Dave Brown of Yahoo! Sports just posted an intriguing interview with Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon McCarthy. They talk about everything from the right-hander’s experience getting hit by a line drive, his tweeting, the trade that sent him to Oakland, as well as his familiarity with some advanced stats.
His thoughts on some traditional stats, pitcher wins and RBI, caught my attention:DB:xFIP and WAR are great, but don’t pitchers need wins to take to arbitration?
BM: Yeah, that’s the worst part about wins. It’s the same with RBIs. They are the two numbers that truly get you paid. It’s absurd. But you become conditioned to having to think about it. In the minor leagues, I don’t think organizations push it, but you get built on that because that’s what you grow up with. And then when you should be getting to a point when you realize it’s a worthless stat, now you realize that your entire financial future depends on it, that stupid number, an arbitrary cutoff point.McCarthy is one of a very short list of players who have publicly shown an interest in Sabermetrics. Zack Greinke is another, as he utilized stats to help him win the 2009 AL Cy Young award. It is nice to hear, every now and then, that a player has taken an active role in furthering his understanding of the game.
