Baseball has always been a game of counting — hits, runs, pitches, even how many inches a curveball breaks. As data gathering and analysis has grown more sophisticated, that predilection for numbers has only intensified.
In the rush to wield new analytical insights, the game’s human elements are sometimes overshadowed. At its best, the application of advanced statistics to baseball questions adds layers of complexity that grow our understanding. At its clumsiest, it flattens nuance, as if a player’s entire career can be summed up by a single calculation.
Some natural internal tension exists between the old school and new school, eye test and analytics, intangibles and hard data.