Outside the Box

Amazon.com: Big Bad Baseball Annual 2000

I'm selling at least one of my extra copies of the 2000 BBBA on Amazon.com. I'll even sign it for the person buying it. I have a 1998 copy for sale as well.

I know that the reviews are a pretty negative for this book, but I enjoy it. It has studies and information that no one else has, but it just isn't in a very user friendly format. The other big problem with the book is the numerous shots taken by Don Malcolm and a few others at Rob Neyer and the Baseball Prospectus. I don't think it is wrong to critique others work, but Don clearly steps over the line in numerous places from critique to ad homoneim (sic).

I'm not writing for the book this year, because I just wasn't sure where it was going and what it's audience is anymore. I'll still buy the book and perhaps support it in some way, but I didn't want to write for it.

I'm worried about sabermetrics. You can rail from dusk till dawn against the establishment, but people become uncomfortable when you question the work of other sabermetricians. Perhaps it was just the tone and tenor that Don chose to use that led to so much criticism.

Is it considered bad form to challenge the work of other sabermetricians?

And if not how should you go about it?

For instance, if I published a study showing one popular metric wasn't much better than randomly selecting players for predicting an event, would folks thank me for doing the study and focus on the results, or would I be called "jealous" and "vindictive"?

Rob Neyer called for a peer review process. How do we go about doing that?

Some of you will read this post and know exactly what I'm talking about, but most will probably scratch your heads and hope that I go back onto my medication. Either way, I would enjoy hearing comments.