Baseball Prospectus writer and editor Joe Sheehan appears on the most recent edition of Bill Simmons' podcast for ESPN to discuss many things stats related in baseball.

Although Sheehan doesn't go into minute detail, I think it might serve as an excellent primer for people here who are interested in exploring - or just having a working map of - the fever swamps of statistical analysis in baseball, but maybe don't feel like reading a lot about it.

He gives the context for why certain stats are currently seen as more important than others and touches on issues past, present, and future. (I thought his short discussion about the possibility of health-related or injury-related performance projections was quite interesting)

Even though Simmons isn't a great interviewer ("Okay, well, hey, let me ask you this..."), I think he actually manages to be a pretty effective interlocutor in this instance. I wasn't holding out much hope, considering his podcast with Aaron Schatz from Football Outsiders last year devolved pretty quickly into Massholism and Simmons claiming credit for thinking up stats that already exist. But, as I said, there seems to be less of that here. Or maybe Sheehan just parries it well.*

Warning, it's around 45 minutes long:

(*Simmons seems to have been ignorant of Line Drive Percentage: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/statpages/glossary/#ld%)