Prospectus Perspective: Sorting Short?

One of the most over-worked tropes of the last three seasons has been the newly assigned importance of defense, as if fielding had been suddenly forgotten or overlooked or undervalued. Where there used to be the suggestion that much—perhaps too much—of sabermetrics was the art of documenting the previously observed, to some extent I wonder if these phenomena are more appropriately chalked up to the need to discover, as opposed to making real discoveries. After all, everyone likes being the first to notice something, and if there wasn't really anything there, well, it was news in 2008, so it has to be newsworthy, right?

Baseball Prospectus