Mack On Baseball – Chapter  4 – Statistics – An Overview

"Baseball fans are junkies, and their heroin is the statistic."

 - Robert S. Weider

"Baseball isn't statistics - baseball is (Joe) DiMaggio rounding second."

                               - Jimmy Breslin

“You can be in my dream if I can be in yours…”

-         Bob Dylan 

I guess you must have statistics if you keep score. Some sports don’t. You’ll never read about a player who led his dodge ball team in hits per throws.

Baseball statistics were pretty simply when I grew up. All anyone cares around were wins, home runs, and runs batted in. The newspapers would print out the top ten leaders in various categories including strikeouts, runs scored, and stolen bases, but, trust me, it was wins, homers, and ribbys that turned fans on.

Pitchers were judged solely on their earned run average (ERA). I remember questioning this early on and thought there should be some degree of blame placed on someone who allows an unearned run to score by pitching to a new batter that hits that runner in. I guess that made me an early saber-dude.

I immediately fell in love with Dan Okrent when he invented WHIP. I remember watching two pitchers go up against each other during a day game at Shea. Doc Gooden pitched the first inning and mowed down the order, 1-2-3. The opposing pitcher, whose name escapes me, gave up two hits, walked another, but managed to get the sixth batter that inning to hit into a double play. The inning ended, tied 0-0, but I went away from that moment thinking it was unfair that the visiting pitcher would wind up with the same 0.00 ERA as Gooden.

WHIP solved this dilemma.

Simply put, “WHIP” means “walks and hits per inning pitched”. Wow, what a great fucking idea that was! All of a sudden, Doc had a WHIP of 0.00 and the other guy’s was 3.00.

You notice this doesn’t include any runners that get on base from an error. Errors have nothing to do with a pitcher’s effectiveness on the mound, even if it is he that makes the error (you’d also then have to rename this to WEHIP); however, your WHIP can still go up after an error is made. This is where Okrent was truly a genius. ERA’s don’t change after an error. The opposing team could pound out ten runs after a key error and a bad pitcher is off the hook.

Then, the world went crazy.

EQA, UZR, FIP, xFIP (what’s that? A porn version of FIP?), VORP, BsR, BABIP, and DIPS

Is it really necessary to keep breaking down what a player does either on the mound or with a bat in their hands?

Frankly, there are other factors I’m still waiting for someone to start breaking out.

How about:

·        How many times did the catcher walk to the mound and calm down a pitcher that was close to going over the edge?

·        What was a player’s average amount of foul balls hit, after two strikes, and before getting base either though a hit or a walk?

·        How many addition tickets were sold before a certain ballplayer was scheduled to be in the lineup?

Look, I know Jerry Grote wasn’t the greatest catcher of all time. And, yeah, he only hit .252/.312/.351/.663 in 1969. But I know, in my heart, that the Mets would not have won the World Series that year, no less even get there, without him behind the plate.

It’s not the Ron Swoboda catch in the outfield or the crazy home runs by Al Weis that make a team the last one standing. No, it’s the steady, all-season play of people like Cleon Jones, Tommy Agee, Art Shamsky, Ron Taylor, and Ken Boswell.

It’s easy to remember Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and Gary Gentry.

But how do you “stat-out” the key homeruns by Donn Clendenon or the key innings by Jack Dilauro?

Dilauro was a no-named lefty that pitched only two years in the pros, one being 1969 for the Mets. He was traded to the Mets in 1968 for someone named Hector Valle. He might not have participated in the playoffs in 1969, but his 2.40 ERA for the 63.2-IP he did throw that season, still stand as the third best all-time among Mets pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched for the team (Carlos Diaz, Billy Wagner)]

What’s the statistic for someone this valuable?

Statistics are great, but there’s a lot more to this game than who did more than someone else. The 2011 Mets had the sixth top batting average in all of baseball. What did that get them?

And, which team had the best OPS, the so-called most important stat in the game?

It was the Boston Red Sox, that didn’t make the playoffs. They also led the league in OBP.