Tuesday, May 10, 2005
 
MBA Defends Decline of Baseball

In a book review for Slate, Josh Levin takes issue with a book's nostalgia for baseball traditionalists versus number crunchers:
    Bissinger challenges Moneyball's analytical argument with unverifiable, splenetic opinions. On-base percentage is the "latest fashion fad." Numbers are less important than human nature. The MBA-carrying thirtysomethings invading baseball's front offices might know their way around Microsoft Excel, but they'll never understand baseball. And so on.
As I have asserted recently, the MBAs in baseball are destroying the tradition of baseball from the front office. So let sportswriters capture the tradition and mystique of baseball without worrying about the detailed statistical analyses. Let managers go by gut sometimes instead of the actuarial charts.

When it comes down to mere statistics, why play the games at all when you can simply do the calculations on an expensive calculator? Or have the MBAs forgotten that statistics capture past behavior and that past behavior might not predict future success or failure? Isn't that what business school teaches them to put on the bottom of financial reports?


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:57 AM
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