Introduction
For all that, baseball turns out to be, in many senses of the word, a game of numbers, and for a long stretch of time, MLB has been home to the rich clientele of fans who fall in love with numbers.
Whether it is the old school statistics of batting averages and earned run averages or the newer advanced stats like WAR and BABIP, MLB indeed has been the land of statistics. Do you fall into that category of people wanting to get a little more into the game? One way you can do this perhaps is by learning how to analyze MLB game statistics.
Are you a fan, a fantasist baseball player, or someone looking to open up your knowledge of the game? Understanding MLB statistics is very informative and gives depth to the love of the game. A very good understanding of MLB statistics is quite informative and gives depth to the love of the game.
It will deconstruct the heavy material on types of MLB statistics, how one reads them, and how it thereby goes about influencing individual performance as well as general team dynamics. It would be a relevant, interesting, and informative article because I would love to share some of my personal anecdotes in my journey to understand baseball statistics.
Table of Contents
1. Why Baseball and Statistics tantalizingly swing together
This goes such a long way in forming such an excellent backdrop against which to frame why baseball and statistics are always kind of joined at the hip. Baseball, for one thing, is a stop-start game, unlike most other sports whose games flow continuously without much distinction between events easily isolated and quantified-say, between a pitch, a hit, or a stolen base. Baseball thus lends itself to statistical analysis.
It’s a game I grew up on, baseball fields played and watched, really even to this day continues to amaze me with the world of numbers as a means of explaining the game that I loved.
To me, at this youthful age, what was important were hits for home runs by my favorite player or batting average; yet what formed inside me over time lay hidden beneath statistics about baseball.
It was from this point that I started compiling more mature metrics-those which could tell a story from what brought them out, how such numbers influenced predictors of what was yet to come.
Statistics serve many purposes for baseball. They can be used by fans to track the movement of a player, or any team; however they can be used in order to help coaches and managers make crucial decisions at just the precise moment. The competitive world of fantasy baseball also feeds on statistics. And with that, let’s get into how you, too, can begin to analyze those numbers for yourself.
2. Vintage MLB Statistics: A Bit Complexity
OK. Time to let some of the pretty pedestrian, old-timey baseball stats die. Seriously, if you are relatively new to the game, then you probably already know these numbers. This will give you a primer to dig deeper into some of the esoteric metrics when you are ready.
2.1 Batting Statistics
Batting Average: The last naked baseball statistic, batting average is, in reality nothing other than hits divided by at-bats. It’s a pretty good barometer of how effective a hitter is-unless it isn’t, as walks, hit-by-pitches, and extra-base hits aren’t included in batting average.
Example: If that batter in 100 at-bats, he gets a hit 30 times, that person’s batting average would be .300, meaning the batter gets a hit 30 percent of the time.
On-Base Percentage (OBP): This metric is much more inclusive than batting average and includes walks and hit-by-pitches in its measurement. Of course, this will paint a much more vivid picture about how often he is hitting or reaching base.
Example: For instance, a batter who has 30 hits, 5 walks, and 2 hit-by-pitches in 110 at-bat appearances is said to have an OBP of .336.
Slugging Percentage (SLG): The term SLG refers to the total sum of bases a player earns per at bat. While batting average throws equal weight on all the hits, slugging percentage throws extra weight at extra-base hits: all the doubles count, all the triples count, all the home runs count for three, while all singles count for one.
Example: The slugging of a batter who gets 50 total bases in a 100 AB would pay him.
OPS: OPS is the combination of a metric that takes into consideration OBP along with SLG. It adds numbers all together, therefore creating an overall look to what a player can hit.
Arguably this, makes up part of the favorite metrics when talking about an overall measure of a hitter’s performance in his season.
For instance: A batter who has a .336 on-base percent and a .500 slugging percent. This then gives his OPS at .836.
