This is a first-rate Posnanski post. Here was my comment:

"I’ve been a baseball fan for a l-o-n-g time. I’ve given a lot of thought to the question: "What makes a winner?" There’s no one answer to that question. But of course I’ve known for a long time that HRs and RBIs, even for a great many players on one team during the same season, won’t make a winning team. All you have to do is look at decade’s worth of those Rangers clubs, and even the Tigers during the late 80s and early 90s, to know those stats alone won’t make a winning team. As a KC fan you need look no further than the 2000 team.

But, related to this post and the interview, I’ve never heard anyone articulate as well as Epstein the larger picture behind looking at OBP. Of course I reviled Dusty Baker’s ignorant "base-clogging" line about walks, but I’ve never quite understood how prioritizing OBP, plus OPS (despite the comment from Ryan above) as an organizational philosophy works toward a winning team until I saw the phrase: "not make outs."

What an excellent, succinct, and powerful way of phrasing the goal. Those three words cover a large range of productive baseball activities both inside and outside the batter’s box: HBP, walk, hits (of course), stealing bases well, running well, not getting picked off, and perhaps sacrifice bunts and flys (which are a borderline activity per Epstein’s interview–get out, but maintain high OBP).

Thanks for forwarding this, Joe. This interview should make an appearance at every non-Boston baseball website within the next week. – TL"