NEW YORK — I am a dinosaur.
For one thing, I still write for a newspaper (also a web site), and I do so proudly.
But lately I’m feeling more and more like I come from the Mesozoic Era. In a time when analytics increasingly rule baseball writing, and sabermetric terms such as wRC+, FIP, x-FIP, ISO and BABIP have become the norm, I sometimes feel as outdated as a fax machine.
Hey, I’m not knocking those stats, nor am I knocking those fine folks who use them fluently, like their second language. Launch angles, spin rates, ballpark factors and the like are all valid, usable numbers.