NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Sabermetric

Sabermetrics is the analysis of A view of the playing field at Busch Stadium in Saint Louis, Missouri. Baseball is a team sport, in which a fist-sized ball is thrown by a player called a pitcher and hit with a bat. Scoring involves running and touching markers on the ground called bases. The ball... baseball through objective evidence, especially As with many sports, and perhaps even more so, statistics are very important to baseball. A seemingly intrinsic part of the game is the keeping of statistics on the achievements of the players. The practice was started by Henry Chadwick in the 19th century who devised the concepts of batting... baseball statistics. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the The Society for American Baseball Research was established in Cooperstown, New York in August of 1971. The Societys mission is to foster the research and dissemination of the history and record of baseball while generating interest in the game. SABR, which is pronounced saber and whose acronym led to... Society for American Baseball Research. It was coined by This article is about Bill James, the baseball writer and father of sabermetrics. For other individuals with the same name, see Bill James (disambiguation). Bill James (born June 18, 1949 at Mayetta, Kansas) is an important and influential baseball writer, and is its most influential statistician. Since 1977, James has... Bill James, who has been its most enthusiastic (and by far its most famous) proponent.

From David Grabiner's Sabermetric Manifesto:

Bill James defined sabermetrics as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball." Thus, sabermetrics attempts to answer objective questions about baseball, such as "which player on the Red Sox contributed the most to the team's offense?" or "How many home runs will Ken Griffey, Jr. in 2004 George Kenneth Griffey, Jr. (born November 21, 1969 in Donora, Pennsylvania) is an American Major League Baseball player. He was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where his father, Ken Griffey, Sr., played most of his best years with the Cincinnati Reds. The younger Griffey played at... Ken Griffey, Jr. hit next year?" It cannot deal with the subjective judgments which are also important to the game, such as "Who is your favorite player?" or "That was a great game."

Sabermetricians call into question traditional measures of baseball skill. For instance, Batting average is a statistic in both baseball and cricket measuring the performance of baseball hitters and cricket batsmen, respectively. Batting average in baseball In baseball, the batting average is defined as the ratio of hits to at bats. The Major League Baseball batting average championship is awarded to the... batting average is considered to be a statistic of limited usefulness because it turns out to be a poor predictor of a team's ability to score runs. Typical sabermetric reasoning would say that runs win ballgames, and so a good measure of a player's worth is his/her ability to help his/her team score more runs than the opposing team.

Accordingly, sabermetric measures - such as Bill James's Runs created (RC) is a baseball statistic invented by Bill James to estimate the number of runs a hitter contributes to his team. There are many different formulas for runs created, but the most basic one is: (H + BB)(TB)/(AB + BB) or, OBP × TB where OBP is on base... Runs created and Win Shares is a book (ISBN 1931584036) about baseball written by Bill James, published by STATS, Inc. in 2002. It takes a sabermetric approach to evaluating the contribution of individual players to their teams overall performance, and focuses primarily on the many formulae involved in computing the final number, as... Win shares or Pete Palmer's Total player rating (TPR) is a metric for measuring the value of baseball players, and to enable players to be compared against each other even when they played for different teams, at different positions, and in different eras. It was developed by sabermetrician Pete Palmer and was popularized in the... Total player rating - are usually phrased in terms of either runs or team wins; a player might be described as being worth 54 runs more than an average player at the same position over the course of a full season, for example.

Sabermetrics is concerned both with determining the value of a player in a season gone by, and with trying to predict the value of a player in the future based on his past performances. These are not the same thing. For example, a player with a high batting average one year may have been very valuable to his team, but batting average is known to be a volatile stat and relying on it to remain high in future years is often not a good principle. A sabermetrician might argue that a high In baseball statistics, a base on balls (BB), also called a walk, is used in baseball to track the performance of pitchers and batters. If a batter receives four pitches which the umpire calls balls, he is entitled to walk to first base. Receiving a base on balls does not... walk rate is a better indication that a player will retain his value in the future.

While this area of study is still in development, it has yielded many interesting insights into the game of baseball, and in the area of performance measurement generally.

Some sabermetric measurements have entered mainstream baseball usage, especially In baseball statistics, on-base plus slugging (denoted by OPS) is defined by the sum of on base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage (SLG). This statistic combines both the ability of a player to get on-base (OBP) and the players power-hitting ability (SLG). It is very popular... OPS (on-base plus slugging) and, to a lesser extent, In baseball, walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) is a sabermetric measurement of how many baserunners a pitcher is responsible for allowing per inning pitched. It gives a general measure of a pitchers ability to keep batters off base. A WHIP of around 1.15 or below will... WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched).

