Crunching the Numbers

1/12/2014

"Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination."--Vin Scully

"Sabermetrics."  It's a word derived from the acronym SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) and was coined by one of the Society's pioneers, Bill James. Sabermetrics is the statistical analysis of every aspect of the game in order to evaluate performance and player value.

Statistics have been a big part of baseball since its earliest days. Baseball is more rich in numbers than any other sport (does anybody really understand football's Quartback Rating?). Anyone who has ever collected baseball cards has no doubt spent countless hours poring over the treasure trove of numbers on the backs. Watch a game on TV some time. The screen is littered with numbers at the top and bottom and almost resembles a Wall Street ticker. Stats in baseball are ever-present and always have been. Never in the game's history, however, have fans been so inundated with statistics as we are now.

A growing number of fans are joining the ranks of the "stat-heads", those who read, devour, study, and analyze the numbers. Sabermetrician Brian Kenny of the MLB Network tells fans that we should trust the numbers, not our eyes. Many fans use players' statistics to break down the game into quantitative pieces. Some use them simply to draft a successful fantasy baseball team. For the players, however, stats are their livelihood. They are the product they sell. In 1929, Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Lefty O'Doul batted .398, easily tops in the league. The following year he batted "only" .383 and had to take a $1000 pay cut.

In Michael Lewis' book Moneyball (and the corresponding movie), we read about the value some baseball people place upon sabermetrics. Lewis tells of Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane and his use of sabermetrics to field a winning team. With almost no resources, Beane uses Bill James' methods of analysis to determine each player's value and to put the best team, for the money, on the field. Sabermetrics are credited with Beane's numerous winning seasons and frequent postseason appearances.

The world of sabermetrics has its detractors. Many former players, including Joe Morgan, Jack Morris, Jim Kaat, and many others, believe sabermetrics are misleading and give a false impression of how to win the game on the field. Knowledge of baseball's situations and strategies trumps knowledge of the stat sheet. So in our endeavor to more thoroughly understand and enjoy the game of baseball, who should we side with--the brilliant thinkers and analysts, or those who played the game so well for so long?  

My personal opinion is that, for fans at least, the two sides don't need to be mutually exclusive. The game on the field--its situations, mechanics, strategies, ebbs and flows--can be "seasoned" by the application of sabermetric data. We can observe the situation on the field, look up the numbers of the batter and/or pitcher in that situation (they're readily available with just a mouse click or two), combine that with traditional baseball wisdom of what the batter or pitcher is supposed to do ("the book"), and get a more developed and well-rounded picture of the workings of the game.

I own a copy of Bill James' Historical Baseball Abstract (a fascinating statistical analysis of the very best players in history at each position, as well as a thorough explanation of the formulas used to determine those rankings), I check the stat lists daily during the season, and I enjoy the use of statistical probabilities in Strat-O-Matic. However, the sheer volume of stats have become overwhelming to me. Gone are the days of simple statistics: batting average, home runs, and runs batted in for hitters, wins and losses, earned run average, and strikeouts and walks for pitchers. They're still there, but they're being choked out by newer, more advanced matrices. The amount of data produced is infinite, which almost makes it meaningless. Just as too many cooks spoil the broth, too many numbers blur the picture.

WAR (Wins Above Replacement--the theory that each player contributes to a certain number of wins per season, and the calculation of how many wins a particular player provides beyond the production a team can get from available players by paying the league minimum), BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play--a statistic that removes a batter's strikeouts from the equation in order to determine his production when he actually makes contact--used to justify keeping high-strikeout sluggers like Adam Dunn and Mark Reynolds on the roster), OPS (On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging--used to evaluate a batter's consistency in getting on base and hitting with power--this is actually pretty useful), OPS+ (OPS adjusted for individual ballpark factors--all smoke and mirrors), ZAP3, CAR54WHERERU, and on and on it goes. Statistical overload. Too much data to handle to be able to see a clear picture. I'm sure that if I looked hard enough, I could find some set of numbers to prove conclusively that the greatest second baseman in history is Steve Jeltz. The numbers don't lie, but they can tell us more than we need or want to know. It's easy to get so tangled up in numbers that we miss the forest for the trees.

Still, the plethora of statistics provide abundant fuel for the hot stove. Fans can still enjoy baseball in the winter by using the numbers from the previous year to argue about the awards that were given (MVP, Cy Young, etc.), trades, free agent signings, and predictions for the upcoming season. And there are certainly enough statistics out there to keep us busy for the whole five months. 

I don't consider myself a "stat-head", although I do enjoy tinkering with the numbers now and then. They do make the game a little more fun to watch. But I much more enjoy what the numbers don't tell us: which pitcher has the best curveball (Clayton Kershaw), which batter has the sweetest swing (Anthony Rizzo), which player has the funniest name (either Coco Crisp or Didi Gregorius), which ballpark is the prettiest (I haven't been to many, but from what I can tell from TV games, either PNC Park in Pittsburgh or AT&T Park in San Francisco), which player has the most fun on the field (Elvis Andrus), etc. Granted, all of those superlatives are in the eye of the beholder, but that's part of the appeal. Baseball is not a flat, two-dimensional thing. There are any number of aspects of the game for us to enjoy, be it statistics, ballparks, player personalities, strategies, uniforms, or any combination of the above. The game has lots of facets, which allows for lots of opinions, and very often nobody's right and nobody's wrong. We can relish whatever facet or facets or the game appeal to us and all have fun together.