I still can't believe that you intended to leave Josh Beckett out of your top 50 list at SI. Admit it - you made a mistake.

As for this article - hear hear. In addition to what you wrote, sabermetrics has enriched the baseball experience for a huge subset of fans. Murray Chass is an irrelevant exception that just happens to have a bully pulpit from which to shout his minority opinion.

The blogosphere:

But it does an absolutely superfluous job of covering baseball itself.

I hope this is an editing error.

As a newspaper editor and reporter, as well as a contributor to this site, I hope more professional beat writers and columnists will embrace and accept sabermetrics and utilize it more often in "the main stream."

If it weren't for online publications like Baseball Analysts, Baseball Prospectus, The Hardball Times, ESPN.com, BaseballAmerica.com and many others, I probably would have lost much of my passion for the sport simply by following nothing but the "traditional" coverage.

One of the issues with newspaper, from what I've experienced, is that they tend to shy away from hiring baseball fans to do their coverage of Major League Baseball... regardless of their experience or skill. They would rather find a solid writer who has only a working knowledge of the sport to keep things "impartial."

Many of the sabermetric publications are so wonderful to read simply because you can feel the writers' passions.

Sabermetrics combined with other factors such as skilled scouting and intelligent player development can turn low-budget teams such as the A's and Twins into consistent contenders.

I wouldn't go entirely on stats and data, but I'd be a fool not to use them. The work of Nate Silver and others has been very enlightening.

I enjoy sabermetrics and think they are good for the game. Sabermetricians,..., eh, not so much. A little too arrogant for me, as many of your columns demonstrate.

Rob,

The three guys that I've gotten the most hate mail about with respect to their exclusion from the Top 50 are Beckett, Matt Cain, and Adrian Gonzalez. You can certainly make a case for any of them. Beckett's PECOTA numbers were not too far behind someone like Dontrelle Willis, who made the list as an honorable mention, and he's certainly made up some of that ground with his performance so far this year, but I still have some longer-term concerns about injuries. Cain has a nice heater, but his peripherals actually aren't very good at all this year. The Adrian Gonzalez argument is more one of positional scarcity. But all of those guys are close, and the difference between #1 and #15 on this list is much greater than that between #50 and #100.

John,

That error is on me. I think I meant to use the word 'stupendous' and somehow things didn't flow quite right from my brain to the keyboard.

Todd,

I'm finding that that arrogance is dissipating somewhat as analysis has grown to play a larger role inside the industry; there is not so much of an axe to grind.

With that said, a lot of sabermetricians suffer from "smartest kid in the room syndrome", and I'm sure there are times when I've been no exception. What's important to understand is that we aren't murdering to dissect; most of us really love baseball.

cool article, my colleague is building something very innovative in regards to sabremetrics. I'll be glad to forward it to you as I imagine it seals up a few "seams" or alternate paths to Bill James' great research, and will likely be a useful new reference tool.

"Sabermetricians [are] a little too arrogant for me, as many of your columns demonstrate."

Yeah, Sabermetricians are the most arrogant people in baseball...except for everyone else.

Do you honestly think that a baseball analyst with a blog or maybe even a self-published paperback book is even in the same universe of arrogance as most managers? General managers? Owners? People who vote for the Hall of Fame?

Do you think your local baseball beat writer - who still thinks hitters who take pitches are lazy - is a paragon of humility?

Let's have some perspective here. If I was making my list of MLB's most arrogant blowhards, nobody from B.P. would make the top 100.

Do you think your local baseball beat writer - who still thinks hitters who take pitches are lazy - is a paragon of humility?

It's funny you should ask -- I do.

While I think there is still lingers a lot of guys afraid of changes or whatnot, but I also think there are a lot of good guys out there. Guys that may not be running statistical studies, but guys who just love the game and are open to different types of analysis. There is, and there always will be, progress being made.

Great article, Nate, as usual. I'd add that the games are, to me at least, much more enjoyable to WATCH once you've had a taste of sabermetrics. A couple years back Mitchel Lichtman and I got into a spirited debate over email about the wisdom of intentionally walking Jeff Kent in a given situation. The discussion would have been unthinkable (or at least much less interesting) without an understanding of run expectancy, platoon splits, leverage, etc. -- all things which are much more rigorously understood b/c of sabermetrics.

For me, sabermetrics is a lot like film criticism. You often hear people say that a critical approach to movies ruins the unmediated joy of filmgoing. But I've found that I'm actually MORE likely to get swept up in the poetry and romance of movies when I have a better grasp of what's going on in them.

Oh, and for the record, Al Gore never claimed he invented the Internet, despite propaganda that says otherwise.

Commenting on Moneyball, the A's and Red Sox....
Sabermetrics helped Billy Beane recognize flaws in the way players are valued financially, which is benificial to a small market club. A difference in the perception of value translates very differently to big market teams that have the resources to pay for the best overall talent, regardless of how this is estimated. The Red Sox, blinded by Bill James, found a way to value Kevin Youkillis higher than Hanley Ramirez (who should have been tapped as untouchable)...because the skill set of the former was determined to be "undervalued." And eventually they'll end up paying Youkillis above market rate, at a price they determine is commesurate with his value. The Red Sox have proved not that Sabermetrics is of little value to a big market team, but that it should be in a different manner.

Garth - Bob Dutton seems to be a different breed of writer. The Giants' beat writer is just a mouthpiece for management and has done quite a few hatchet jobs on players (Jeff Kent isn't clutch, Ray Durham plays too much basketball, etc...) The Dodgers have to contend with Bill Plaschke, who made it his personal mission to get Paul DePodesta fired. Richard Griffin called J.P. Ricciardi racist because he drafted too many college players. And we have the moronic ramblings of the aforementioned Murray Chass.

Unlike Dutton, most baseball writers prize their access and aren't open to new ideas. The idea that Nate Silver is arrogant in comparison is preposterous.

Brian:

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/

"But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

For someone who makes general claims on improving various aspects of American life as most politicians would do, he includes a specific claim that is refutable.

Since politicians will either life or make general claims that can mean anything and therefore is irrelevant to listen to, I'd prefer the latter, so that we can ignore them altogether.

life=lie

And here's Vint Cerf defending Gore. If Gore had said "promoting", or "involved in the creation of what eventually became" instead "creating", then that would have been more accurate:

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html

Baseball has always been obsessed with statistics and numbers. It's part of the fun. However, it's also a downfall. Take the Barry Bonds thing. We are in a frenzy over his numbers and what they say about him and us and how his overtaking Hank Aaron is an affront to Aaron and baseball. I say, "So what." Let him take over Hank. It doesn't take anything away from the Hammer. We all know Aaron had more class and was a more decent and important player in the history of baseball. STYLE COUNTS. That's what baseball forgets. It is entertainment, not engineering or physics. Putting the emphasis on numbers takes the style out of the game. I'll take Ozzie Smith or the Mad Hungarian over Barry Bonds any day of the week. Screw the records and the numbers. Let's see cool players again who entertain and dazzle us. Let all the records be obliterated and forgotten.

To the last commenter:
I understand your angle and I feel the same way to a degree. The difference is that I want my team to use sabermetrics and therefore have a better chance of winning while the other teams go for razzle dazzle and therefore have a better chance of being entertaining. Turf baseball in the 80's is an example of enjoyable but sabermetrically unsound baseball. The bottom line is that statistics matter and using them intelligently improves a teams chances of winning.

To the last commentator:
Win or lose, does it really matter? The Yankees are a .500 ball club right now, and they draw more fans than any team in baseball. It's about money, baby!