Baseball College

I’m making an appearance on my blog for the first time in over a week, and I think it’s high time I write an article while I still have time in my life to do it.

I’ve been reading all kinds of fantastic information from all of the Cardinals bloggers recently (all of which you can find in my blogroll on the right). These posts have had elaborate statistics that predict the worth of the newly acquired players to the cardinals in 2006. A few bloggers have posted that with the players the Cardinals have now, we’re a 90-95 win team. While I don’t think that’s unreasonable, I myself have a hard time dropping all kinds of statistics on the reader, and here’s why:

I’m a numbers guy: I was an accounting major and a math minor in my undergrad, and am now going to graduate school for accounting. Let’s just say that numbers and I, well, we’ve met. I love numbers and I think statistics are one of the most intriguing parts of the game of baseball. Why don’t I like them to make predictions though?

I’m a firm believer in the intangibles that can’t be measured. I believe that we have the best regular season manager in the big leagues, and he alone will find a way to get the ballclub more wins than an ordinary manager would during the regular season. I think it’s hard to predict how many balls will be hit to centerfield in the top of the 9th that Jim Edmonds dives for, catches, and saves the game. Baseball is a game of inches, we’ve all heard that one before, and I think those inches can influence more than just a couple games throughout the course of a season; more than a few at bats, more than a few pitches.

How can we predict what a change of scenery and coaching will do for these new additions to the Cardinals ballclub? I had a revelation last night about new additions to the Cardinals ballclub, and I’m going to use myself as an example. As a highschooler, our baseball team wasn’t anything to write home about. I loved playing the game more than anyone on our team, but the games that I really got jacked up for were the games when hundreds of fans would come out and watch. It wasn’t about the rival team as much as it was about the atmosphere that got me ready to go. Busch Stadium will be undoubtedly packed throughout the season, and it will be rockin each and every day. That in itself should get a player at least a little pumped up.

Team chemistry is another item that can’t really be measured. Only time will tell how well this team plays as a cohesive unit. Maybe they’ll get along great, play well together, and win 105 games. Maybe Sidney Ponson will get everyone liquored up before the games and we’ll win 75. Who knows? Sure we can guess, and it’s fun to guess, but I just don’t think that statistics tell enough of the story for me to get too enthralled in them. We’ll just have to wait until April to find out what this team is really made of.

Obviously this is my opinion, and only my opinion, and I’m sure the majority of you would beg to differ.

I think there’s one thing we can all agree on though: April better not take 2 and a half months to get here, because I’m ready for baseball now. Fly High in ‘06 Birds.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2006 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.