Personal Example:
As far as fantasy baseball is concerned, the only thing that ever really seemed to matter to me when I first started was picking players who have a high average-it just seemed obvious, didn’t it? That high average=good. Of course, after all those seasons of perennial losing, I became interested in OPS and on-base percentage before my drafts.
2.2 Pitching Statistics
Earned Run Average, or ERA: Perhaps it is the oldest statistic in pitching that measures how many runs an earned to a pitcher for every nine innings that he has pitched. Now, while one might look at it in a very simple and traditional sense as a parameter that tells how effective a pitcher is, it seems that it does not take into consideration fielding luck or performance.
For instance, if during a match, a pitcher has allowed 30 runs to be scored in 150 innings, then his ERA would be equal to 1.80.
WHIP: Walks + Hits per Innings Pitched: This is the amount of base runners he is allowing into the game. Almost a sum of walks and hits, taken per innings pitched. For this reason mostly, such a number tells us how many times he is permitting batters to reach the bases and thus such a commonly tracked number.
Example: A pitcher walks 120 and strikes 90 innings so his WHIP would be 1.33.
K’s (K) and Strikeout per Nine Innings K/9: For my money, quite frankly, no better yardstick exists with which to measure the strength of a pitcher over batters. K/9 calculates those batters fanned by an average pitcher over nine innings, one measure of strikeoutability, if you will, within the framework of a season.
Example: If a pitcher strikes out 90 in 100 innings pitched then, that pitchers K/9 is 8.1.
Wins and Losses (W-L Record): For more than a century, the win-loss record has been used to tell how good a pitcher is, but the analysts and fans eventually came to realize that not even a win-loss record can give an accurate measure of a pitcher as it can be dictated by the offenses his team provides and the bullpen that he has to rely on.
Example: A 15-10 pitcher might well be doing a little better than his record is saying if the ERA and WHIP he is buoyed up on are pretty high and pretty commensurate with the win total.
3. Advanced Metrics: More Than
And of course, analysis of the game has kept pace with the game itself. Advanced metrics-often called in the press and popular culture “sabermetrics”-offer a much more detailed, nuanced view of performance by player. The numbers run deep in every aspect of baseball, whether real-life baseball strategy or fantasy baseball, enabling teams and fans alike to understand what’s happening on the field.
3.1 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
WAR probably gets as close as possible to actual approximation of any meaningful whole number in baseball, as it at least tries to stuff the contribution a player makes toward his team into one number by way of trying to measure how many more games he is worth winning above a replacement level player at the same position.
Maybe the most useful feature of WAR: it reduces batting and pitching contributions to one number. Although approached much, much differently, both Baseball-Reference and Manographs construct perhaps the most intuitive method of applying to yield a big number for the overall value of a player.
Personal anecdote:
I even recall the first time that I ever heard of WAR and, in fact, it was only passing conversation with another baseball enthusiast. Now, he’d be going on about Mike Trout and his 8+-WAR season and honest to goodness, until then, I literally wouldn’t have any idea what the heck he was talking about.
But once I did my research it completely turned my opinion on how to grade players around. Now, superstars are minus batting average or home runs as measures of great skill.
3.2 FIP
FIP is probably one of the advanced pitching metrics, based on an attempt to determine how a given pitcher would have performed behind an independent defense. There, people in analytics reviewed only results that strictly fell outside of a pitcher’s control: strikes, walks, hit-by-pitches and home runs. FIP will become a far stronger forward predictive tool than ERA is because FIP removes the effects of the team’s defense and luck.
4. Team Statistics Overview
Of course, individual stats are self-evidently important but baseball is always a team game. Such an appreciation of team statistics brings into view how each of its players, taken collectively as a team, can impact wins and losses. In series analysis, such considerations cannot fail to elaborate on pursuit of playoff chances on the basis of team stats.
4.1 Run Differential
Simple yet potent team stats are runs differential. If you take the total number of runs a team has allowed other teams to score and subtract from that the total number of runs they’ve put together, you will have for the most part an idea as to how good a team is.
