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Cal Ripken Jr. isn't anti-analytics, but the Hall of Famer hopes the sport eventually dials back its infatuation with numbers.
"I'm very analytical, so I like the analysis," Ripken told WFAN's "Boomer and Gio" show Tuesday. "The trick is, what do you apply? What do you use from that instead of just overwhelming the athlete or making them a robot to say 'play here, play there'? How can you give them some information that they can process in the course of a game that they can make better decisions?"
Boomer Esiason asked Ripken if he thinks there's a guy who stands outside the dugout relaying orders from the front office to the manager based on analytics.
"I think that's an extreme example of the direction coming down from upstairs," said the Baltimore Orioles legend, who was promoting his new book "Just Show Up." "And I think that's happening more and more is that they want to make the lineups out, they want to choose based on stats. And there's all this intangible value that a manager has sitting in the dugout. And I hope that the manager still has some leeway. But if you're being interviewed for a managing job right now and they ask you, what do you think about a suggestion coming from the top every once in a while, you should say, 'I'm open to it,' otherwise you won't get hired."
Ripken says he believes baseball will once again not be such a slave to sabermetrics.
"My dad used to say that things run in cycles," he said. "And I hope that this whole analysis will actually not burn itself out, but it'll be realized that you can't play that way overall. You can take data in -- and information is really important -- but then you have to choose what to use it with, and those intangible values like (former managers) Earl (Weaver) and Lou (Piniella) are really valuable from a motivational standpoint to try to get back in the game. Sometimes a hunch -- batting a left-hander against a left-hander because he has a really good change-up might be the right pinch-hitting move, and it might not be statistically supported. Or how about just the guy that gets hot?"
To listen to the interview, click on the audio player above.