What's funny is that back in the old BP days, you could still argue most of the interesting work in baseball / statistics was being done in the public domain working of standardized data sets - whether it was DIPS via Voros McCracken, or Tom Tango's work, or that of MGL / some of the early BP guys in the past few years. Now, since we're pretty good at capturing offensive value, the really interesting stuff is being done a) on the predictive side and b) on the defensive side. The latter in particular makes use of propeitary data sets like some of the Baseball Info Solutions stuff or Pitch FX's advanced DB's - making it harder for a young analyst who wants to break into baseball to pull a Voros. Moreover, ESPN can certainly afford those resources, but I doubt that the goal is going to be to do groundbreaking stuff anymore - I think it would be a role similar to Hollinger. But given the ESPN "analysts" (and I use the term loosely) consist of idiots like John Kruk, Silver's influence seems as if it will be limited.

McColin, are you an old Baseball Primer / BTF guy as well?