Statistics In Baseball

In baseball, nearly everything is a statistic. There is a statistics for a players average on certain pitches in certain places in the strike zone. There are statistics on how many more wins a player gives his team more than a replacement level player. Statistics, while not always pure, have helped the game evolve through changes, to a game where small market clubs can compete with teams like the Yankees. In baseball, not all statistics are pure. Everything counts and there is no statistical punishment for cheaters. Gaylord Perry got into the Hall of fame and he often used Vaseline. "I reckon I tried everything on the old apple, but salt and pepper and chocolate sauce topping." (Perry 121-222). Even Preacher Roe admitted to scraping balls.

The first box score that appeared in a newspaper was on October 22, 1845. Imagine a game where the pitcher through underhand from 45 ft. The batter hits what looks like a clean single. The outfielder catches it on the first bounce. The single umpire signals out. This was how the game began. The rules gradually progressed over the next couple decades. Pitchers gained the right to throw overhand and develop curves. Batters gained the right to call high or low pitch and lost bunting privileges. Bound catches went away along with soaking (throwing a ball at the base runner for the out). The stats shown in the 1860’s only included hand outs (outs made) and runs scored. Statistics focused mainly on defense with no statistics on pitching and few statistics on batting. Henry Chadwick and Mr. Reed came up with a statistic similar to today’s range factor, only to have Bill James recreate it 100 years later. In the 1960’s, pitchers were dominating the game so much that they lowered the mound and came up with the designated hitter (DH) in the American League. Announcers talked about batting average (BA) and wins. In the 80’s, they started talking about on base plus slugging (OPS) and earned run average (ERA) (Holt). Players now want to lead in on OPS and wins above replacement (WAR). For pitchers, stats looked at used to be Wins and ERA. Now they are WAR, fielding independent pitching (FIP), and groundball to fly ball ratio. For batters, instead

Is this competitive disadvantage fair? Other than luxury tax, the MLB didn’t help much so they had to make do with what they had. Billy Bean, the A’s general manager, thought that on base percentage (OBP) was more important than BA. He did not have much money to sign free agents so it was key to get good players for little money. Most players were valued by BA. With his understanding of OBP, he didn’t need to spend much money. By using this strategy referred to as moneyball, he was able to advance to the playoffs. Theo Epstein of the Boston Red Sox, like Bean, was able to get good players by valuing OBP. He got Kevin Millar, Bill Mueller, David Ortiz, Jeremy Giambi, and Todd Walker. Epstein valued draft picks. He changed the belief, "I can't let him walk and get nothing but draft picks in return." (Verducci) and turned it into "I'll let him walk and get the draft picks." (Verducci). He had 3 of the top 49 picks of the draft and got 3 major leaguers, a big accomplishment. When Epstein noticed that high school prospects were going in the later rounds, he changed his technique and drafted 56% high schoolers from 2007 to 2011. He drafted all but five position players, since pitchers were harder to predict. He had many scouts and would look very closely at all draft picks, prospects, and big leaguers that they wanted. This new