.. then yeah. Your point is well taken Logan. SSI is not the place where Cameron is going to get the most of it. Point cheerfully conceded. Of course, he has plenty of fans who deliver as much of that as he wants.
And thanks for holding down the other side of this one. Friends of USSM don't speak up too often here, and we try not to focus on them obviously, but when they do come up, their friends are always very welcome to chime in.
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What you have here, though, is a situation where it would not matter in the least if USSM's source were Jeff Kingston his ownself.
You could give USSM all the benefit of the doubt you wanted, and you would still have to conclude that neither Cameron, nor I, nor Jeff Kingston (the assistant GM) can comment on Jack Zduriencik's saber orientation. To go ahead and assert that "I've got a source close to Zduriencik and he personally assured me that Zduriencik does not listen to his sabermetricians" is just a case of not having been around many execs like him.
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Zduriencik in fact has had many sabermetricians taking payroll checks from him, such as Percival, Brett, and Tango. In the blog-o-sphere, they want to solve this by wordsmithing quotes from Zduriencik. That's pointless when in fact he has employees who are dedicated sabermetricians. (But Zduriencik has repeatedly stressed his regard for sabermetrics.)
So you've got Admiral Rickover with a dozen chemists on staff, and then he orders the Sixth Fleet to the Indian Ocean, and "one of Rickover's staff personally assured me that Rickover never listens to his chemists. Look! He just moved the Sixth Fleet. What more do you need?" Logan, I'm sure you can see the problem with that kind of commentary without any more help from me.
What we do know is that if Admiral Rickover personally chose and paid twelve chemists, and a civilian reporter is screaming to the world that Rickover hates science with a bloody passion, that civilian reporter is out of line. Period.
Rickover hired the chemists; that's the fact we've got in front of us. The rest of it is no more than pulling baloney out of our ears.
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Besides all that, Cameron (in this analogy) is a civilian, no time as a servicemember, commenting acidly on Naval (i.e. F-500) processes. How do you suppose that kind of commentary is received by actual Sailors? :- ) You guessed it. Bat571 isn't real interested in your and my opinion as to how he should run his processes on an aircraft carrier, and if he were, there would be something wrong.
In this analogy, I happen to be a Sailor (consultant to execs), and now you (a civilian) are asking me why I don't give Cameron (another civilian, er, non-big-company guy) "the benefit of the doubt" --- > when he publishes hit pieces on Naval (i.e. F-500) processes. How ironic! ;- )
In this case, we can't apply benefit of the doubt, because there isn't any. It's simply inappropriate to charge Zduriencik with any particular decisionmaking process from a distance of five miles. If we've got a mole in the next office, that mole is also unable to comment on why Zduriencik signed or didn't sign Raul Ibanez.
(Bill James implied that it could be reasonable to sign Ibanez for next year. Another pernicious USSM habit is to take their own analysis and equate it with "the sabermetric" analysis.)
We don't know what Zduriencik weights when he makes a decision, and we most emphatically don't have the right to infer it from a decision we happen to disagree with.
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As to Cameron's ability to write an interesting op-ed? Stipulated. :- ) The contemptuous tone often drives me to distraction, as everybody knows, but nobody ever denied that he's super smart. And my guess is that a rep for being scary smart is the main goal there, so it's all good.
Keep it comin' Logan - always happy to volley a few amigo -
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