An Appeal to Emotion

I'm sure the last thing many of you want to read about is the Brewers' trade for Zack Greinke, but what I'm going to discuss is much more than that.  Since the trade was announced this weekend, I have read just about every article written about it and have seen the trade broke down many different ways.  Many of these articles have gone into an extensive breakdown of the WAR value of Greinke, of his BABIP, of his K/BB, of his BB/9, and of his K/9.  All of these statistics have become very valuable and are very helpful in measuring the effectiveness of baseball players, but in my mind the statistical evolution has taken away from the beauty of the game.

I understand that statistics have become a great way to make projections for the upcoming season and a way to predict the future, but one thing that statistics do not account for is emotion.  Sure it's unusual for players to make huge statistical jumps from one year to the next, but when there is a whole city involved who knows what can happen.  To understand the emotion involved in this trade, here are a few quotes from the past week.

"When I found out about it, I told my wife it was probably the happiest I'd been since I was drafted 10 years ago." - Zack Greinke

"I feel like I've acquired a CC Sabathia except for two years and maybe longer." - Brewers GM Doug Melvin

"I just wanted to be on a team that was trying to win this year, because as a pitcher you don’t really know how long your career is going to be. I just really wanted to be in a place where they were playing to win games right away. So Milwaukee’s obviously that place, and I’m just really happy that it worked out.” - Zack Greinke

"ZACK GREINKEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!" - The text I sent to my brother upon hearing the news

This is just a subsection of the emotion involved in this trade.  Greinke has gone on the record multiple times saying that it was hard for him to remain motivated to pitch in Kansas City when the Royals were not trying to win.  Motiviation should not be a problem in Milwaukee.  Milwaukee is desperate for a winner.  This was evident in 2008.  Every start by C.C. Sabathia was sold out and I don't see any reason why the same thing won't occur for Greinke.

There is just simply not enough emphasis placed on the emotion of a fan base and the infusion of the excitement of the fans into the team's play.  Athletes are undoubtedly affected by the fan support of a city.  I've seen the Brewers play in front of 20,000 fans in Milwaukee County Stadium.  I've seen the look in the players' eyes and the lathargic play that accompanied the lack of excitement.  I've also seen the Brewers play in front of 43,000 fans in Miller Park.  I've seen the extra hustle the players exhibit and I've seen Craig Counsell jump a few feet in the air to snare the last out of a one-run game.  Maybe the 40 year-old Counsell did a few more plyometric workouts than I thought in the offseason, but until the day I die I will be convinced that the collective will of the entire stadium gave him that extra inch of vertical necessary to catch the ball.

Don't get me wrong.  I love the statistical evolution of baseball and will likely write a blog post about advanced statistics (Yeah.  That was a teaser), but there are only so many things you can predict through statistics.  There are no statistics in the world that would have told you the Red Sox were going to come from behind andbeat the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS.  There weren't many statistics that projected the Giants to win the World Series last season, but there is no denying the desire of the rabid fans of San Francisco to win a championship.  That is the beauty of baseball.  On any given day, one player can take over a game.  Roy Halladay had never pitched in a playoff game before and with a raucous Philadelphia crowd behind him, he pitched a no-hitter in Game 1 of the NLCS.  There is a certain magic to the game of baseball and sadly it gets forgotten as people get swept up in the over-analysis of statistics in Major League Baseball.