Contents

1 Examples of sabermetric measurements

2 Major proponents of sabermetrics

3 See also

4 External links

Examples of sabermetric measurements

In baseball statistics, on-base plus slugging (denoted by OPS) is defined by the sum of on base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage (SLG). This statistic combines both the ability of a player to get on-base (OBP) and the players power-hitting ability (SLG). It is very popular... On-base plus slugging (OPS)
Runs created (RC) is a baseball statistic invented by Bill James to estimate the number of runs a hitter contributes to his team. There are many different formulas for runs created, but the most basic one is: (H + BB)(TB)/(AB + BB) or, OBP × TB where OBP is on base... Runs created
Pythagorean expectation is a formula invented by Bill James to estimate how many games a baseball team should have won based on the number of runs they scored and allowed. The term is derived from the formulas resemblance to Pythagoras formula to compute the length of the hypotenuse of... Pythagorean expectation
Total player rating (TPR) is a metric for measuring the value of baseball players, and to enable players to be compared against each other even when they played for different teams, at different positions, and in different eras. It was developed by sabermetrician Pete Palmer and was popularized in the... Total player rating
Equivalent Average (EqA) is a baseball metric invented by Clay Davenport, and intended to express the production of hitters in a context independent of park and league effects. It represents a hitters productivity using the same scale as batting average. Thus, a hitter with an EqA over .300 is... Equivalent average (EQA)
Peripheral ERA (PERA)
In baseball, Defense Independent Pitching Statistics (DIPS), also known as DIPS ERA (dERA), is a sabermetric statistic which measures a pitchers effectiveness based only on plays which are completely under his control: home runs allowed, strikeouts, and walks. Those plays are under only the pitchers control in the... Defense Independent Pitching Statistics (DIPS)
Secondary average, or SecA, is a baseball statistic - more precisely, a sabermetric measurement of hitting performance. It is a complement to batting average, which is a simple ratio of base hits to at bats. Secondary average is a ratio of bases gained from other sources (extra base hits, walks and... Secondary average
In baseball, value over replacement player (or VORP) tells how much a player contributes offensively and defensively to his team in comparison to a fictitious replacement player, who is an average fielder at his position and a below average hitter. A replacement player performs at replacement level, which is the... Value over replacement player (VORP)
In baseball, walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) is a sabermetric measurement of how many baserunners a pitcher is responsible for allowing per inning pitched. It gives a general measure of a pitchers ability to keep batters off base. A WHIP of around 1.15 or below will... Walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP)
Win Shares is a book (ISBN 1931584036) about baseball written by Bill James, published by STATS, Inc. in 2002. It takes a sabermetric approach to evaluating the contribution of individual players to their teams overall performance, and focuses primarily on the many formulae involved in computing the final number, as... Win shares

Major proponents of sabermetrics

This article is about Bill James, the baseball writer and father of sabermetrics. For other individuals with the same name, see Bill James (disambiguation). Bill James (born June 18, 1949 at Mayetta, Kansas) is an important and influential baseball writer, and is its most influential statistician. Since 1977, James has... Bill James is widely considered the father of Sabermetrics. He began publishing his Baseball Abstracts in See also: 1976 in sports, 1978 in sports and the list of years in sports. Auto racing Stock car racing: NASCAR Championship - Cale Yarborough Cale Yarborough won the Daytona 500 USAC Racing - Tom Sneva wins the season championship Indianapolis 500 - won by A.J. Foyt. Janet Guthrie became first female... 1977 to study some questions about baseball he found interesting, and they soon became popular with a generation of thinking baseball fans. He discontinued the Abstracts after the See also: 1987 in sports, 1989 in sports and the list of years in sports. Auto Racing Stock car racing: Bobby Allison won the Daytona 500 NASCAR Championship - Bill Elliott CART Racing - Danny Sullivan won the season championship Indianapolis 500 - Rick Mears Formula One Championship - Brazil 24 hours of Le... 1988 edition, but continued to be active in the field. His two Historical Baseball Abstract editions and Win Shares is a book (ISBN 1931584036) about baseball written by Bill James, published by STATS, Inc. in 2002. It takes a sabermetric approach to evaluating the contribution of individual players to their teams overall performance, and focuses primarily on the many formulae involved in computing the final number, as... Win Shares book have continued to advance the field of sabermetrics, 25 years after he began. In See also: 2001 in sports, 2003 in sports and the list of years in sports. Auto Racing Stock car racing: Ward Burton wins the Daytona 500 NASCAR Championship - Tony Stewart Indy Racing League - Sam Hornish Jr. wins the season championship. Indianapolis 500 - Hélio Castroneves |CART Racing - Cristiano da Matta... 2002 James was hired as a special advisor to the The Boston Red Sox are a Major League Baseball team located in Boston, Massachusetts. They are in the American League East Division. They are the defending World Series champions. Founded: 1893, as the Toledo, Ohio franchise in the minor Western League. Moved to Boston when that league became the American... Boston Red Sox.

