Josie Lepe/San Jose Mercury News/MCT/Sipa USA

Ex-MLB player Aubrey Huff takes shot at 'stat geek' Keith Law

Originally posted on Larry Brown Sports | By Larry Brown | Last updated 2/20/19

Former MLB player Aubrey Huff has been retired since 2012 but has found a way to get his name back in headlines.

Huff saw the 10-year, $300 million contract Manny Machado received on Tuesday and compared his stats to Machado’s, wondering why he didn’t receive such an offer earlier in his career.

He also sent this tweet, showing his old-school views on the game (tweet edited to remove profanity):

“WAR, spin rate, launch angle?… who gives a s—t. I’m a HR, Average, RBI’s kinda guy. But the most important thing I look at (above all these geeky new stats that were created by nerds that wanted to be in the bigs but couldn’t) is he a good teammate and does he have heart?”

Someone saw this tweet and tagged Keith Law, criticizing Huff’s type of thinking in the face of analytics championed by Law.

Huff responded, saying Law is the “poster child for the new era of pointless stat geeks.” He then took a shot at such people, saying they’re using “irrelevant stats” to nose their way into a game they weren’t good enough to play.

.@keithlaw is the poster child for the new era of pointless stat geeks. These guys weren’t good enough to actually play baseball but found a way to use irrelevant stats like launch angle, and spin rate to be relevant and be around a game that didn’t want them between the lines. https://t.co/nlw1i7aYdb

— AUBREY HUFF (@aubrey_huff) February 20, 2019

Law, never one to back down, responded back.

you think an invisible sky fairy made people

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) February 20, 2019

Huff has made his political views clear in the past and has been crushed for them, so this type of thing is nothing new from him. He could not come off as more ignorant in his views. People have gotten smarter about ways to analyze the game. Those who don’t use such data and methods have fallen behind when it comes to being successful.

Huff’s view that these new stats are useless and only created by people who weren’t good enough to play is laughable. Dave Stewart and Jerry Dipoto are two recent (or current in Dipoto’s case) general managers in MLB who also pitched at the big league level. Theo Epstein, Andrew Friedman and Brian Cashman are all executives who never played but embrace these stats and run circles around those two. How about Billy Beane? The guy played in the majors and is recognized as one of the best executives in the game. He and his front-office group led the analytics revolution throughout MLB. Guess Huff really failed to do his homework on this one. Maybe he just doesn’t like falling behind the times and feels angry that he does not understand the new stats.

This article first appeared on Larry Brown Sports and was syndicated with permission.

More must-reads: