Baseball Analytics Quotes

We just kind of relied on written scouting reports through the eighties and even the early nineties. I've really been amazed by some of the data that's out there, especially with regards to tendencies of hitters, and certainly tendencies of pitchers as well. I would have loved to have gotten that data when I played.

I just talked to a young lady, a freshman at Santa Barbara. She's taking a course, and 'Moneyball''s one of the required readings. This young lady could dream of one day becoming a general manager.

Look, I loved working in baseball.

I'm a big Alex Cora fan, as far as aggressiveness, the things that he sees like pitch tipping. His eyes are really good.

Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics.

I understand what sabermetrics get across, and what they're getting across is to keep it simple. Especially for me, as a pitcher, that's something that helps me - finding ways to keep it simple. Numbers can only tell so much.

The only thing Earl (Weaver) knows about big-league pitching is that he couldn't hit it.

Fantasy sports went a long way toward developing the sabermetrics formulas used not only by oddsmakers but general managers in hiring players. So the amateur fantasists ended up creating some of the algorithms that Oakland GM Billy Bean's statisticians used to win games with less salary money available for star players.

In baseball you have terrific data and you can be a lot more creative with it.

The version of 'Moneyball' I pitched - and we made - is about a guy, Billy Beane, who thinks he's trying to win baseball games. But it's deeper than that.

Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom's apple pie.

For me, the most important thing is running a good clubhouse. The X's and the O's - you sit up in the stands and, for the most part, a lot of fans go to the game and they know what's going to happen. You're going to hit and run, steal, put a pitcher in, take a pitcher out.

Scouting and player development is the key to year-in and year-out success, not the occasional lucky hit. There are no definitive answers in this game, no shortcuts. When you think you've got it all figured out, you can get humbled very quickly.

That's all baseball is, is numbers; it's run by numbers, averages, percentage and odds. Managers make their decisions based on the numbers.

Every time I sit with our general manager at a baseball game, and there's number-cruncher and statistician guy - I'm sitting around - they start talking about stuff, and I say, 'What's that? I've never heard of that one before.'

I never talked about launch angle, never mentioned launch angle. I know there's a lot of people probably hoping that I would say that because that's just the trend in baseball.

Though 'Moneyball' had the talents of screenwriters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin going for it, they weren't baseball insiders.

Just because I am increasingly bored by sabermetric arcana doesn't mean anyone else has to be; it remains good for people who like that sort of thing.