Interview With MLB Player

Here I have my interview with MLB player Daniel Robertson on 2/21/15 where I ask him a few questions about the role of sabermetrics in baseball.

Q: Sabermetrics are really important in Major League Baseball, especially after Moneyball, how do you feel sabermetrics would be different in Minor League Baseball or in college. Do you feel that the overall lack of experience at these levels makes players more unpredictable?

A: I think using them for maybe college seniors or college juniors, as opposed to freshman or sophomores, you can get some kind of a player or get a rough idea about a player. Going into pro ball, I think it’s already used in the minor leagues, not for every player, but for the top prospects, so you can see how their success in the minors correlates to the big leagues, but I think for early college students and high school students it’s too soon. It would be very unpredictable because you’re going to get kids that grow, kids that put on weight or lose weight. Also think it’s too much for a 19-year-old kid to worry about like “I’m going to the University of Arizona and I’m not going to get playing time because my WAR is .1 and this other kid’s is 2.” So it’s too early and it’s too much pressure for a kid, especially in college. You want a kid to get used to being away from home and let baseball be a way out. Sabermetrics brings a lot of stress. I think when it was first introduced, it brought a lot of stress, so it’s too much for those kids to handle. But later, as a junior or a senior, you can get a rough estimate and a good base point.

Q: I said earlier that sabermetrics is widely used in the Major Leagues. Do you feel that it can get too big?

A: Yes, they’re too big for a sense that decisions can’t be made on baseball knowledge. I’m all for putting people on the field because someone has better stats. I wouldn't want a player with a -6 WAR playing in front of me while [my WAR] is 1. I would think it would be a disservice to the game and a disservice to the fan. But I think it could be too big in situations where it’s the bottom of the ninth in the ALCS to go to the world series and you pinch hit a guy because the sabermetrics says he hits well against lefties on a Friday night at 9:30, and you pinch hit him for a right handed hitter who has a career .210 [batting average] against lefties but the underlying fact is as a manager you know that this guy is 8/10 against this pitcher because he sees him well but statistics aren't going to show that. That’s a manager decision, a flow of the game decision, so I feel like if sabermetrics became too leaned upon there would be no accountability and nobody gets better. I feel like if you give someone millions of dollars to do one thing but you make decisions based off of the numbers, you start messing with a guy’s confidence and that’s worth more than anything. If someone believes in you, you’re going to be better, but if you believe in the numbers more than the guy, I think the fans are going to be the one who are going to be disappointed, they’re not going to get the best product that major league baseball has to offer.

Q: Do you feel like “star power” is an argument against sabermetrics? (In the sense that in the NBA, players like Lebron James always seems to find a way to win despite what the stats say. For example for much of his time in Miami, the stats said that Lebron James was terrible in the 4^th quarter, but experts and most fans agreed that, even on a team with multiple clutch performers, Lebron James should have a green light to shoot in the waning minutes of a game.)

A: Lebron is a good argument, because the sabermetrics don’t measure winning. There’s a reason Michael Jordan never lost in a final and Lebron James has lost 3 times. When it’s time to win, I don’t think numbers or a formula can [overshadow] heart because that’s all it is. You can’t write a formula for how much you love something. If somebody loves winning more than the next guy, it doesn't matter what that guys sabermetrics are, you might just not beat him. I feel like star power has a limited amount because a lot of stars have good sabermetrics. I don’t know of a current player that is a superstar and makes hundreds of millions of dollars and someone like a Bill James would come out and say “I don’t know how this guy got 100 million dollars he’s terrible.” I don’t think star power has anything to do with it. I actually think sabermetrics has the ability to make you a star. Let’s take a guy like Denard Span, whose game doesn't jump off the charts, but when you take a look at his sabermetrics, they do. So I feel like, since Bill James created some of these things, it’s given the ability to create some star power sometimes because you have guys like Pujols, Trout, Posey, [Pablo Sandoval], and Hamilton. And for [Hamilton], numbers can’t predict when he’s going to get hurt, numbers can’t prevent injuries, so it has the ability to make people better rather than hurt because, at the end of the day, if someone’s sabermetrics are bad, no one’s going to invest in him.

Q: You said that a team can’t entirely be based off of sabermetrics, do you think that, for example, a team like the [2002 Oakland Athletics] has 6 of their 9 starting spots filled up and they just need to fill the other three, that they can use sabermetrics entirely for that.

A: If I put my [general manager] hat on and I need to fill 3 slots, like my 7, 8 and 9 hitter, and my team needs to work on x, y and z, I feel like you could use the numbers to punch them in. I think the sabermetrics correlates for those reasons. I think it makes it easier for a man to say, “Well my gut tells me I should go with this guy but the numbers tell me I should go with this [other] guy.” If you know baseball and you know people, the guys are going to match up pretty closely with their sabermetrics. Bill James did a great job with his formula, but I don’t think baseball guys are too far off, because if you look at the best guys in the game, they all have great sabermetrics... so I think you can use [sabermetrics] to find those three guys, but if it’s game 7 of the world series… I don’t think sabermetrics can give you a player [to use] because you don’t know how much he slept the night before and those factors. So the numbers can’t correlate everything, but they give you a good [idea]. I think sabermetrics don’t tell you the whole story, they just tell you a rough estimate of who to come up with.