Earlier this year, resident ubermensch Dave Cameron submitted for the Reader’s consideration a piece in which he introduced another of FanGraphs’s cutting-edge metrics — namely, Hyperbole Index. Hyperbole Index, or HI, took the world of baseball analysis by storm*, leaving breathless readers of all descriptions, from ESPN Senior Writer Rob Neyer to cunning linguist Snoop Dogg (the latter of whom gushed, “That’s shit’s off the hizzy!”).

*Denotes possible use of hyperbole.

Because I try to have as few original thoughts as possible throughout the day, I’ve opted, in this space, to ride the frig out of Dave’s equally well-pressed and metaphorical coat-tails and share with the Wide Readership some very experimental metrics on which I’ve been working as part of my contribution to FanGraphs’ Department of Advanced Statistickery.

Two notes before I unveil said metrics.

First is that it’s important to recognize that the stats which follow are very much in the development stage and therefore lack the precision and accuracy of a finished product. Much like the Master Painters of yore, I’m only ever involved in the conception of a new stat. The grunt work I pass long to my apprentice statisticians, whose responsibility it is to f a whole bunch with Excel and crap.

Second, I’d like what follows to serve as a bit of a repost to certain readers who’ve called into question the empirical rigor of my first couple-few submissions to FanGraphs. While most readers have been supportive, there are some — and here I’m thinking particularly of user PlayOnWords at D-Rays Bay, who suggested that I’m “turtlenecking”* FanGraphs — there are those who would break that most important of commandments, “Let a player play.” I believe the following work will serve as a giant “Booyah” to those critics.

*Which, if I were to do that to FanGraphs, I’d at least have the decency to buy it dinner and stuff first.

Here now are five metrics on which I’ve been working:

Stat
Douche Factor

For Short
DF

What It Measures
Probable douchey-ness of a player, expressed as a percentage from 0% (very probably NOT a douche) to 100% (almost definitely a douche).

How It’s Calculated
While I’m still experimenting with the degree to which they ought to be weighted, I’ve identified, by means of extensive testing and research, what the main components of the metric are.

DF considers the three following components:

1. Stupid Jewelry Factor — In which the number of Phiten-brand “energy necklaces” is considered.

2. Facial Hair Factor — In which the of facial hair is considered. In most cases, the goatee is douchey. Clay Zavada is merely comical and is not penalized.

3. Eye to Jaw Ratio — In which the distance between the eyes is weighed against the distance across of the jaw. Close-together eyes paired with wide-set jaw denoted probably douchey-ness.

Probable League Leaders
Chris Britton (see photo)
Joba Chamberlain
Brad Penny

Stat
Whiffle League Equivalents

For Short
WLEs

What It Measures
While a lot of work has been done to assess how minor league performance might be predictive of future major league performance (see: MLEs), very little has been done to investigate how minor or major league production might translate to wiffleball. As you can imagine, the wiffleball lobby isn’t happy about this one bit, and have recently made it their business to harass Yours Truly. Not that I can blame them. As an avid wiffleballista myself, I’m shock-and-awed at the degree to which wiffleball’s place in history has been ignored.

How It’s Calculated
I don’t care, just do it.

Probable League Leaders
This guy.

Stat
WOPS

For Short
WOPS

What It Measures
Contrary to what the Reader might think initially, WOPS isn’t Weighted OPS or Walks-plus-OPS or anything involving OPS at all. Rather, WOPS is an attempt to measure the relative Italian-osity of major/minor leaguers. If you don’t get immediately how hilarious this is, click here.

How It’s Calculated
By dividing the the total number of letters in a player’s name by the number of vowels. The closer the result is to 1, the higher the WOPS.

Also, by going to a player’s house/apartment and seeing if his couches have plastic on them.

Also, by considering the model year of the player’s Camaro.

Probable League Leaders
Mike Napoli
Silvio Berlusconi
Val Pascucci

Stat
Total Recall Bases

For Short
TRB

What It Measures
No idea, actually. It’s just I thought it might be possible to do some promotional tie-in work with the film of the same name. I’ll have my people call someone else’s people.

How It’s Calculated
Dollar signs.

