Bob Ryan’s misplaced rant against advanced statistics

The timing of Bob Ryan’s recent rant against WAR in Sunday’s Boston Globe seemed a bit suspicious. While thousands of quants from the recent MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference climbed out of bed and fire up their tablets and computers, Ryan treated his Globe readers to an attack on a statistic gaining popularity in the baseball mainstream while using the very same position the advocates of said metric use to bolster their argument. If the first rule of journalism is know your audience; the second must be say something provocative – especially if it attacks the new, defends the old, and gets said in the decaying world of newsprint.

Ryan’s picking a fight where there was none to be had and used a shaky argument – that the stat is made up – to demonstrate how little he actually knows about the very statistic he’s challenging. And picking the stat’s poster boy Mike Trout didn’t make his comments any more sensible. Trout’s 9.1 WAR is exactly why he is the best player in baseball. And that is based on thorough analysis of statistics, both advanced and traditional – not a shaky opinion he thinks is coming from the world of sabremetrics. There is no “eye-test” or subjectivity in WAR. Its a detailed breakdown of the aggregate contribution a player makes to winning. The made-up “replacement player” is a similar statistical representation. It isn’t pretend or made up. In 2012, he was Ceasar Izturis. But I’m guessing Ryan cared little for doing any research that would have helped explain the stat but undermine his grumpy old man rant.

Bob, General James has plenty control of his troops. They’re thinking in a rational and disciplined way. Not sure if the same can be said here for this column.