< SABR
Reform
Baseball Statistics: How Much Is Enough, 1990, New York Times
While sabermetricians made great academic progress through research in SABR, the data remained unused in the industry.
James H. Albert, Professor of Statistics at Bowling Green State University and SABR researcher
"As you start to invent or develop methods that are not familiar ... that's really attractive but it's sort of for those who don't anything about how it comes it's sort of a black box, a weird number that somebody makes up, and there's always resistance because we don't it means or where it came from you are a little suspicious about it."
James H. Albert, Professor of Statistics at Bowling Green State University and SABR researcher, student conducted interview
Although sabermetrics was a revolutionary idea with the potential to change MLB, scouts adhered to antiquated scouting evaluations because traditionalists rejected new concepts.
"There's a lot of preconceived notions learned over decades. Folks don't necessarily like being told they are wrong. ... Like all things new that they didn't understand: with great skepticism."
Tom Tango, Senior Database Architect of Stats for MLB Advanced Media and member of SABR, student conducted interview
Photo Courtesy of Baseball Hall of Fame
Scouting Report, 1993, Baseball Hall of Fame
"Traditionalists were always poised to reject our data—that there was too much of it, or that it was irrelevant to winning, which older writers attributed to 'intangibles.'"
John Thorn, early contributor of SABR and baseball historian, student conducted interview
Most fans wanted to enjoy the national pastime as entertainment rather than mathematics and thus considered research on sabermetrics "nerdy."
The longings of a sabermetrician, 1983, The Bulletin Journal
Another Season, and Baseball Still Seeks Truth in Numbers, 1982, Bruce Weber
Baseball? I Got My Ph.D. In It, Thanks, 2002, New York Times
The rejection impeded the sabermetricians' research.
"The ideas, a lot of the ways I saw baseball, was not consistent with the way that 99% of the world saw baseball. It's hard to get that now because they way I saw the game became so widespread and generally accepted that it's hard to envision a world in which nobody is expressing these kinds of ideas so they regarded inherency."
Bill James, oral interview, SABR
When you feel like you are objectively correct about something ... but people still dont agree with you that would be a frustrating situation to be in. That's reflected a lot in Bill James’s work in the 80s. His tone when he writes gets more progressively antagonistic and this is mostly because he's showing his work and doing the math ... and for that not be be widely adopted would be insanely frustrating. Their approach was to show [their] work by making it about math.
Scott Bush, CEO of SABR, student conducted interview
However, some Major League Baseball (MLB) teams and sports media gradually began to acknowledge the value of sabermetrics; as teams adopted sabermetrics, their reliance on traditional scouting decreased, too.
Full Counts, 1983, The Daily Union, Juction City, Kansas
Off the Bench, 1982, The Sunday Union
Bill James’s Baseball Analyst, 1982, SABR
"At a personal level I was pretty pleased with the acceptance I felt. There was initially a lot of resistance to accepting the value of what I brought to the table, but that didn’t mean we didn’t get along. I honestly believe the great leveler of tension was simply this: we had in common a love of the game. There were always going to be exceptions, but for the most part I was treated very well."
Craig Wright, "Touring the Bases with…..Craig Wright"
Scouting Budgets as a Percentage of Payroll over Time, 2009, How Major League Baseball Scouts have Impacted Valuation Yields
Although sabermetrics began as a revolutionary idea, widespread rejection and limited acceptance positioned it as a gradual reform in the baseball industry.