Probable League Leaders
Give me money.

Stat
Enthusiast Quotient

For Short
EQ

What It Measures
The degree to which a player either (a) has warmed or (b) is likely to warm the cockles of the Enthusiast’s heart.

How It’s Calculated
Sir Philip Sidney once quothed*, in re the ideal writing process: “Look into thy heart and write!” To calculate EQ, you do pretty much the same thing, except instead of “write” at the end, instead you “assign a number with which you feel comfortable.”

*Which, that’s the only way people used to speak, I’m pretty sure.

Probable League Leaders
Mark Bellhorn
Jeremy Hellickson
Charlie Haeger

The day after Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS between the Red Sox and Yankees, I talked briefly, mournfully with my friend Leo, another Son of the New England States. While I had watched the game in a sports bar in Missoula, MT (where I was accidentally pursuing a bachelor’s degree*), Leo, who lived in New York, had acquired a ticket and gone to the game alone. Which, that means he had witnessed firsthand Aaron Boone’s game-ending dongpiece off Tim Wakefield, had found himself seconds later amidst a repulsive and jubilant (and considerably less homer-friendly) Yankee Stadium, and had made his way home on a subway car populated almost entirely by spiritually verklempt Red Sox fans.

*At the University, not the bar.

The thing Leo said the next day that has always stuck with me was something like, “I keep betting on the Red Sox, Carson, not with money but with my emotional well-being.” He discussed the degree to which, instead of his personal relationships, his career prospects — anything, in fact, that would normally inform a person’s inner life — he allowed the fate of the Red Sox to dictate almost entirely his emotional highs and lows.

Leo’s was a good assessment of how I, too, had approached my baseball fandom — less as an innocent pastime and more as a psychological instrument.

This is not all that shocking: many young men, particularly those of an analytic bent, view emotion as inefficient. Other People — regarded as “hell” by a certain Nobel-winning Frenchman — are notoriously unreliable. The prospect of allowing chance (i.e. Boston’s prospects) to inform one’s mood is quite rational, really.

There was only one flaw to this thinking. Apart from the fact that, through 2003, Boston had very often fielded interesting teams — notably, the Pedro-led teams of the late-90s and, before that, any of the teams which featured Randy Kutcher’s moustache — almost none of them were particularly well-constructed. Wunderkind Theo Epstein wasn’t hired until after the 2002 season and, therefore, was unable to fully assert his Genius upon the organization in 2003. As a result, they (i.e. the Red Sox anytime from 1979 – 2003) were probably not a great bet upon which to stake one’s personal welfare. The pay out would be great, certainly, if and when it came, but the odds of great success were low.

Two things have changed since then.

First is that the Red Sox won the World Series. Twice, in case you don’t remember. Theo Epstein and Friends got their fingerprints all up on the 2004 permutation of the team. The first Championship, in particular, did a lot to release Yours Truly from the bonds of single-team allegiance.

Second is that, in the meantime, I’ve read a great deal of the sabermetric canon. That includes books like Moneyball and BP’s Mind Game and Tom Tango’s The Book and then websites like the present one and BP and Hardball Times, and, retroactively, seminal works on baseball by Sabermetric Baby Daddy Bill James and John Thorn and Pete Palmer and Earnshaw Cook. Such reading changes the Baseballing Enthusiast — for the better, I’d argue vehemently. Where once randomness reigned supreme for Yours Truly, now randomness only reigns like 95%. Either way, I’m watching the game differently now, in a manner less dependent on the personnel decisions of a select few in Boston’s front office and more upon those players who profile well by the new metrics.

Greg Schimmel, keeper of the excellent Cape Cod League Blog, sums up this mindset in his website’s tagline: “Watching the players first and the games second.” While I’m sure that the Average Reader has ties of some sort to an MLB club — it’s very hard to become a fan otherwise — I’ll guess that you view yourself as watching the game similarly to Schimmel. Part of this is almost definitely the influence of fantasy baseball, which makes GMs of all of us, and which, in this author’s opinion, is basically the best thing ever to happen in society. The other part is the knowledge that baseball management is sometimes full of giant morons. Andrew Friedman & Co have done a lot to bring esteem back to that community, but so long as Dayton Moore has a job, a certain demographic of Baseballing Enthusiasts will always feel (and perhaps correctly so) that they could’ve done better (or at least not traded for Yuni Betancourt).

