Here's my final post on this. Which is not about W/L, but about BL:
BL seems to have a massive superiority complex. He presents his opinions with an air of authority, as an indisputable truth, because I believe he thinks that he is somehow smarter than most everybody else here. He loves his new age baseball stats, he feels that he has some sort of special insight into baseball that few others have because of how he has embraced these stats, and that this application of his "special knowledge" in threads such as this one shows that he has a much more in depth and complete understanding of the game than most everybody else.
Unfortunately, for him, he doesn't. He keeps allowing himself to fall into the same old trap of eventually saying something that's utterly retarded, and then not knowing how to retreat. Examples are things like "Kenny Lofton should be in a HOF conversation because of his career WAR", and "a pitcher's W/L record is completely meaningless". When others challenge him for making these statements, he's unable to back down and admit "well, maybe that wasn't the smartest thing I've ever said". Instead, he doubles down and often follows up with a twisted argument, one that takes the original premise, turns it into something else (deflection?), and then jumps with both feel down into the rathole.
His obsession with advanced stats trumps all other knowledge about the game. If it's not covered by a stat, or is not embraced by the new-age baseball thinkers and writers, then it's either not important, or just flat-out wrong. There's no grey area in his thinking, it's all "my way, or the wrong way". And it's this stubborn adherence to this mode of thinking that makes him the source of amusement or mockery. And his lack of self-awareness doesn't allow him to realize this.
And this trait goes beyond baseball. His thoughts about politics and social matters are also influenced by this air of superiority, as we've seen in the other forums. "Rioting and lawless behavior is an effective way to bring about social change" was another classic case of saying something idiotic, refusing to back down, and then going down the rathole.
5/31/2016 5:21 PM (edited)