Stats are extremely useful for us since our scouts are probably not accurate. However, stats are generally only valuable when you understand the environment they are made in. Spring training is a total crapshoot. For example, if your team played Toyama anytime in the first half of spring training, you were playing A ball and AA ball competition because I use the first two weeks of ST to get my kids extra experience. If you played us in the last two weeks, you were playing AAA-ML guys, with A/AA guys as backups. At no time did I play an entire quite of major leaguers full time...including in the rotation, where we had AAA Ken Thompson in there all the way to the end.Longshoremen wrote:I use it sometimes to determine position battles, but given small sample sizes, it's really not that reliable for that. I tend to doubt good performances more than bad performances in ST. Given the "tryout" nature that many teams tend to use in ST, you should do better, all else being equal, amirite?Wind Dancers wrote:For me spring training is about getting young guys development time and getting old guys through without injury. Numbers don't matter.
Other teams have different ideas on how they do things.
So stats created in ST are always interesting, and I have the same human interest in them. You need something to go on, so you go on what you see. But in reality, a hot or cold string in ST is often not particularly useful (except that maybe it's useful in that they give us something to self-justify our decisions on). :)
All that said, we should be locked a loaded for ST now...and don't be surprised to see us get out of the gates slow. My approach "seems" to be good for getting guys through ST healthy, but maybe doesn't kick the rust off as well as we might. Dunno.
I've always disregarded ST stats completely, but Canton's argument here may have some merit. 