Despite these changes, I still find myself placing emotional wagers all the time; they’re just of a different variety. Where I once submitted to the fate of the Red Sox (read: terrifically irresponsible), I’m now more careful with my affections. In particular, I’ve switched the nature of my allegiances from a single team (Boston) to a variety of players in a variety of organizations. I allude to this at some level in my most recent dispatch from the front lines of baseball commentary, in which I attempt to classify the heroes of the sabermetric community.

The payoff from following this more obscure class of player is self-evident. Commenter “Tim” describes it as finding a “diamond in the rough.” It’s the sporting equivalent of bringing in a faded piece of cloth to the experts of Antiques Road Show. Sure, it might just be an old handkerchief, but maybe, just maybe, Robespierre used said handkerchief to wipe the blood of French noblemen from his brow.

Of the five types of player to which the Sabermetric Enthusiast forms his allegiances the one with the most potential for joy is the youngish minor leaguer or recent call-up. Youth, as the Greeks figured out a long time ago, is seductive. And even if they (i.e. the Greeks’) celebrated youth in ways that we Moderns consider both “morally deprave” and also “illegal,” they (i.e. still the Greeks) were at least on the right track.

I’ve made it a habit to choose a handful of young players at any one time and monitor their progress with something like a personal stake. This less resembles the gamble about which my friend Leo spoke in re that 2003 incarnation of the Sox and more like a low-risk investment in which one “diversifies his portfolio”*. One can pick a couple-few players who he finds appealing for whatever reason and then track their development through the various levels. If said prospects don’t make it, big whoop. In the event that one of them makes the Show, he (i.e. the fan in question) has earned the right to say “I told you so” — i.e. one of the very best feelings in the world.

*Whatever that means.

Marc Hulet’s coverage of the minors here at FanGraphs is an invaluable resource for the practice of prospect hunting. Minor League Splits owner-operator Jeff Sackmann does sweet work both at that website and THT (even if he’s made it his personal mission to report only on Felix Cespedes for the moment). Baseball America‘s reporting on prospects is also excellent, if slightly more traditional. First Inning’s good, and there are a whole bunch others, too, which I’m sure I’m omitting.

Below is a list of the players I’m currently tracking, my current “portfolio.” None of them are sure-fire stars, which I think is necessary ingredient to such a list. There has to be some doubt to the prospect’s chances, otherwise the return on the investment is sullied.

1. Alexander Torres, LHP, Los Angeles Angels (Double-A Arkansas)
I saw Torres pitch in early July for Rancho Cucamonga and was duly impressed by his stuff, which features, among other things, a two-seamer that helped him produce a GB% of 58.9% in 122 IP this season in the high Class A California League. Torres also posted a park- and luck- adjusted 9.12 K/9 there. Baseball America only ranked him 24th in their pre-season Prospect Handbook, so pulling for him smacks very little of front-running — a.k.a. the enemy of the True Statnerd. A recent promotion to Double-A Arkansas hasn’t been entirely kind to Torres, but he’s only 21 years old and sports a record of success.

2. Chris Heisey, OF, Cincinnati (Triple-A Louisville)
Heisey has steadily received more recognition as he’s continued to perform through the various levels. It was, in fact, a feature about him in Baseball America that first called my attention to him. Regardless of his recent press, however, the fact remains that Heisey was a 17th-round pick from a college most notable for its tradition of throwing newly engaged students into the nearby Yellow Breeches Creek. Heisey has a skill set faintly reminiscent of Curtis Granderson at the same age: a decent mix of speed, power, plate discipline, and Can-Do Spirit, but without any real hype to surround them. He posted a park- and luck-adjusted line of .315/.398/.538 in 314 PA at Double-A Carolina this season with as many walks as strikeouts. Despite only drawing 12 BB in PA at Triple-A Louisville, he’s hitting well there, too.

