Then again, maybe he is the two standard deviation exception. Only one way I know of to find out for sure. And it’s expensive for some owner.

First poster to make me decide between telling them what I think of them and getting banned from this site.

Enough said.

But even a fan can see quite a bit, if they watch a lot of baseball. This whole idea that the naked eye and sabremetrics conflict – to me – is ridiculous

Well they can conflict when the eye tells you something that doesn’t actually happen. There are two big problems with the eye test. For one, many of us, if not most, aren’t trained scouts so while we see someone catching everything/hitting everything, we may be missing an actual weakness (bad routes hidden by great speed) or lack of plate discipline covered up by an uncanny ability to foul pitches off.

Also, it’s just not physically possible to watch every single play of every single game. So a person could watch every Braves game, and give an excellent run down of the strengths and weaknesses of the Braves players, but they’d be unable to give an accurate assessment vs other CFs in the game.

Scouts and stats both have their places in the game, but it’s best when used together, not separate.

Section 1. The Bourn Identity. Who is this guy?
Section 2: The Bourn Supremacy. How this guy can win you pennants
Section 3: The Bourn Ultimatum. What he will cost, take it or leave it, countless “mystery teams” are also bidding

But I think the Carl Crawford deal may affect Michael’s value. I like him, but he may have trouble getting much past 60 MM$.

Look, this is a blog for fans, not for players. If you are a fan of a team that might sign Bourne, don’t you want to have an idea of what to expect from him if that happens and a forum in which to discuss it?

Setting expectation level is very important. It isn’t (and won’t be) fair of fans to suddenly expect Bourne to be something he’s not just because he’s paid more.

There’s nothing mean-spirited about the article, unless you’re Michael Bourn and your skin is made of wet paper.

Further, I think that articles that are written in this manner are a lot of the reason that SABRe guys get a bad rap from old-school guys. Michael Bourn is a human being, he’s not a line in a spreadsheet. Sure, compared to other players similar to him the odds seem pretty good that he’s going to have a hard time living up to whatever his next contract pays him, and that’s a good and fair thing to write about. And as I mentioned before, it’s something that should be accounted for by GMs when considering what to pay him. But there’s no need to write an article that in so many words says “Michael Bourn is going to suck from here on out, the numbers tell me so” and then defend yourself by including a throwaway little paragraph at the end saying that maybe Michael Bourn can buck the trend (but don’t bet on it ).

Finally, why not use a headline like “Odds against Bourne living up to next contract” rather than “History suggests that Michael Bourn is likely to be a bust”? That alone would diffuse a lot of the petty tone the article has.