Here's a link:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content...R.html?sid=101
Here's the Dunn excerpt:
One veteran scout for a National League club said he studies statistics more than ever and more and more of his colleagues do the same. For instance, before coming to Cincinnati two weeks ago to follow the Reds, the scout looked up each pitcher's walk rate, strikeout rate, ground ball-to-fly ball ratio and opponents' batting average and each hitter's contact rate and walk rate.
"If you scout someone and totally dismiss the numbers, you're missing something," he said. "If you don't look at (Adam) Dunn's stats, you might think, 'This guy sucks. Get him out of here.' But he's a hitter. He gets a bad rap around here, but he's the only guy on that team who can change the game."
The poster child
In many ways, the Reds' Dunn embodies the statistical evolution.
He does not fit the old ideal of contact hitting and defense, and his batting average (225 through Friday) is poor. But he is on pace to reach 40 home runs and 100 walks for a fifth straight season, and the statistical research of the past two decades has shown that the ability to get on base and to hit for power are the most important elements of a successful offense.
At the start of the week, Dunn led the Reds in home runs, slugging percentage and Equivalent Average (EqA) and was second in Win Shares and Value Over Replacement Player (VORP).
Meanwhile, the statistical research that led to the creation of EqA, Win Shares and VORP also uncovered a red flag above Dunn: Players whose value derived largely from walks and extra-base hits tended to decline faster than players with a wider range of abilities.
An athlete such as Cincinnati's Ken Griffey Jr. can add muscle, pull the ball more often and learn to draw more walks as he ages; Dunn cannot learn to swing the bat faster.
Even an organization as traditionally scout-centric as the Reds can find value in such information. Team officials might not be able to cite Dunn's EqA, and they might not know that baseball-reference.com lists Darryl Strawberry, Harmon Killebrew, Rocky Colavito and Tom Brunansky among his comparable hitters, but some in the front office have an eye on the stat sheet.
"There's some neat stuff out there, if you can extrapolate it," assistant general manager Bob Miller said.
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