‘Parks and Recreation’ is making sabermetics jokes again
“Parks and Recreation,” undoubtedly the best NBC comedy executive produced by an ex-baseball blogger, delighted its sabermetrics-loving viewers Tuesday night with another baseball Easter egg.
Previously, “Parks and Rec” had introduced us to the law firm of Babip, Pecota, Vorp and Eckstein — the first three of which are advanced baseball stats. The caboose in that references former MLBer David Eckstein. In the “Parks and Rec” season premiere, which is set two years in the future, we find that the firm has merged with another and now nearly has a starting lineup of name-partners.
That’s fWAR (Fangraphs’ version of Wins Above Replacement), DIPS (defense independent pitching statistics) and Winshares (Bill James’ measure of a player’s value, and the title of his book). Gritt is grit, the fuel for “scrappy” players like Eckstein who sabermetricians would argue are overrated.
That’s at least part of the joke here — two of those things are like the others. “Parks and Rec” executive producer Michael Schur (aka @KenTremendous) was one of writers behind influential baseball blog Fire Joe Morgan, where they’d take a shot at Eckstein every so often while expounding upon the virtues of sabermetrics.
Now he lets the folks in Pawnee do it in their own sneaky little way.
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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
