I’d argue that the past can be a predictor of future performance, just in terms of determining a player’s performance levels.

Now, obviously, like you said, there will be hot and cold streaks, but I think the idea is to try and determine how a player will perform over the course of the season.

Naturally, you have to have a pretty large sample size to accurately predict these things (see Ryan Ludwick this season), but given the correct circumstances, I think Sabermetrics are a fine predictor of future performance. For instance, OBP is a pretty universally constant statistic. A guy could be in a horrible hitting slump, but maybe he’s still seeing the ball really well. He’ll still take walks and keep that OBP afloat that way before the balls he’s hitting right at people start to drop in.

Either way, as I stated, my original intent was to have a little fun with it and see how these tenets of James’ applied to this year’s Birds.

Even still, I’ve read Money Ball and some Bill James articles so understand the concept. One thing I’m unsure in all of this is if these models are predictive of the future or just tell us what happened in the past? One arguement I make sometimes is that looking at say 14 day or 30 day stats doesn’t tell you anything about a player’s future, only about his past. In fact, you could argue the opposite, that a player coming off of a good 14 day period may be due for a regression to the mean. OK, that doesn’t pertain to Sabermetrics, but you can still ask the same questions. Sure, you can argue that opb is a better predictor of runs than average and slugging % predicts rbis better and that stealing doesn’t lead to more runs. But does knowing those stats from the past really tell you more about the player’s future? Maybe some other stats tell you more, such as age?

In any case, getting back to the 10 commandments of Sabermetrics.
1) don’t bunt. Certainly not going to fly with Tony and didn’t fly with Whitey either. If you never bunt then the idea of a ‘fake’ bunt where you intentionally try to draw the infielders in probably will never work either. I doubt any national league team would subscribe to the no bunt theory and I wonder if that rule is meant just to apply to the AL?
2)no low obp before the cleanup hitter. Tony doesn’t seem to adhere to this one as he likes power in the #2 slot. I doubt Ankiel or Duncan would qualify as high obp guys, yet those are prototypical #2 hitters for Tony. I would rather see high obp with speed in the first two spots.
3)3 run HR and leadoff walk. Ideally you would like that, and having the pitcher hit eighth and a power hitter 2nd kind of subscribes to that theory. In the first inning you get Pujols batting 3rd for the 3run HR shot, and then later in the game if the 9th spot leads off when the pitcher makes the last out, then you have a shot at your power two batter to cork one.
4)70% SB rate. Maybe as a general rule, but clearly there are times that dictate running. Billy Beane doesn’t like to run at all, but to me team speed including SBs are essential and something the Cards sorely lack. Lopez at least brings that component with him. I still think the Cards would have won the WS if Coleman hadn’t gotten roled up in the tarp and Brock was instrumental prior to that. They both probably had greater than 70% success rates, but I think getting steals is huge. Puts tremendous pressure on pitchers and infielders and forces errors.
5)Don’t idol MI. Certainly a gold glove SS is nothing to sneeze at and the Cards had a pretty good one in Ozzie although he did improve his hitting later. I think the Cards have made wise moves in the middle infield department since you can’t tie up every position with a big money stud. Better to go for fielding and preferablly speed there, IMO.
6)credit pitcher. I think Tony does a good job of this but maybe overdoes it. Really more about protecting the player. I think this one goes more about ‘valuing’ a player and isn’t strategy related. Some of the sabermetric stats look at things like ground balls in play and outs vs hits etc. With the extensive notebooks that Duncan has he probably has stats we’d never even think of.
7)don’t abuse starting pitcher. I’m not sure what this one means, but it could mean in terms of innings pitched in a season. Clearly there are correlations between 200+ innings and a fall off in performance the following year. Not sure how the Cards fare there, but seeing as how we’re happy if a SP goes 6 or 7 innings they are probably safe.
8)hot hand doesn’t exist. I guess this is saying that past performance doesn’t predict future success, or at least recent performance. This is true of Tony in that a ‘hot’ player could ride the pine, however, that could be because the ‘cold’ player is ‘hot’ against a certain pitcher, or better against a lefty, etc. This rule would seem to suggest that would have no merit. To me it seems like it does have merit at least in certain situations as you might get inside a pitchers head and cause a less than stellar performance. I know there is supposedly no such thing as a ‘clutch’ player either. Maybe that is what Tony is thinking when he puts Looper in to pinch hit or lets the pitcher bat for himself and then doesn’t even have him pitch the next inning?
9)Definitely not a Tony/Duncan rule of thumb although there have been an awful lot of youngsters playing for them this year, so maybe they are coming around. I like a mix of youth to inject energy and veterans to instill discipline and maturity. This might come back to the ‘clutch’ thing, but when the going gets tough I’ll take the one that has been there before.
10)I wish other teams would subscribe to that so the Albert could get some balls to hit!

For clarification, I’m not disputing the list, and I am fully aware that this is all backed up by research.

I’m pretty disappointed in how blatant the Cards’ disregard for some of these items has been.

I think it will be interesting to see just how much organizational focus changes as the front office gets deeper into the Mozeliak-Luhnow years.