I hate stats

More specifically, I hate stat "people". Those people who push their stats on others. Those people that think good old stats like RBIs, ERA and fielding percentage are no longer valid because we have things like WAR, UZR, OPS and CHONE. Every time you open your mouth with a clearly ungrounded statement like "I like Jacoby Ellsbury" someone has to come back with how his WAR is far below the league average, his OPS is lackluster at best and his UZR fielding rating lists him just above Wily Mo Pena and just below a three legged dog. This then makes your innocent "I like Jacoby Ellsbury" comment come off as "I lick windows" because some stat guy wants to flex his numerical stat muscles and questions your "fan-dom".

I'll tell you one thing: stats are flawed. All of them. The more flawed they are, the more interpolating them effs things up even more. To think you can divide a field up into sections and determine who can get to what ball and who does it better is founded on the same principles as the ones that brought us every Hugh Grant movie ever made, and that is not a world I want to live in. It makes every Joe Shmo out there think they are Bill James. Sorry for the name drop. It's kind of how starting a lame Red Sox blog makes you think that people want to hear what you think.... ohhhh, self burn.

I'll tell you another thing: I like Jacoby Ellsbury.

The ole Switcheroo

It's been made official. Well as official as the internet can be. Jacoby Ellsbury will be sliding over to left field and Mike Cameron will be the new center fielder. That's according to multiple reports, and if there's been multiple, it must be true.

Time for my "baseball fan vs baseball stat guy" debate that I tend to always bring up. A stat guy is going to tell you Cameron is the better fielder with the better arm and the better UZR fielding rating. All this is true as far as I can tell from multiple clicks to various sites with "graph" and "stat" in their titles'. It's what people in the biz (or so I'm told) call "research". The way I see it, you're taking a guy, Ellsbury, that is fast as sh*t and can cover tons of ground and moving him to a part of the field with no ground to cover (in Fenway at least). I don't buy into the UZR rating that says Ells is a poor fielder. Point blank, no matter what kind of break or how bad he supposedly is at reading the ball off the bat, the dude can cover some serious ground and get to balls that the 37 year old Cameron will not be able to get to. Also, with that huge Green wall out in left, it helps to have someone with a strong arm so when those slackers rounding first think they have an easy double you get the LF throwing a strike to 2B to cut him down. So the poorly formed conclusion I'm coming to here is that I value Jacoby's speed over Cameron's overall ability. Like most things baseball, the majority of the Red Sox upper management and I see this issue in different ways, hence the moving of Jacoby. I miss the days that stats were just kind of scoffed at and we all just went by gut feelings, "vibes" and if those couldn't settle the issue then contests of who could eat the most tacos.

You're telling me THIS guy is a bad fielder?

The Gold Gloves were given out last week and it was the usual suspects taking home the hardware and among all the fielding talk someone found a way to try and tell us that Jacoby Ellsbury is a below average out fielder. Actually, of all the AL center fielders the UZR (which I can only assume stands for "Useless Z-something Rating") had him listed second to last, only in front of Vernon "Ridiculously Crippling Contract" Wells. His rating is actually so bad it says that his shifty D gives up 18.3 runs per year. We have entered the twilight zone. Yes I know his arm is only a tick above Johnny Damon, who is barely a tick above disabled infant monkey, but he has made an entire Nation get used to the fact that a diving, lay yourself horizontal 3 feet in the air, catch is something that is to be expected on a daily basis. Let the stat guys have their fun but no one is going to convince me that Tacoby Bellsbury is not a good fielder. UZR, to you I say GOOD DAY!!