I'm about to try to straddle the third rail. (Wow, that sounds dirty.) More than politics or Sammy Hagar, nothing incurs the wrath of statheads like my admittedly thoughtless rejection of DIPS. I can hear Jay Jaffe now, his carotid pounding like his fingers on the keys. Voros McCracken, who won't return my calls, thinks my first name is "the guy who doesn't like my stuff."

David Pinto, of Baseball Info Solutions and Baseball Musings, has an interesting take on pitchers and defense, one that I think takes another step forward towards explaining what Voros saw.

I was a bad pitcher, but one of the few skills I had was keeping the ball down and locating. I couldn't do it consistently, but I could make a guy ground out when I really needed to, most of the time. Derek Lowe, when presented with DIPS, said much the same thing. I've never disagreed with the math or the thinking behind DIPS, just the feel. If I could do it, I know major league pitchers with exponents more talent should be able to do it and more.

I think the 'holy grail' will be MLB.com's Range Project, though I'm interested in what people think of David's data.