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| Oh, wait, that last one is real. |
Tuesday afternoon, USA Ultimate announced that it has hired
legendary baseball statistician Bill James—of Moneyball fame—to spearhead the new Advanced Metrics Bureau, aimed at
taking the ultimate fan experience to the next level.
“Ultimate has made huge strides forward in terms of media
exposure and fan viewership over the last few years,” said USA Ultimate CEO Tom
Crawford at the press conference. “But
we’ve been lagging behind in terms of pretentiously complex statistics.
“Now, USAU is thrilled to announce that Bill James,
father of baseball’s ‘sabermetrics’ movement, has joined the team, and will be
providing us with extensive new statistical models for the game we all love.”
James, whose approach uses advanced numbers to find hidden
value in players, spoke to reporters about his decision to quit his lucrative
career in baseball statistics and join up with ultimate.
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| Priorities. |
“Well, frankly, baseball sucks,” confessed James. “Nothing
happens. I’ve made an empire out of
inventing a thousand ways to count precisely just how much *nothing* will happen in any given baseball game. I just took a
look at one more Opening Day…I had to get out.”
But James is nonetheless happy about the potential for
advanced stats in ultimate. Said James,
“Well yeah, of course I’m excited. I mean, when you consider how boring baseball
is, it’s kind of a miracle. We just
got people hooked on the stats and the fools flocked to the games by the
millions. Just imagine what we can do
with a game that’s actually mostly sports!”
The new statistics, which James and USAU plan to start
tracking this summer with the 2014 Club Season, aim to find all sorts of
hidden value that ultimate players have never known their teammates had.
Some reporters raised concerns about USA Ultimate’s limited
resources, and how all these new statistics could possibly be in place in time
for the club season. But USAU officials seemed confident in reassuring the crowd.
“Don’t worry; it’ll be fine,” said Crawford. “We’re just going to make a new tab in Score
Reporter.”
Buckle up. Moneyflatball is coming.
