Two World Series wins later the press isn't quite so quick to mock the guy, but that doesn't mean they'll stop appealing to reactionary fans who think RBIs are the bee's knees.
There's been an interesting discussion going on at Baseball Prospectus about how more useful stats can begin to infiltrate the media. Well, don't look now, peeps, but its happening. The Boston Globe is starting to get with the program. Last year's hiring of Peter Abraham who formerly covered the Yankees combined with the new blood of Amalie Benjamin has brought a new willingness to explore some of what might have previously been dismissed as computer nerditude.
Take yesterday's article on new shortstop Marco Scutaro by Peter Abraham. First Abraham spoke with Sox catcher Jason Varitek who consulted his famous folders on opposing hitter's tendencies. Varitek told him something, and then - and this is the crazy part - Abraham went and checked it with statistics from Fangraphs.com.
Here's the sequence:
“He made adjustments. He simplified his swing, and that allows him to cover more area of the plate,’’ Varitek said. “He got better as a hitter. From my perspective, there was a change in his mechanics and his approach and it paid off for him.
“He made those changes just as he became an every-day player and it worked for him.’’
The statistics bear that out. Scutaro had a .320 on-base percentage in his first six seasons in the majors, playing part-time for the Mets and Athletics. But when he was made a starter by the Blue Jays in 2008, it rose to .362 over the two seasons that followed.
Scutaro’s simplified swing improved his contact percentage (per the statistics at Fangraphs.com) and last season he had his career best on-base percentage (.379) and slugging percentage (.409).
Contact percentage? On-base percentage? Slugging percentage? Fact checking? That was published in the newspaper, people. I mean, wow. OK, sure, nobody reads the newspaper anymore, but still, that's some good reporting. Hell of a job.
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