Was Mark Twain right when he said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”? Statistics are certainly useful but can be manipulated, especially when taken out of context. A mayor might tout his or her success by saying that the number of violent crimes in the city was down 10 percent in the past year. But what if, in the first few years of the mayor’s term, violent crimes rose 30 percent, compared to the period before he or she took office?” – Jacob Silverman of howstuffworks.com
What is Sabermetrics? In short, it is the measure of baseball statistics in order to determine player performance. Long before the Tinsletown-Movie “Moneyball” – baseball statistician Bill James founded the idea with the title honoring SABR or the Society of American Baseball Research. Before Sabermetrics, teams were consumed with the over-valuation of statistics like an RBI, which in reality, only is beneficial if the players in front of that specific batter were successful at reaching base. Sabermetrics was born in the 1980’s, grew up in the 1990’s and began to truly affect the game in the 2000’s. Sabermetrics is revolutionizing more and more into Pro Sports today. Sports CEO’s and General Managers are now beginning to use these stats in order to stay competitive. Recently, it has been reported, that Brandon Russ CEO and President of the Buffalo Bills is planning to incorporate Sabermetrics to contracts, and use in conjunction with scouting and player analysis beginning in 2013. What Bills James created not only changed the revolutionized MLB and sports, but enabled struggling teams the ability to compete again.
Below is a list of terms from baseball.about.com detailing many of the Sabermetric Statistics used by a number of baseball executives today.
BABIP: Batting average on balls in play. It’s the frequency of which a batter reaches a base after putting the ball in the field of play. For pitchers (a measure of the hitters they face), it’s a good measure of luck. So pitchers with high or low BABIPs are good bets to see their performances adjust to the mean.
BsR: Base runs. Similar to runs created (see below). It estimates the number of runs a team “should” have scored given their component offensive statistics.
CERA: Component ERA. It’s an estimate of a pitcher’s ERA based upon the individual components of his statistical line, another statistic that tries to take luck out of the equation.
Def Eff: Defensive efficiency. It’s the rate at which balls put into play are converted into outs by a team’s defense. Can be approximated with (1 – BABIP).
dERA: This is a measurement of what a pitcher’s earned run average would have been, if not for the effects of defense and luck. It uses batters faced, home runs allowed, walks allowed, intentional walks allowed, strikeouts and hit batsmen in a complex mathematical formula.
DICE: Defense-independent component ERA. It’s a mathematice formula that measures pitching performance using home runs allowed, walks, hit by pitch, strikeouts and innings pitched.
DIPS: Defense-independent pitching statistics. They are a series of statistics (such as DICE above) that measure a pitcher’s effectiveness based only on plays that do not involve fielders: home runs allowed, strikeouts, hit batters, walks, and, more recently, fly ball percentage, ground ball percentage, and line drive percentage.
EqA: Equivalent average. It’s a stat used to measure hitters independent of ballpark and league effects. It’s a complex formula that takes into account hits, total bases, walks, hit by pitch, stolen bases, sacrifice hits, sacrifice flies, at-bats and caught stealing. It’s then normalized for league difficulty.
ERA+: Adjusted ERA. It’s earned run average adjusted for the ballpark and the league average.
Fielding Runs Above Replacement: The difference between an average player and a replacement player is determined by the number of plays that position is called on to make.
IR: Inherited runs. It’s the number of runners inherited by a relief pitcher that scored while the reliever was in the game.
ISO: Isolated power. It’s a measure of a hitter’s raw power – extra bases per at-bat.
LIPS: Late-inning pressure situation. It means any at-bat in the seventh inning or later, with the batter’s team trailing by three runs or less (or four runs if the bases were loaded).
Runs created: A term to measure how many runs a player creates. Its basic formula is hits plus walks times total bases, divided by at-bats plus walks.
OPS: On-base plus slugging. Measures a batter’s ability to get on base and hit for power. It’s simply the on-base percentage plus the slugging percentage.
PECOTA: An acronym of Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. And it’s also an homage to journeyman baseball player Bill Pecota, considered a baseline average player. It’s an incredibly complex formula that forecasts a player’s performance in all of the major categories used in typical fantasy baseball games, and also forecasts production in advanced sabermetric categories.
PERA: Peripheral ERA. It’s a pitching statistic that computes the expected ERA, taking into account park-adjusted hits, walks, strikeouts and home runs allowed.
Pythagorean expectation: It’s a formula that resembles the mathematical Pythagorean theorem and is used to estimate how many games a baseball team should have won, based on how many runs a team scored and allowed. Comparing the two percentages can determine how lucky a team was.
QS: Quality start. A game in which a pitcher completes six innings, allowing no more than three runs.
RF: Range factor. Used to determine how much field a player can cover. It’s nine times putouts + assists divided by innings played.
TPR: Total player rating. It measures the value of players that allows players to be compared for different positions, teams and eras, used in the Total Baseball encyclopedias.
VORP: Value over replacement player. Basically how much a player contributes to their team compared to a fictitious player. For hitters, it’s the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute.
WAR or WARP: It represents the number of wins this player contributed, above what a replacement level hitter, fielder, and pitcher would have done.
WHIP: Walks and hits per inning pitched. It’s the average number of walks and hits allowed by the pitcher per inning. (BB + H divided by IP).
Win shares: One of the first sabermetrics statistics, it considers statistics for players in the context of their team, and assigns them a number that’s one-third of a team win, using a set of complex mathematics that takes almost 100 pages to explain in Bill James’ 2002 book, “Win Shares.”
XR: Extrapolated runs, similar to runs created, except it assigns a run value to each event, rather than a multiplicative formula.