On Emphasising Uncertainty

In describing the appeal of Bennett Miller's 2011 adaptation of Moneyball, a recent Washington Post article stated that the film captures the moment when "American masculinity... began to inflict data on leisure in order to approximate the control of destiny." That single, and singular, phrase was the direct impetus (or kick in the ass, if you prefer) I needed to create this website.

For a long time now (long in internet terms, at least) baseball writing seems to have been dominated by a certain type of analysis. Whether at its most concentrated, on sites like FanGraphs or Baseball Prospectus, or at its most broad, on sites like The Ringer, baseball writing appears to have self-selected for a certain type of writer and, consequently, a certain type of fan. That writer is one who takes as much delight in the graphs and tables of an article as from the words themselves; one for whom advanced statistical calculations are as fundamental to the sport as leather and wood; one who attempts to "approximate the control of destiny." If you are the type of baseball fan who shares these sentiments then baseball writing in its present state is perhaps the best it has ever been. I have found, however, that for the past few years I've been reading these types of articles with less and less interest, to the point that I now find it difficult to read most baseball writing. That line in the Washington Post article forced me to admit something I had been struggling with for quite some time: I don't want to read about analytics.

Now, that last sentence runs the risk of turning this site into a kind of hirejoemorgan.com, which is a pretty bad jumping off point for a website that purports to focus on baseball in the 21st century. Let one thing be clear: this site is NOT an attempt to discredit analytics. Analytics are a wonderful thing, and that's not just a platitude I'm throwing in so you'll keep reading this. I purchase the BP Annual every year and read it cover-to-cover! I'm a patreon supporter of Effectively Wild! Any franchise with pretensions of creating anything resembling a winning team had better be using analytics to their full advantage. After years - decades - of questionable choices by the franchise, the Padres' decision to hire Dave Cameron filled me with a warm feeling of reassurance that perhaps - finally - somebody in the front office has a clue what they are doing. So no, this site is not going to denigrate analytics. When it comes to the product on the field, I love analytics.

I just don't want to read about them all the time. Essentially, baseball analytics are a type of science and, like all sciences, that means they are devoted to one goal - the pursuit of truth. Over time, baseball writing has come to reflect the emphasis the industry has placed on this particular science. As such it feels like most baseball writing now functions as the lab report, the to-the-point text that answers whatever questions might be left by the results of the experiment. Important and insightful, certainly, but ultimately secondary to the data. The thing is, the humanities have always appealed to me far more than the sciences, so the pursuit of absolute truth has never really been that interesting to me. Subjectivity and uncertainty, on the other hand? That's my jam right there. And that is particularly true in the case of baseball, a game in which fact is simultaneously fundamental and entirely secondary.

I could be wrong - I usually am - but I think it's highly likely I'm not the only one who feels this way. I think there is a fairly significant segment of the baseball-loving public that misses the uncertainty of the game before analytics became stock-in-trade. Because not every story in baseball can be told with numbers and charts and facts. Because so many stories in baseball are subjective and uncertain, and it feels like those stories have been forgotten or diminished in some way. In the context of baseball, what we know is vitally important. But in the context of fandom, so too is what we are uncertain of.

So please understand: this website is not as an attempt to de-legitimise fact. Rather it is an attempt to emphasise the importance of uncertainty in our love for the game.