How stat-friendly should the Giants really be?  Christian
Petersen  If you haven't read this excellent feature on Hensley
Meulens, please go there now. The sub-heading is "The space-
traveling knight, who speaks five languages, is a failed-phenom-
turned-hitting-guru, and may be the future of big league
managing." That'll pique your interest.  But there's a passage
that might weird you out.  He tells his hitters not to take good
pitches for the sake of working the count and wearing out the
opposing pitching staff, a central tenet of Moneyballism. "I
keep it simple," he says. "I believe in seeing the ball and
hitting it. There's all kinds of statistics nowadays. What's the
WAR? (Wins Above Replacement.) What's the BABIP? (Batting
Average on Balls In Play.) What are these things, you know?"
Great, now I'm going to have "What's the BABIP, Kenneth" stuck
in my head all day.  It's a little stunning that Meulens has no
regard for modern statistics. Okay, I'll give him WAR because
I'm still a little weirded out by th