Baseball, and in particular baseball’s statistical and prognosticative analysis, is like a lot of intellectual endeavors (religion, politics, anything else that shouldn’t be talked about on this site) in that its followers tend to be fairly polarized in their opinions. Whereas one may wander into a random tavern and overhear a liberal vs. conservative political debate, users on this site are fairly reserved to their stathead/old school methodologies of analysis and predictions of players. Some players might exhibit tools out the yin-yang whereas the future Jack Custs of the world make statheads drool, or some players might elicit praise from either school of thought for different reasons. Since most of the people on this site ARE very intelligent, and since pride seems to be requisite sin (no scientific evidence to back that up, just noting a perception) for intelligent people, some posters can take a serious offense in having their methodologies questioned, which is normal in any polarizing environment.

Another possible reason for dissent on the site is due to the attempt of nearly everyone here to distinguish him/herself from the lot by picking a deep sleeper prospect as “theirs”, which is fun because if Vechionacci actually does make a name for himself, that crazy Yankee fan will feel like a validated badass because he knew something all along that others may have questioned, but if he fails it’s okay because the odds were stacked against him anyways. I imagine this environment of clashing ideologies with wildly varying aspects on how people attempt to forecast greatness creates a sometimes hostile board, since some people need to disprove or discredit the ideas of others in order to gain validation for themselves.

Since there are hundreds if not thousands of people who visit this site regularly, and since tolerance and/or benevolence isn’t oozing from all of them, minor flare-ups are bound to happen, which, comparing that to the flamewars that once desecrated this site, aren’t that bad. On a related note, I do notice that some people take particular (and quite possibly sadistic) glee in correcting others’ mistakes of information recollection, which may have to do with the fact that past statistics are the only tangible, definitive, and sacred aspects to baseball’s analysis.

Obviously, having a clean envrionment depends on bloggers who also desire that in kind. On that note, I think Matt Bush (yes, THE Matt Bush) is going to surprise some people. :-)

However, this is an open forum so there are always going to be instigators or jerks or kids. It doesn’t take long to spot them. And although they certainly detract from many posts, if you can look past them, this site is still a great place for discussing baseball. Though it does seem like the community lost a bunch of smart posters when the format changed.