3. Any Young Rays Pitcher (and also Orioles ones, too)
I acknowledge this is cheating a bit, but allow me to explain. There’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed whereby, if I enter a bar, say, or crowded room of any description and notice one or two attractive ladies, I’m more likely to consider all the other ladies in said space more attractive. Because it feels good to do so, I’m gonna go ahead and call this the Transitional Property of Hotitude. A similar Property occurs among baseball organizations. Recognizing that a team has one or two fantasy-inducing prospects, the observer becomes enthused by other prospects who might go unnoticed were they playing, for example, somewhere in the Houston minor leagues. Tampa and Baltimore currently fit this category. Matthew Moore (born in 1989!!!) has posted an adjusted line of 13.00 K/9, 5.17 BB/9, 47.5% GB% at low Class A Bowling Green, while Jeremy Hellickson (born in 1987!!!) has put up a 10.43 K/9, 3.21 BB/9, and 36.6% GB% at Triple-A Durham. Meanwhile, fellow Bull Wade Davis and other farmhands David Newmann and Darin Downs bask in their reflected glow.

The same is true in Baltimore, where Jake Arrieta, Brandon Erbe, and Zach Britton appear poised to follow Chris Tillman and Brian Matusz to the Bigs.

4. Val Pascucci, Inert Masher, San Diego Padres (Triple-A Portland)
Yes, he’s 30 years old and, yes, he’s incredibly limited defensively, but Pascucci has the sweetest name in the business, a good minor league track record, and only 74 major league plate appearances. My man on the scene Danny Woytek sings his praises at Portland Sportsman.

5. Cole Gillespie, OF, Arizona Diamondbacks (Triple-A Reno)
Gillespie has become considerably more interesting since his move to the Arizona organization in the trade that sent Felipe Lopez to Beer City. While Gillespie had cheap-ish young talent ahead of him in Milwaukee in the form of Ryan Braun and Corey Hart, Arizona’s outfield situation is considerably less certain. Furthermore, Gillespie has gone ahead and murdered the ball since his arrival in the Biggest Little City, posting an adjusted line of .313/.431/.515 in 123 PA, with 21 BB versus only 22 K. If he can end up playing a passable center field, at which position he’s played a little in Reno, he could be a valuable major leaguer.

Thanks to Minor League Splits for adjusted minor league stats.

Note to Reader: If you’re in a rush or merely averse to reading, I invite you to skip bottomward without further ado. If you’re the sort of Reader who’s in the market for a prose style sweeter than candy, then read this whole thing like seventeen times.

The first thing you need to know is this: I love Mark Bellhorn so hard.

I wanted him (i.e. Bellhorn) on the Red Sox while he was a Cub and then Rocky in 2003. I watched his Boston plate appearances with the sort of attention a young aristocrat such as myself ought to reserve only for Latin, opera, and the finer points of estate law. During the 2004 ALDS versus the Angels, I almost found myself in honest-to-goodness fisticuffs with another, much larger Red Sox fan at The Riviera in New York City when he (i.e. this monster-sized person I’m talking about) had the temerity to suggest that Bellhorn was somehow undeserving of his post as Boston’s second baseman. I thumbed my nose at the haters when Bellhorn jacked a donger in Game Six of the ALCS versus New York. I continued to defend his place on the Sox in 2005 even as his numbers made it very difficult to do so without the threat of physical abuse. To this day, I carry a Bellhorn (2003 Topps) card in my wallet for what I would describe as its “talismanic properties.” I am currently aware that he (i.e. Bellhorn) plays for Colorado Springs and is posting a park- and luck-adjusted line of .259/.364/.494. I still believe that he is of some use to an MLB club — as an expert on the catalog of REO Speedwagon, if nothing else.

Many would feel compelled to describe my feelings for Bellhorn as a “mancrush.” Excuse me while I take umbrage at that term. To have a crush implies a sort of puppy love, a feeling of intoxication. Pleasant, yes, but also fleeting. My love for Bellhorn, on the other hand, is as deep as and complex as the wine-dark sea.

Moreover, I think less than Mark Bellhorn himself, it’s the idea of Mark Bellhorn to which I’m irrationally drawn.

Which, allow me to pontificate on that.

