected to be even better and the test is now between it and A, while B is forgotten about.
I think the most important thing is to understand the stats yourself. What do they really tell _you_, not what do others tell you about them. If you look at how a stat is formulated and it makes sense to you (sense meaning that you a) can understand it and b) don't see any major faults with it), then feel free to put weight into it. If not, then don't. Rely on the stats that make sense to you.