They were very clear 15 - 20 years ago. The neanderthals who ran Major League Baseball in the bad old days were retrograde, anachronistic, and foolish. Using the ‘metrics’, the guys with the laptops would conserve careers, keep pitcher’s arms safe, and no one would ever have a career like Steve Busby’s anymore:
Unfortunately, the ‘metrics’ people, beginning with the publication of “Moneyball” have taken over the sport and destroyed its soul. Statistics, or ‘metrics’ are controlling the moves of major league teams, and the philosophy surrounding protecting pitchers is so bad, you recently had a young pitcher in the middle of a no hitter pulled … to protect his arm:
Instead of letting Skenes have a brush with baseball history, they’re protecting his arm. Because everybody knows that the metrics prove it - right?
No. Here is the poster child for the young man who should have won 250 games, and instead, because they had to protect his arm, finished his career hurt, with 113 wins.
It’s a crying shame, and not many people are talking about it. John Smoltz is one. I’m another.
Everyone is deathly afraid of putting in work, taking on risk, and looking at the way things were done, realizing that perhaps they weren’t broken, and didn’t need to be fixed.
I am not confident that things will change. Strasburg made over $200 million in his career, so people will run into the arms of the metrics buzzsaw and roll the dice.
Risk and Work are Four Letter Words