Rob Neyer is an baseball author and, since 1996, a columnist for ESPN.com. A disciple of sabermetrics legend Bill James, his column is an outlet for everyday fans to gain from the insight that statistics-centered analysis can offer. His books include Baseball Dynasties, Feeding the Green Monster, Rob... Rob Neyer is a columnist for ESPN, which stood for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, is an American cable television network dedicated to sports 24 hours a day. It was founded by Scott Rasmussen and his father Bill Rasmussen, and launched on September 7, 1979. Its signature telecast, SportsCenter, debuted with the network and aired its... ESPN's web site who has espoused sabermetrics since the mid- Events and trends Technology Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other technology Reduction in size and cost of mobile phones leads to a massive surge in their popularity Year 2000 problem (commonly known as Y2K) Microsoft Windows operating system becomes virtually ubiquitous on IBM... 1990s. He has authored or co-authored several books about baseball and is probably the most widely-read sabermetrician in the world.

Baseball Prospectus is an annual publication and web site produced by a group of sabermetricians who originally met over the This article is about the Internet, the extensive, worldwide computer network available to the public. An internet is a more general term for any set of interconnected computer networks that are connected by internetworking. Graphic representation of the WWW information network structure around Wikipedia, as represented by hyperlinks The Internet... Internet.

There is another former major league player named Billy Bean. William Lamar Billy Beane (born March 29, 1962 in Orlando, Florida) is a former Major League Baseball player and the current general manager of the Oakland Athletics. Beane, who grew up in the San Diego area, was a first-round... Billy Beane has been the In Major League Baseball, the General Manager typically controls player transactions and bears the primary responsibility on behalf of the ballclub during contract discussions with players. Current MLB General Managers American League National League See also Manager Categories: Baseball | Baseball executives ... general manager of the The Oakland Athletics are a Major League Baseball team based in Oakland, California. They are in the Western Division of the American League. The team is often called the As. Founded: 1893, as the Indianapolis, Indiana franchise in the minor Western League. Moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1900 when... Oakland Athletics since See also: 1996 in sports, 1998 in sports and the list of years in sports. Auto Racing Stock car racing: Jeff Gordon is the youngest driver ever to win the Daytona 500 NASCAR Championship - Jeff Gordon Indy Racing League - Indianapolis 500 - Arie Luyendyk CART Racing - Alex Zanardi won the season... 1997. Although not a public proponent of sabermetrics, it has been widely noted that Beane has steered the team during his tenure according to sabermetric principles: Batters should try to get walks, defense is less important than people think, pitchers should be able to strike people out, spending amateur draft picks on high school players is a bad use of resources, etc. What's remarkable about this is that so few other teams in baseball apply these principles, thus making the Athletics the first, best test case for sabermetrics in action. In See also: 2002 in sports, 2004 in sports and the list of years in sports. Auto Racing Stock car racing: Michael Waltrip wins rain-shortened Daytona 500 Winston Cup Championship won by Matt Kenseth for Ford. Nextel signs deal to replace R.J. Reynolds as title sponsor of series Indianapolis... 2003, Michael Lewis is an American contemporary non-fiction author. His bestselling books include Liars Poker, The New New Thing and Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Lewis is married to former MTV news correspondent Tabitha Soren. External links http://literati.net/Lewis/ BBC television programme The Future... Michael Lewis published Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is a book by Michael M. Lewis in 2003 about the general manager of the Major League Baseball team Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane, and his teams approach to running the organization. The central premise of Moneyball is that the collected wisdom... Moneyball, a book about Beane and how his approach to running the Athletics works.

External links

"The Sabermetric Manifesto" (http://www.baseball1.com/bb-data/grabiner/manifesto.html), by David Grabiner
Rob Neyer's page at ESPN (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/neyer/index)
Baseball Prospectus (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/)
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) (http://www.sabr.org)
Project Retrosheet (http://www.retrosheet.org/)
Baseball Reference (http://www.baseball-reference.com)
StatHead.com (http://www.stathead.com/)
Baseball Think Factory -- a discussion forum (http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org)

Categories: Baseball statistics

Results from FactBites:

Sabermetrics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (1491 words)
	Sabermetrics is the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially baseball statistics.
	Sabermetrics is concerned both with determining the value of a player in a season gone by, and with trying to predict the value of a player in the future based on his past performances.
	Bill James is widely considered the father of sabermetrics due to his extensive series of books, although a number of less well known SABR researchers in the early 1970s provided a foundation for his work.

More results at FactBites »

COMMENTARY

Share your thoughts, questions and commentary here

Want to know more?
Search encyclopedia, statistics and forums:

Feeds | Contact
The Wikipedia article included on this page is licensed under the GFDL.
Images may be subject to relevant owners' copyright.
All other elements are (c) copyright NationMaster.com 2003-5. All Rights Reserved.
Usage implies agreement with terms.