Tom Tango (Tangotiger) is awesome

[TooLiveBrew]

Brilliant quasi-rant about the old guard of baseball statistical analysis/knowledge from The Book blog (entry link):

It's taken me a long while to get to where I am in terms of understanding how to use the numbers. It's not for lack of effort or inspiration. It's more in terms of exploration. Bill James and Pete Palmer had to do their Columbus. Then the next group of us came along and did our Magellan. It was all part of the growing pains. Eventually, someone else will be our Neil Armstrong (and Zefram Cochrane). But, the road had to be paved for them.

I think by doing the work we did as coldly as we did, we've set the landscape. And I agree that the next step is the warm-hearted work, the game theory, the tendencies, physical characteristics, and behaviour of humans. But, we needed to get past our numeric stage. I think we're close to making the jump.

All of the defenders of the "world is flat" simply don't stand up to the scrutiny. They make lazy excuses, or simply want to remain in a pool of ignorance because it gives them comfort to keep doing things their way. Good. The world is big enough for all of us. Join us if you want. Just don't stand in our way.