This morning I attended a breakfast being held in honour of some of the new inductees into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame: Jorge Bell, Tim Rains, and Rob Ducey. Also present (among many others) was Tom Henke, who was inducted two years ago.
Before the breakfast I had the opportunity to chat informally with these four players. It was really clear that the players are not entirely sold on the "Moneyball" approach to understanding baseball.
I told them that over two decades ago I had been a member of a group on the internet that was promoting the use of OPS [On-base-percentage Plus Slugging-Average] as a simple tool to assess the abilities and contributions of players. Rob Ducey laughed and good-naturedly turned his back on me.
I added that when I was doing local play-by-play, I insisted that the screen show OBP and not show RBIs. But then Jorge Bell and Tim Rains both "expressed disappointment" with the over-emphasis on on-base-percentage by the teams during the past decade.
Ducey asked me, "What good is just getting on base?" I pointed out that so long as you're getting on base, you're not making outs, and that's pretty important. I added that OPS includes hitting for power as well as avoiding outs.
Bell and Rains then started praising base-stealing from lead-off hitters. Bell in particular was complaining that he had been coaching a player to become a lead-off hitter, but he'd been told to concentrate on on-base-percentage instead. He mentioned how good Rickey Henderson was at stealing bases.
Unfortunately the conversation ended then as breakfast was announced. I was about to point out that Rickey Henderson was able to steal so many bases because he got on base so often. And I know that if we'd had more time, I would have asked what makes a good lead-off hitter if it isn't a high OBP.
The point of this post is that players, especially veterans, have not all bought into the Sabremetrics approach to baseball.
A second point is that just because someone was a star player that doesn't mean they would be a good analyst or general manager.
Henke, Bell, and Ducey all signed my very old Blue Jays necktie (in that order from top to bottom in the photo below). Their signatures are in Sharpie just above the blue ink signature of Paul Beeston. He signed the tie when he was at The University of Western Ontario to receive an honorary degree probably nearly 20 years ago.
Special thanks to Barry Wells, who made it possible for me to attend the event.