May 30, 201313 yr He kind of stepped in it with his sabermetric comments after Ackley was demoted, but I think he did a pretty good job clarifying here: Wedge discusses his sabermetric remarks | Mariners blog | Seattle Times Lots of good stuff, and definitely close to the way I look at hitting and using sabermetrics.
May 30, 201313 yr That was pretty good. I'd written him off as a dope after the initial quote but this was pretty well said.
May 30, 201313 yr Well, GOOD GRIEF..... I had (fortunately) missed the uproar over his first comments. NOW we are apparently taking "political correctness" to sabermetricians? What a bunch of BS. When I read the transcript of Wedge's Monday comments, what I took from it was that Ackley had lost his aggressiveness at the plate. Well guess what? It seems to me that getting too wrapped up in stats could, in fact, do that to you. Apparently it was a slow sports news day -- I've lost all respect for Neyer, Heyman and the others who could get so twisted over pretty innocuous comments.
May 30, 201313 yr Strawman. I too missed the "uproar." I don't think there really was any outside of twitter. Fangraphs didn't weigh in on it. Baseball prospectus didn't weigh in except to say that Wedge was right. In fact Wedge's comments re: Ackley (after looking them up) are supported by statistics. Ackley's one of the most passive hitters in baseball, but he sees a lot of strikes and has hit poorly in his time at the MLB level. There's no conflict here.
May 30, 201313 yr I missed all the hub-bub too, since I'm not a part of the sabermetric community, but I can understand how a group that has traditionally felt underappreciated (such as sabermetricians) can be extra sensitive to what is perceived as criticism, whether or not it was intended as such. I see that in life all the time.
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