Wyers: Breaking down the sabermetrics debate between Brian Kenny and Hawk Harrelson

From SABR member Colin Wyers at Baseball Prospectus on April 26, 2013:

I don’t know how we got to this point, but the long-awaited grudge match between White Sox color commentator Hawk Harrelson and MLB Network broadcaster Brian Kenny (with occasional contributions from Harold Reynolds) took place last night. Everyone was polite, nobody got sent to the hospital, and Hawk launched a thousand indignant tweets. You can see the whole thing through the miracle of YouTube, if you have ten minutes to spare for Hawk to say five minutes’ worth of sentences twice.

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So what we have is a discussion between someone who’s practically a caricature of the old guard of baseball and someone in Kenny who is trying to immerse himself as much as possible in new analysis. And, of course, it started with Hawk asking, “Did any you guys see the movie Moneyball?”

Hawk had seen Moneyball, and boy, did it get his goat. He felt like the movie missed the point: “When you got Mulder and Zito and Hudson, you can write any book you want to. Because this is a game of defense, and pitching is the first line of defense.”

This is as good a time to mention this, not that I haven’t said it before and not that I won’t have to say it again. But let’s quickly examine the official rules of baseball.

Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=20371



Originally published: April 26, 2013. Last Updated: April 26, 2013.