Mostly teams with a positive run differential are successful because they score more often than their opponents. A ten-runs differential is more than enough in and of itself to justify arguing for one team over most games in the battle for a playoff berth, though they hardly seem translated into their record.
Bullpen begins to get into tight games, and the cocktail of any competing team in such terms has it as the most important ingredient. Bullpens statistics for such purposes speak to bullpen ERA, saves, and inherited runners stranded-so it basically provides a broad synopsis as to whether or not the relief pitchers for a team can get the job done in a clutch situation.
The clutch stats measure batting of a team or player that goes well in the situation but happens when there is a runner in scoring position, or doing the same in close games in the late game. Even if most of the statistics were highly reported and debated by sabermetric circles to exist, it would still explain why some teams tend to do much better in games that are close compared to others.
5. MLB Statistics Used to Fantasy Baseball
More exciting than fantasy baseball? Well, there’s a whole lot more to baseball statistics. You’ll be able to have draft picks, a treasure trove of trades, and even be able to set lineups for games with that power to rip apart stats if you’re the fantasy player.
Winning fantasy baseball games more often than not boils down to how one is able to break down numbers and then try to predict what is likely to happen in the near future.
5.1 Keys Stats for Fantasy Hitters
These are the numbers that find their ways into hits selections because these will most clearly speak to a player’s ability in terms of creating offense. Batting average isn’t good enough; you want to monitor the players whose OBP or SLG reveals some amount of extreme value on the surface, especially in leagues that reward home runs, doubles, and walks.
Another fantasy baseball great, only not sexy compared with some of the other stats, is BABIP. It’s going to find guys out there who are probably just over their heads because luck’s been on their side. If one of your players has a very high BABIP, he’s probably going to be due for a scoring contraction; if he’s got a low BABIP, this guy is probably about to break out.
5.2 Fantasy Pitching Key Stats While ERA is a great stat to use, it’s not the only one that can help make a pitching decision. Here are two others that are very nice to track as well: FIP and WHIP. One thing that era doesn’t account for is a strangled defense, sometimes that is offered up for a pitcher; therefore, FIP really gives you a better feel for the real talent that a pitcher has; WHIP also is pretty useful in that regard because it captures number of baserunners allowed to reach in a season and the pitchers that have the lowest tend to be used the most in fantasy leagues.
K/9 is also a very strong number for fantasy pitchers, particularly in strikeout bonus leagues. That is, the pitcher will be much more likely to qualify to be on this list and consequently accrue points even if the batter doesn’t start and pitches into the late innings of a game.
I remember drafting a pitcher in fantasy baseball who, at draft time, sported an extremely low ERA with a relatively high FIP. I paid not much attention to FIP at the time but, sure enough, the ERA of this pitcher quickly began its ascent and I wished I would have sold high when I could have. From that point on, FIP became one of my easiest default statistics for grading fantasy pitchers.
6. Conclusion: This is MLB Statistics Ends
Game statistics of the MLB are the counts of numbers, though they do attempt to measure the story of every game and the depth making baseball. You may be that ordinary fan in the park who wants only to have fun playing the game, or you might be that fantasy baseball player on a quest for that extra little push. And though you hail from a certain school of thought, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to care about just about everything to do with MLB stats. That’s it.
The more the old and new statistics you know, the more you can love-not just in strategy but through just performances by the players and the dynamics of a team-and just like that, you will think you are being more related to that baseball world, even debating which one is next for MVP or even figuring out what happened in those pivotal moments in last night’s game.
Grab up a scorecard, get online to your favorite baseball statistics website and dig down to number-nitpicks-you’ll see that knowing your way around MLB stats makes the game fun to play.
That’s the way to unravel all that wonderful MLB game statistics like an insider. Sit there in the ballpark with a hot dog in your hand, or enjoy the box score from the comfort of your couch-and you now have the tools to look a little deeper into the numbers that make baseball interesting.
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