You hit another point of mine that I think is essential to the American mindset: the need for quantitative analytics. Efficiency, return on investment, etc is something essential to the American psyche (in my opinion wrongly) when sometimes the best decision for everyone involved and affected by the decision is the less efficient choice or the one that can't be explained any other way than a qualitative judgement.
I feel like this mindset is the core sickness to so many things in this country whether it is hiring people or how we assess public education effectiveness or just about anything.
Interesting thoughts on a lot of levels and regarding subjects totally unrelated to sports.
While I think you have to measure performance with objective metrics, I see your point, but think it has a different cause.
The objective measurements aren't flawed in and of themselves. The flaw is in the audience....the good and bad / black and white / 1s and 0s / binary thought processes make people impatient.
For most things, there are a zillion shades of gray. Yet, when faced with a number, too many people get too narrowly focused on the metric as of the moment at hand. They totally lose sight of the process needed to make sustainable and permanent improvement.
So they're forever starting all over, and never make real improvement.
I still believe in objective measurement. I just think it has to be over a period of time long enough to provide a valid database on which you can make a decision.