Math is Stupid: The Buster Olney Story

This past weekend, Buster Olney was accosted on twitter by ruthless twitter thugs for pushing the idea that Josh Donaldson’s RBI are the reason he is in the MVP race.

Donaldson’s uncanny ability to drive in guys that he did not place on base aside, Olney was met with rash criticism for not using statistics like WAR or OPS+. Statistics that use numerous variables to calculate a batters value to his team beyond hitting the ball when there are people on base (which he had nothing to do with).

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The reason Buster used RBI instead of these advanced stats is actually fairly simple, it’s because math is stupid.

Math, which was invented sometime before modern language but after the first woman, has long been used to count money, calculate long distances, and generally confuse Rob Gronkowski. But if George W. Bush taught you anything it’s that you don’t have to be any good at it to get anywhere in life. Why? Because around every corner is some know-it-all who is totally excited to show off his math skills and do all your equations for you.

I was never good at advanced math. In 11^th grade we got into Algebra 2, which despite its awesome name was the worst sequel of all time. In Algebra 2 we started learning advanced equations, stuff that required more than 10 minutes of thinking, stuff that I really didn’t want to do at 16 years old. Forgive me for being 16 but honestly if it didn’t have to do with my girlfriend’s boobs or the new Usher music video I usually tuned out after about 80 seconds. Because of this, I pushed D’s across the board in math right through college.

My last semester at Colorado State, I took statistics because it was required by CSU for journalism students to pass Stat to graduate. Which doesn’t make any sense except when you remember college is maintained by mean, aging overlords that would prefer you having to take irrelevant classes several times rather than actually learning something useful for life.

The only reason I passed statistics was because the professor allowed us to crowd fund the final, by that I mean he allowed the entire class to work together and we created one giant Google Doc and put all the answers in it. Even with all of my classmates doing 85% of the work, I still got a 72 on the final and barely passed the class. To be honest, I wouldn’t be shocked if my professor just passed me to spare me the heartbreak of having to come back to school for one class which I may not pass anyway.

So, it doesn’t surprise me that Buster Olney fought back against the Math Gang. They push a medium that scares a lot of writers. They take baseball and make it something that I’ve feared since I was 15 years old, they make it about equations and combined numbers and the narratives we remember hearing on the radio are being pushed aside.

Math is stupid, most of the math we learn isn’t useful to people that don’t calculate how to shoot men to the moon and the math that is useful we learned back when we were 12 years old. How many dollars do I have? How long is this screw? How long is it going to take for me to drive to Chicago? If Pedro has 19 watermelons but he gives 4 to Jessica and Jessica eats 3 and gives 1 back to Pedro, why the hell does Pedro have so many freaking watermelons? And seriously Jessica, you ate three entire watermelons? What are you, a brown bear?

My point is, some people do not like math. I am one of those people. And even though I like advanced statistics and find them incredibly valuable to the game of baseball, I can see where a person like Buster Olney is coming from.

It starts with him citing WAR, and then one of the yahoos who follows him asks him to define WAR, which he does. Then the same yahoo asks what components go into WAR and how it’s calculated and seventeen hours later Buster Olney is Periscoping his formula writing on the Good Will Hunting blackboard as we try to calculate if Daniel Nava is more valuable than one half of Jose Bautista’s right hand.

I’m not saying statistics aren’t necessary, they are. I love to see what a good player’s value is and I REALLY love seeing a bad player’s negative value.

But if we start yelling at people that don’t like math who are we, really? Are we the same kids that used to push Keith Law down outside the tetherball courts? Yes, we are. We are the exact same kids. We’re so busy pushing people down outside twitter’s tetherball courts we forget that the whole point of this game is to have these kinds of discussions.

So let math be stupid.

You don’t have to be math’s army.

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