lies, damn lies, and statistics

Or however that quote goes. If I really cared for the welfare of my blog readers, I'd have googled it, right?

I'm reading this book about the history of statistics in baseball and the controversies about and uses thereof (shoutout to Mr Indemnity: sound familiar, dude? it's your book. want it back when I'm done?) It's all much more fascinating than my poor description would probably lead you to believe. Do you know what the guy who invented rotisserie (i.e. fantasy) baseball said? Something along the lines of feeling like he's Robert Oppenheimer and has let loose a great evil upon the world unintentionally. Ha! He also said that people follow him into the men's room and try to regale him with stories of their teams and all the great decisions they've made when he's just trying to take a shit. So, yeah, I can see where that would get a wee bit annoying.

Anyway, the book also discusses how with the advent of computers, completely meaningless stats can be called up at a moment's notice and inserted into, say, the mouth of Tim McCarver. (The book doesn't *actually* mention Tim McCarver. That's editorializing on my part. Mea maxima culpa.) I am reminded of that by the blurb yahoo! sports has given me today on Miguel Olivo, who is both my catcher and, y'know, Ubaldo's. According to them, Mr Olivo now has 101 career HRs and 102 career walks, and no MLB player with at least 100 HRs has ever ended his career with more home runs than walks. To which I say: So? And also: Huh? What exactly is that supposed to tell me? That he never waits for a pitch?

I'll tell you a bit of news that tells me more about Mr Olivo. He passed a kidney stone in the middle of Wednesday's game and went right on playing. Would JD (Nancy) Drew do that? I think not.

xoxo