Epicurus said of the gods that they are not the catty, bickering cadre of drama queens portrayed in Homer’s epics, but totally content beings upon whom we ought to meditate so’s to better understand how to perfect our own happiness.

I’m not sure I’d describe Bellhorn as perfect, per se. There have been certain days when his hair — so often the platonic ideal of “the wet look” — does not live up to the lofty precedent it has set for itself so far as Awesome Factor (AF)* goes. That said, there is something that Bellhorn has done perfectly — namely, to parlay a kinda limited skill set into a couple of really excellent major league seasons.

*A totally real metric, duh.

This is* Mark Bellhorn’s skill: to hit a ball very hard when it crosses the plate in an area approximately two baseballs wide by two baseballs tall, middle-in — and to play a decent, if not stellar second base while doing it. I remember Bellhorn taking pitches that other hitters — literally, any other major league hitter — would swing at**. Bellhorn? He’d just watch it go, almost always with an expression on his face — a cross between annoyance and boredom — that I remember my friends’ older brothers wearing when I was in junior high and they (i.e. the older brothers) in college. Bellhorn was the anti-Molina.

*Was? I had a hard time choosing which tense to use in re Bellhorn, on account of, like a deaf and/or senile grandparent, he’s still technically around but you wouldn’t say that he’s flourishing exactly.

**Unfortunately for me, the way I remember the situation is not entirely substantiated by the facts — at least not to the degree I thought. Bellhorn’s Z-Swing% of 64.0% was below the league average of 69.6% in 2004 but ranked only 32nd among the 162 players with at least 500 PAs. His Z-Contact% of 78.4% is more representative of the Bellhorn I remember. It places him ninth among the same group of players.

Bellhorn’s “patience” was less patience, I’d say, and more an acute awareness of his abilities. Knowing that he would almost definitely miss any offering not expressly located in his own personal hitting zone, he decided not even to acknowledge these pitches. Of course, with two strikes, he might take a cut so’s to give the impression of caring, but I always got the sense that it was more for show than anything. Luckily for Bellhorn, this sort of approach (i.e. the one where you “wait for your pitch”) is not such a bad one for hitters, especially those with some power. And it worked well for Bellhorn in 2004, during which year he posted a wOBA of .360 and a PrOPS of .254/.364/.425.

Such self-awareness is not peculiar to Bellhorn, either. If anyone remembers the Scott Hatteberg chapter from Moneyball, you’ll remember Hatteberg, commenting on his ability to lay off pitches outside the strike zone, saying something like, “I just realized a long time ago that, if I swung at certain pitches, I wouldn’t be able to hit them hard.” Hatteberg continues by asking why you would swing at a pitch that you knew you’d just ground to the second baseman. Furthermore, he was confident enough in his contact abilities (regularly posting a Contact% of around 90%) that he didn’t mind hitting with two strikes. This perfect storm of innate ability and homespun common sense made Hatteberg a very valuable baseball player for a couple years.

There is something very elegant about this, about a player who, in being most authentically himself, in having an approach to baseball so informed by his approach to life, succeeds at baseball.

This is one type of player to which I’m drawn. And if it’s true what my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Terry once told me – namely, that I’m “not that special”* — then I’m guessing that a Reader or Two might have had similar inclinations.

*A real molder of young minds, that Mrs. Terry.

For some time, I’ve attempted privately to articulate exactly what sorts of players someone like me is drawn. Or phrased differently: for some time, I’ve recognized a peculiar tendency — in myself, among my statnerd friends — to develop irrational attachments to certain players. These attachments are not systematic, by any means, but they’re not entirely random, either. Always the players in question seem to gravitate towards one Type or another. What I’ve been unable to do is to put my finger on, in, on top of, or even athwart the connection between these players with any sort of satisfaction.

A TAXONOMY OF STATNERD HEROES

After a lot of very serious research — most of which involved something akin to “soul-searching” — I alighted upon what I consider to be at least something like a reasonable summary of Types. This is merely an attempt to make explicit what has more or less been said — like by Sky Kalkman, for example, when he says he roots for “smart organizations and underrated players.” I’ve made no attempt to suggest why the players belonging to these Types — to suggest why they warm the cockles of the statnerd heart. That project might be more appropriate for someone familiar with “science.”

