Mike B, Oswego, IL — With the wealth of information on sites like Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs, what stats do you use to evaluate players and make predictions?Steve Stone: I use my eyes. I’m in my fifth decade, and those who solely rely on computers usually come up a little short. Those who have been around the game a long time and who have seen every type of player, we really depend on our eyes to show us what kind of player you are dealing with. A man’s ability to play on a division-contending team, you can’t find that into a computer because some guys have never played on a winning team. It’s the same reason I wouldn’t let anyone do open heart surgery on his first day, even if he was the top med student coming out of Harvard, the best heart surgeon they had ever seen. I prefer the experienced guy that has done 5,000 of these, and no matter what happens on the table, he has seen it before. The computer is a nice tool but you can’t replace the eyes of a veteran baseball evaluator because, at the end of the day, the computer doesn’t have eyes.
You too Steve? What’s wrong with using both?
