Orthodox stathead

From Wiki Gonzalez

An orthodox stathead is someone who follows old school stats (batting average, RBI, wins, etc.) just as religiously and passionately as your normal stathead does with the newer stats. Many of them will argue that numbers don't mean anything to them and that statheads need to get themselves away from the computer and watch a game once and a while, but they would be totally lost without their (at least) 100 year old statistics.

The term was popularized by John Murphy, though Greg Franklin may have been the first to use the phrase on the Net in 2001 (http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:hcK5_WuBvlcJ:www.baseballprimer.com/clutch/archives/00001813.shtml+%22orthodox+stathead%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8).

Greg at that time used the term not for followers of old-school stats, but for followers of the basic principles of Bill James -- statheads who often demonstrated a doctrinaire ("orthodox") approach to applying these principles, and unwillingness to listen to criticism or accept new sabermetrics findings. Sentiments like

• advocating always putting great hitters to the farthest left of the defensive spectrum they can notionally handle, disregarding defensive skill
• scorning base-stealers, clutch hitting, veteran presence, chemistry, light-hitting glove wizards, and other tenets of old-time baseball thinking
• pushing persistently for the replacement of mediocre veterans by talented minor league prospects, said talent determined by MLEs
• lionizing OBP to the extent of touting unknown prospects whose only skill was drawing walks, and labeling well-known rarely-walking prospects as "tools goofs"
• focusing on usage of Three True Outcomes types and Ken Phelps All-Stars as a litmus test for evaluating general managers
• attributing any of said players' performance failures to management misuse or bias, rather than player limitations
• blind love for Billy Beane and the Athletics' approach to team-building

were all characteristic of orthodox statheads.

In recent years, as sabermetrics has matured, the value of some of the new metrics (particularly defensive) has been appreciated, and the debate has become more nuanced. Therefore, the need for such a definition of "orthodox stathead" has waned, and the current definition holds.