The Statnerd Hero might very well be:

1. An MLB player whose advanced metrics (i.e. EqA, wOBA, VORP, UZR – really anything that attempts to improve upon AVG, HR, and RBIs) suggest greater production than is commonly perceived.

This is really the sort of player to whom the world was introduced by Bill James and made by popular by Moneyball. It could be Scott Hatteberg or Jack Cust or, more recently, defensive savant Mark Ellis.

No, it’s not only Oakland A’s on this the list.

2. An MLB player whose peripheral numbers (i.e. xFIP, PrOPS, tRA) suggest greater production in near future.

In 2007, you would’ve been hard-pressed to find a more rabid J.P. Howell apologist than yours truly. Howell finished that season with a 1-6 record and 7.59 ERA, but his 4.25 xFIP (8.65 K/9, 3.71 BB/9, 46.1 GB%) suggested an excellent young pitcher. His 5.53 tRA for is less optimistic, but 1) I didn’t know that at the time and 2) that’s not really the point. The point is that, at the time, I was convinced of Howell’s excellence, even as public opinion differed.

3. Either an MLB part-timer or older (27 and up) minor leaguer whose production suggests probable success in expanded MLB role.

The Informed Reader will already know that Prentice Redman and Ruben Gotay’s PCL numbers are currently off the proverbial hizzy. Redman is posting a park- and luck-adjusted line of .328/.375/.569 with Tacoma, while Gotay has a park- and luck-adjusted line of .294/.444/.480 with Reno.

Jeff Keppinger and Micah Hoffpauir have both filled this space, even if neither of them is playing all that well at the moment.

4. A younger (under 27) minor leaguer, but not top prospect, whose minor league numbers suggest success at the MLB level.

Mike Napoli, Mark Reynolds, even Curtis Granderson: despite strong minor league records none of these three was really ever a highly touted prospect in the way that a Mark Prior or Jose Reyes or even Homer Bailey was. Of course, “highly touted” is a bit subjective, but let’s pretend we all understand what I mean. Napoli was considered a bit of defensive liability and more of a placeholder for Jeff Mathis. Reynolds, if I’m remembering correctly, was called up to replace an injured Chad Tracy but was considered a low-contact guy without a real position. Granderson was regarded as doing a lot of thing decently but nothing real well. A current player in this mold is Cincinnati farmhand Chris Heisey, a former 16th round draft pick who posted a park- and luck-adjusted line of .315/.398/.538 in 238 Double-A ABs this year.

5. A player who demonstrates vigorously what Americans, quoting French poorly, call je ne sais quoi.

As FanGraphs’ own Erik Manning pointed out earlier today, pitchers such as Charlie Haeger and R.J. Swindle — those guys who reach a mostly successful end by unorthodox means — are heroic, too. This category is big enough to include top players, as well. Like, can anyone believe how compact Albert Pujols‘s swing is? And what about Javier Vazquez’s curve?

Warning: what follows is very nearly about baseball.

Perhaps the Reader has heard that story, apocryphal or not, about the early century art-goer who, upon observing the less-than-representative figures of Mister Pablo Picasso’s paintings, said something along the lines of: “That’s not art! My child could do that!”

Perhaps the Reader hasn’t heard that story. Either way, the point remains: Picasso’s work has a playful sensibility that one could certainly construe as childish and, hence, easy. Picasso — who, if Jonathan Richman is any authority, never got called an asshole — had a clever response to this, saying (again, perhaps apocryphally), “When I was young I could paint like Raphael. It took my whole life to paint like a child.”

If the Good Reader has a similar reaction — i.e. “My child could do that!” — to the work I’ll be providing to FanGraphs, I won’t be very surprised. Which, that’s way less to say that I’m a genius-level-master-of-the-genre like Picasso and way more to say that I’m less smart than the other people who contribute here and it’s pretty obvious.

