A Guide to Sabermetric Satire

Instead of doing either a parsing of bits of a poorly written/misinformed article or a serious mini-survey of an issue that comes to mind, I will make an attempt at giving those who dislike statistical analysis or the people who perform such studies some tips on how to write proper satire of such subjects. The genesis of this comes from a pair of blog posts at Seattle Sportsnet

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Alex, if you happen to read this, just think of this as an olive branch. ;)
Now that we got that out of the way, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1) Get our heroes right
In any good anti-sabermetric diatribe, it's essential to latch onto the right people. This could be analysts, front office people, well known blog writers, or players. One of those surely isn't Steve Balboni. He's neither the powerful, plodding walk machine that people assume was the ultimate point of "Moneyball" nor is he the underrated, defensive wizard that seems to be the raison d'être for those who don't give a darn about stat analysis. Attacking false idols isn't funny. It's just a bunch of fail.

2) Keep our ballpark activities straight
There's really no one way we enjoy the game just like there's no one single way those who don't know UZR if it smacked them in the behind. If there is something that we like, it's this: Good baseball! We do enjoy baseball. Instead of attacking how we don't enjoy it, just be creative in poking fun at what we enjoy at the park. Just keep in mind that what people write about and what they do at the ballpark tend to be different. ;) If saber-friendly people don't enjoy Felix Hernandez, why do USSMariner and Lookout Landing get tremendous joy from seeing him pitch (that is, when Felix isn't ODing on fastballs earlier).

3) Keep up with the trends
Topical humor works. Dated humor is tougher to pull off. As I mentioned in Point 1, we're past the point of praising Adam Dunn. That's so 2003.

So the next time you want to get your piece mocked on ATH, keep these rules in mind. Don't mess up so badly that I have to do satire theory posts.