Sociologist Max Weber famously coined the term “disenchantment.” He believed in the idea that as science progressively develops to calculate and intellectualize, the world loses its magic.
The two things I love the most are Sabermetrics and data storytelling. I try to engage in both every chance I get, whether it’s through my blog, Robinson Review, or Truth Review. But my biggest worry is that Sabermetrics may be ruining the baseball I used to love.
In today’s game, players seem to be perceived as mere datasets. They used to be either worshipped as heroes or detested as villains. Now we say “his Clutch Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) is top 1% instead of saying “he has a big heart.” We are starting to optimize and calculate a culture that is inherently valuable because of its variability and unpredictability.
I’ve thought this over through the idea “Sports as Culture.” Baseball with its three potential outcomes (Home Run, Walk, Strikeout) has a mathematically perfect but visually unattractive format. Think about ancient architecture. We cherish them not because they’re efficient, coordinated, and large-scale like modern architecture, but because they have an irreplicable romantic touch that reenacts the nostalgia of the historical period
It’s not like the league doesn’t know about this. That’s exactly the reason why the pitch clock was introduced and the shift was banned. Optimal is usually good, but in this case it wasn’t. That’s also why the league tried to protect culture from sinking into the midst of math.
I see the Tragedy of Optimization in Korea’s education system as well. Education is no longer an effort to build culture and the foundation for innovation, rather an effort to optimize the labor force. We need to remember that sports and education are special because they focus on human values, not data inserted into a spreadsheet. Inefficiency is what makes drama, failure, and finally redemption all possible.