Stats rule and are a HUGE part of baseball and in fact make baseball the most intriguing of all major sports. However, even Bill James acknowledges that there are plenty of things within the game that are immeasurable and often misunderstood or even misleading when looking at the stats. All one can do is use stats to confirm what the eye sees. I knew Hardy would hit dispite the fact that he was hitting .180 for a long time. there wasnt a statistic to be found that would indicate that Hardy would hit and hit a lot. Low and behold, post all star break OPS .878. Find me a stat that would have predicted that. I LOVE stats and grew up spinning the spinner on my ALL-STAR baseball game and recording stats for hours on end but there is a reason baseball uses scouts. The eye can be a very useful tool in determining how the stats may be misleading, overestating or understating a players real ability. Plus there are very skilled stat magicians in the world that could cherry pick numbers and prove just about anything they want to prove. PS....anytime there is a stat called "Line drive percentage" that doesnt have anything to do with how often a player hits a line drive, stats will be debated. PS#2 ....if statistics where the end all of sports information....Las Vegas would surely have gone bankrupt decades ago. You can NOT simply punch numbers into a computer and predict with certainty how things will unfold. Once again, I am a stat lover but things go deeper than the numbers.