How To Talk to the Statistically Challenged
A simple guide to getting your point across in a conversation
01/16/04
Phil Orr

...I had to do an extra article this week, so I'm going to have a little fun with this one. Tonight I was trying to think of a topic to write about. I planned on doing a study about "contract years" and to see how player performance differs, if at all in them, until Andy crapped all over my work, saying a season's worth of FA would barely be enough of a sample size. So for hours I sat here, trying to think while figuring out "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" on my guitar, chewing on a guitar pick (an odd habit I've developed), and above all, raising my eyebrows at some comments on message boards where I browsed trying to come up with an idea.

I'm lucky in the sense that for the most part, the boards I visit are mainly filled with people who can discuss baseball intelligently. Obligatory plugs go to the Jays board on FanHome, and the "Talk Sports" forum of OOTP Developments (A text-based sim game I highly recommend if you don't know what it is. Go check it out.) Occasionally though, someone will come in and start talking about something that you can statistically prove is not true. And they just won't listen. Naturally, these threads usually become long and repetitive, with people trying to simplify the point as much as possible to the uninformed. No one can seem to get their point through to them. So I've decided to come up with a step-by-step guide to making a point to a statistically challenged individual. Kind of like a field guide for how to approach these creatures.

1. Consider changing your nickname to something with poor capitalization, a players name, praise for the player, and some number. JeTeRiSgOd4825 or sorianoRULZ666. Alternatively, you can praise a team if it's a team message board, such as "MarlinZKiD_2003" Keep in mind that you should not be afraid to use words like "kid" "dude" or the likes. Apparently, they're cool. As is poor spelling, so I can't stress enough that SOMETHING in your name has to be misspelled. Or at least not make sense or have poor grammatical structure. See #4 for more information regarding how to format your message.

2. Learn the value of a tangent. If there is an intriguing conversation going on, hijack it with a post that's off topic proclaiming Shannon Stewart the MVP because the Twins started winning once he got there, Derek Jeter better than A-Rod because A-Rod has no rings, or just any comment about the player they're discussing not having the intangibles or veteran leadership required. Leave the thread, return hours later. There should be many posts condemning your comment. Simply post "u guys just dont get it" and leave the thread, never to post again. Continue to monitor the thread, however, for someone who agrees with your point. He is to become your protégé.

3. Do not make any sudden movements. If you come straight at these animals with EQA, VORP, and the likes, they'll quickly get defensive. Do not corner them, or they become frightened. Instead, try simply stating the accepted stat by them that most fits your argument. AVG, RBI, SB without looking at the success ratio, whatever you need to do to try to convince them that you're on their side. Keep in mind your goal is to transform them, so you need to disagree on something. Find something you know that they're wrong about, and agree with them, although raise a counterpoint using one of those accepted stats. To keep them from getting wise to your ploy, include "(player x) OWNZ!!!!111" in your message.

4. Whatever you do, avoid using proper English. It makes these fascinating creatures like a deer in headlights, and you'll have lost all progress. Instead, only use capitalization to MAKE A POINT followed by many exclamation marks, and ones. Why ones? For some reason, when people cannot type, they also can't continue to hold down the shift key for long periods of time, thus exclamation points become the number 1. outside of that do not use capitalization and no matter what you do avoid punctuation except for maybe the occasional period. this seems to be the secret code that they use to talk and while the rest of us squint at the monitor trying to figure out what is being said they read it flawlessly keep in mind youll have the urge to use commas and apostrophes fight the urge. finnally dont be afrade to misspell stuff or to runtwo words together and feel free to make up your own words that seem to make sense in a given situation. unhitting seems like it could be useful. as a general guide your exclamation to other punctuation ratio should be approximately five to one.

5. You have now successfully completely the disguising stages. That last paragraph took a lot of work, so at least I can go back to using punctuation now that I've gotten my point across. You have now entered the secret society of the statistically challenged. We now approach the hard part, of trying to prove a point without the immediate use of meaningful statistics. If it's a debate of "clubhouse leader" or other intangibles... simply make something up. Honestly, when they can't prove that intangibles for a player exist, they can't prove you wrong either. Solidify your point by pointing to the player being on a winning team, or where the team was without the player, or a quote from anyone, no matter how meaningless the source is. Consider it's rare that no ballplayer will say something nice about a player. For a catcher you can always find a pitcher saying "(player y) called a good game out there today." Use that as evidence to the catcher knocking the team's ERA down a good run or so. Pick an arbitrary number and stick with it. Don't let the fact that stats may prove otherwise, in the underground world of the statistically challenged, quotes from inside the baseball industry hold more weight than statistics. You can use one game as "(player z) said (player y) calls a great game!!!11" see the slight difference? we twist the words slightly so instead of calling a single great game, it can be applied to many games. This should go over fairly well. Do not be deterred by any statheads who will point out the flaw in your argument, they will be ignored, as their posts are not read. You can also easily find manager quotes about pitchers with "pinpoint control" or "amazing stuff" or hitters who "make good contact" or "saw the ball well" If a guy hits .220, it doesn't matter if you can find a quote from someone inside baseball saying that the plays "makes good contact" (You have to learn to alter things like that so it appears to refer to the general player instead of an individual game. It's no longer a quote, so you can't use quotation marks, but that's not a problem anyway since you've already learned to do away with punctuation.

6. You've laid the foundation for the creature to trust you and see your side of the player. Now, with that new found trust, you can make up your own statements, using the general "he's said to be" or "they said" such as "hes said to be a cancer in teh clubhouse" Who said it? You did. But they don't need to know that. Only statheads seem to require a source.

7. Find an article that proves in a proper fashion that the player is good. Then, use it as backup proof of your point. Link to it and say something like "told ya hewas good!!!11" If a stathead points out the differences between why he's good that are laid out in the article and your mess of reasons, simply reply with "doesnt matter why hes good he just is and thats all that matters." Encourage yourself to repeat the point (ie. Doesn't matter... that's all that matters.) If someone with fewer posts on the board than you have disagrees with you, no matter how small the difference, reply with a courteous "STFU, n00b." and if the board allows it, follow it with many smilies. The minimum is 8. Keep in mind, however, the scene in Office Space that discusses why it's the minimum number of pieces of flare. You should be more like Brian and less like Joanna.

8. Ideally, your protégé has now read a respected article (hell, you can even link to us. They won't explore the rest of the site and see this article, and beyond that unlike statheads who will say "I've never heard of them..." they will not question the source. Just anything that uses respected stats to prove the point.) This is the most dangerous step where you might lose them. Find another player with similar statistics. Keep in mind BA, HR, RBI, R, SB have to be similar as well. Then compare the players, saying that this second player must be pretty good too cause he has similar production to the first one. Now find another player, who is lacking in one of the 5 categories I listed, but is similar in a more meaningful way. Point out that statistic and also how it was used in the article (thus try not to go overboard... let's keep this to one of OBP, SLG, OPS here.) If he questions the use of the stat, find an overrated player by the statistically challenged and point to which one of them they're good at (As much as I hate Jeter, he has a pretty good OBP cause of his BA. And Soriano although he wouldn't know a ball if it hit him in the hand (if you get hit when swinging it's still a strike, alfonso...) has a good SLG. There's always a way.). If he appears silent, you've frightened him. Take it back a notch, continue to compare players, and then try a useful stat again in a couple of days.

9. Talk to them online during a game, and you can point out things like "Man, Soriano struck out again. His BA and OBP just dropped, and he didn't get a homerun!" Continue to tie in real stats with morganeque stats.

10. Finally, you admit your epiphany. You point out that you've been watching games (this is key, as non-statheads think that is required to judge a player) and noticed that OPS seems to be a good measure of a players ability. When they do poorly, it goes down, when they do well, it goes up. Admit that you're "starting to understand that stats rule"

At this point, it's up to god. There is no more you can do to convert him. I took this beyond proving your point, which is covered in steps 5 and 6, to attempting to make the individual understand stats so that you can show him why the player is actually good. Ultimately, there will always be stupid people, and this will fail more often than not. But you should consider this like charity. When you feed the homeless, in the grand scheme of world hunger you're barely making a dent. But you're still doing a good thing. Similarly, in the grand scheme of stupidity throughout the baseball world, it won't change much. But in that small way, you've started to make the world a better place.

Finally, I close by saying that if you know them personally, buying them a sabermetric gift is always good. I mean... who's going to throw out a gift? You can get them here (I'll stop plugging the store in my articles once someone buys something, damn it...) On that note, I'm pretty sure next week I'll get back to meaningful analysis, estimating how many doubles and quadrangles any given player will hit or something like that. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed my venting regarding what I've seen become all too common on message boards, and ideally we can put a stop to.

I'm not sure how many comments I'd get being a satirical piece, but feel free to mail me at phil.orr@ballparkanalysis.com just to shoot the breeze. If you'd like more information on the disease discussed in this article and how to treat it, please consult your local library and search for "ignorance." It's an epidemic. And we can stop it.