Messrs. Appelman and Cameron have admitted me on a trial basis to these electronic pages as “a change of pace”. I’ve been too frightened to ask — for fear of messing things up — to ask exactly what that means. My sense is that I’m basically allowed to do whatever I want (like, I dunno, write an entire article about how, in the future, I’ll be writing other articles) so long as the word “baseball” appears somewhere. Other than that, I’ve essentially been given free reign to write pieces — like I’ve done some other places — to write pieces that (hopefully) appeal to the sort of person inclined to point his or her web browser to the best independent baseball analysis site on the internet.

Translation: I’ve won the Baseball Nerd lottery.

I say this less to brag and more to prove a point*. As the Average Reader of FanGraphs is very probably college-educated, literate, and generally sharp as a tack, you might very well feel like those critics of Picasso. Maybe your kids couldn’t do this exactly**, but you, reading this right now, almost certainly could. In other words, there’s no good reason in the world why I — or any one person, in particular — should be allowed to do this.

*I swear, just wait.

**Or, okay, maybe they could.

Well, there is one reason: luck.

American Funnymen Will Ferrell and Larry David have both discussed on NPR the role of luck in their respective careers and in the lives of actors, in general. David said during one recent installment of Weekend Edition: “There’s a tremendous element of luck in show business, especially when it comes to acting. There are great actors out there that nobody knows about and probably have had to quit because they couldn’t make a living.” Now, whether those other actors are/were as talented as either Ferrell or David, we don’t know, but the fact remains: there’s not always a perfect correlation between talent and success.

Writing is no different. Consider: a couple friends of mine, Jed Berry and Reif Larsen, have, of late, found success as honest-to-goodness, real-live novelists — and deservedly so, I’d say.

Now consider another friend of mine, Sean Casey*. I feel very comfortable saying that Sean — whose literary voice I’d describe as a mixture of Mickey Avalon and GK Chesterton — is the best author working in English**. Sean has had some stories published in McSweeney’s — no small feat, of course — but has yet to find the same sort of commercial success as either Jed or Reif. You could never say it was due to a lack excellence in re his prose stylings, though. (Or, I guess you could say it, but if you did, I’d be forced to put on these here brass knuckles.)

*Yes, like the Mayor himself. And, what’s more, is that it’s actually Sean Thomas Casey. Also like that Mayor.

**A point I’d be make even more vigorously were I able to read.

Understanding the role or contribution of luck as distinct from true skill: this is more or less one of the current missions of sabermetrics. Stats like xFIP, tRA, PrOPS, third-order wins — their intent is to understand not necessarily what did happen but to understand what probably should have happened or what would usually happen and what is most likely to happen in the future. Teams that have adopted sabermetric analysis — in tandem, of course, with traditional scouting — have succeeded*. They understand, unlike Bill Bavasi during his post-2007 spending spree, that results can be deceiving if the peripherals suggests something else.

*There’s a book about this called Moneyball. It’s kinda underground, though, so you’ve probably never read it.

Sky Kalkman writes on his profile over at Beyond the Boxscore that he roots for “smart organizations and underrated players.” My guess is that anyone who points his internet browser to FanGraphs feels roughly the same way. The sabermetric community is one generally dedicated to fairness, thoroughness, use of reason, and curiosity — a number of qualities that haven’t always existed in baseball management.

Even recently, how painful has it been, for example, to watch Jose Frigging Vidro play first base for the Mariners while Russell Branyan toiled in four corner obscurity in Milwaukee (and Nashville)? Or to watch (Sir!) Sidney Ponson throw a pitch ever?

Woody Allen says at the end of Annie Hall that we’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it’s so difficult in real life. My impression is that, if we can accept Allen’s as a definition of art, then sabermetrics is absolutelydefinitelyassuredly an art. And, just as Kalkman notes, it’s an art whose practitioners are bent on seeing justice done — in baseball, if nowhere else.

I’m aware that right now, as a Baseballing Writer, with this opportunity to write for FanGraphs, I’m about as lucky as it gets. Were I a pitcher, my opponent BABIP and HR/F would be below league average. I’d be undeservedly in line for Cy Young consideration. I’d basically be the Barry Zito of 2002 of sportswriting (which, okay, he wasn’t bad, but he also wasn’t this guy).

Here’s to hoping that, when things regress to the mean, I’m able to hold down a spot in the rotation.