Q. and A. with C. Trent Rosecrans

[BCubb2003]

I don't usually mix business and pleasure, but here's a Q. and A. with C. Trent (can't vouch for the knucklehead asking the questions):

http://blog.syracuse.com/future-news..._cnaticom.html

It's mostly about the news business, but here's a baseball-related excerpt:

Where do you stand in the debate over old-school scouting and sabermetrics?

I believe there's a happy medium somewhere, but I lean heavily toward the numbers guys in most arguments. I used to be dead-set against silly acronyms and all that stuff, but then I started reading the reasoning, thought and research behind them. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about sabermetrics. There's the whole "mom's basement" cliche that is just silly and played. At its base, the sabermetrics community is trying to better understand something they enjoy and questioning everything they know. To me, that's healthy thought -- of course, it can be taken to an unhealthy extreme, but it's still good to be out there. I don't know the math, but I enjoy the theory behind it and find it more honest than saying, "well, that's the way it's always been." There are things numbers don't tell you, but at least there's a reasoning behind it.