We want to apologize to anyone who will be offended by this piece.

We have been very free about our age. We started following the Cleveland Indians in 1965 as a youngster and baseball became and still is our favorite sport. However, the way the sport is viewed now is kind of disturbing.

We were talking with some longtime friends about the game about a week ago, and one of them said they remembered when a guy who hit .250 was considered an average player, a JAG (just another guy) in today’s vernacular.

We brought up that someone asked us if we thought Dave Kingman (302/478/780, 442 career home runs) was a good player back in the day. Kingman played from 1971-86. We replied no, and that no one else thought he was good either. He made just three all-star teams in his career.

When Bill James wrote The Baseball Abstract, it changed our view of the game. We grew up thinking you had to have speedy players at the top of the order, batting average was king, etc. But reading that book, we realized the job of the leadoff man was to get on base, no matter how good a defender you are, you have to be able to hit, and many other things.

The advanced statistics started by the sabermetric movement have value, no question about it. However, it should not be the only prism the game is viewed through, and James himself will tell you that.

Batting average isn’t meaningless. It measures how many hits a batter gets in his at bats. It may be less important than on base percentage, but it shouldn’t be ignored.

Someone once told us that analytics get used as a fallback for when something is tried, and it doesn’t work. Coaches or managers can say “the numbers” said it was the correct decision. Sometimes it’s true, but people need to realize that sometimes it isn’t.

The game is still about getting 27 outs and scoring more runs than your opponent. One of the reasons that sacrifice bunting has all but disappeared from the sport is that James and other pointed out that the number of outs in a game is precious and a team shouldn’t give one up unless it provided a huge advantage.

The way MLB has promoted itself hasn’t helped. They focus on the raw athleticism of today’s players, which is nice, but as former player John Kruk once famously said “I’m not an athlete, I’m a baseball player”.

There is considerable focus on hitting the ball hard or the speed of pitches, neither of which helps to win a game. Now, we agree that if you hit the ball hard consistently, you will very likely succeed in the sport, but it isn’t a necessity.

For example, Whit Merrifield, Charlie Blackmon, and Geraldo Perdomo all rank near the bottom of average exit velocity, but all three are solid offensive players. Meanwhile, Kansas City’s M.J. Melendez is in the top 10 in this category. He has a 713 OPS.

It probably bodes well for Melendez’ future, but that’s why it should be a supporting statistic.

Strikeouts aren’t a big deal anymore, but when there is a runner on third with less than two out it is. How many times in today’s game do you see a team get a leadoff double and the runner never moves. The “get ’em over and get ’em in” rules no longer apply.

Hopefully, the new rules enacted by the sport this year start reversing the launch angle era and get back to the fundamentals of the sport. We don’t want to take away from the entertainment and showmanship in the game these days, but playing the right way isn’t a bad thing.