Even though I have been a member of SABR (Society of American Baseball Research) and a regular visitor to sites like Fangraphs, Baseball Savant, and Baseball Reference, I really have come to consider myself to be a Stat Agnostic, if not an outright Stat Atheist.

I enjoy reading articles and hearing people on podcasts discuss player performance, team projections, WAR Value and other advanced metrics, but in the end, I find the emphasis on stats to be remarkably beside the point. Thinking about baseball that way is losing the forest for the trees. No it is even more than that. It is losing the trees and the forest for the pine-needles and leaves.

While baseball stats have the ability to tell us a lot about the this game we love, in the end they cannot really tell us anything important about the game and why it matters. I think this is true anytime anyone chooses to focus on numbers and data.

There are no data points to tell us why Shakespeare matters. There are no metrics to explain the Beatles or Bach. Instinctively we understand that if someone were to try to quantify the performance of Michelangelo or try to predict the success of the next great American novel, they would be whistling in the wind.

The things that matter about Baseball are the same things that matter about Art and Music and family gatherings and being with friends. It is the alchemy of Time, Emotion, Finitude, Transcendence, and Connectedness. It is Magic and Spirit and Beauty. It is the Infinite-Yes that sacramentalize everything.

Numbers can’t even begin to understand this Infinite-Yes that we participate in. Only words and Art and our own experiences can even begin to help us understand.