Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Buster Olney vs. DePo

It's kind of refreshing to read a guy who wears his antagonism towards the analytical/stathead community right on his sleeve. Buster is still mad as hell about the Penny-Choi deal with the Marlins last summer.

You'd think that maybe he'd wait for Dodgers second or third loss to string Paul DePodesta up from the nearest tree. But no, he's going to get his shots in early and often.

After stipulating that the conventional wisdom (or CW to Kaus readers) underestimated the Cardinals last year. He says it can be right, too:

"It would be hard to find someone in baseball who understood the changes made by Dodgers general manager Paul DePodesta during the offseason." That's funny, because "out" of baseball, among the BP'ers and bloggers, there aren't many who DON'T understand those changes.

"The conventional wisdom is that the Dodgers are a mess... If the Dodgers return to the playoffs, DePodesta deserves all the credit, because he's made a lot of moves that are way outside of the box." A mess, huh? Go on...

"And, by the way, the conventional wisdom within baseball has many wondering how long he'll stick with Hee Seop Choi as his first baseman. Choi opened the season with three hitless at-bats and two strikeouts, batting in the No. 2 hole. The numbers apparently tell us he's an effective player. The Cubs and the Marlins watched him play every day, with his very slow bat speed, and saw something much different than what the numbers say, and both teams unloaded him."

Oh, the scathing skepticism, the unassailable logic of the argument! Please stop, Buster! You're shaking the cult of statistics to its very foundation!

As far as I'm concerned, this guy is a hack. He was when he wrote for the Times, and he will be at ESPN, whether or not the Dodgers make the playoffs.

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