A respected scientist once told me that statistics only confirm what you see. His words continuously popped up in my head while reading well-known writers as they justified their Cy Young ballots. In particular, I was shocked to see Dave Cameron of FanGraphs, whose work I greatly admire, leave Jon Lester off his top five ballot.
I empathize with fans who think these dumb advanced statistics are worthless, especially when most who’ve watched Lester all year believe he was truly one of the best NL pitchers. This post highlights how I believe Cameron misinterpted a few advanced baseball statistics and how we can use his example as reminder to talk appropriately about baseball analytics.