As advertised, Hawk Harrelson showed up on MLB Network yesterday to take on Brian Kenny in a tete-a-derriere about sabermetrics and advanced analysis. I won’t ruin it for you, but know that Harrelson is not all anti-stats. He has his own metric -- tWtW -- The Will to Win, which he claims is more important than anything.
Which, fine, if that’s how he thinks baseball works. All I want is for him to put his money where his mouth is and ask players on a losing team why they don’t have The Will to Win. When they lost it, why they don’t acquire it and why the guys on the other team have more. If he’s willing to do that, great, I’ll shut up about Hawk for the rest of my days.
If not, I’m gonna assume that he’s full of crap and is using his experience in the game as an appeal to authority to make up for his apparent ignorance about what makes good baseball teams good.
Enjoy: