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From WAR to WHIP, Baseball’s ‘New’ Stats and Acronyms Are Mind-Blowing

VaselineJuly 16, 2024

0 5 minutes read

From WAR to WHIP, Baseball’s ‘New’ Stats and Acronyms Are Mind-Blowing

Confession: I have not baseball. Not the Brewers, not the league, not the World Series.

There are a lot of reasons why: the disappointing strike of 1994, the boring ultramarathon games, and the fact that Robin “The Kid” Yount didn’t get to play until his retirement years. I celebrated my birthday at County Stadium with my softball glove and Cecil Cooper and Ben Oglivie buttons. Then I grew up and completely ignored the Mark McGwire game to cover football and basketball and everything else.

Decades went by. And the game evolved so much in that time, and the stats, the specialties, the hyper-specific scenarios that yielded analysis and stats followed. There are things called WAR and WHIP and OBP+. There’s a “hard hit rate” that makes sense, but what the hell is rOBA?

There’s Pull%, Cent% and Oppo% – something about batters and their tendencies – and Standard field game Pos and lgRFGs. Bah.

I now look at baseball the way a baby boomer looks at an Uber. You tell me to trust it, but I don’t… and I can’t remember my app password anyway.

Still, there’s something about this year, 2024. Major League Baseball finally got the pitchers and batters to pick up the pace in 2023, and this season, these National League Central-leading Brewers were … intriguing. Everyone in the locker room is talking about the super-low expectations, and we all know that underdog journeys really do make the best stories. It was time to face my fears — I don’t know this game, I don’t understand these intricacies – and see if I could get back to baseball. And learn its peculiar language.

Where to start?

Two places, of course.

Media. Watch matches, listen to broadcasts and podcasts and read news.

And statistics – because no other sport is as dependent on data as this one.

A logical place to start was Gold Glove winner, MVP and all-around good guy Christian Yelich.

Okay, one of the statistical websites — baseball-reference.com — has 12 pages. Batting average, plate appearances, home runs, stolen bases, RBIs. It starts with the usual stuff, everything makes sense.

And then… OBP, OPS and OPS plus. And… batting player value.

Runs from the field.

Running away from positional scarcity?

Runs better than average.

Wins above average.

Works from replacement level.

‘Like programming a VCR’

My anxiety level is rising. This is clearly a foreign language. I contact Jeff Levering, the very friendly, very knowledgeable Brewers radio announcer. He will help translate.

“I’ll have to study it again, some of these stats are like programming a VCR,” he replied via text, and it’s funny in more ways than one.

Okay, in the meantime, we can always count on announcers Brian Anderson and Bill Schroeder. They were covering a game between the Brewers and Boston Red Sox on June 2, discussing the National League batting percentage leaders when they asked the question: Does Yelich have a shot at the NL batting title?

Otherwise: A player needs 3.2 plate appearances per team game to qualify for the batting title. Yelich missed some time in mid-April …

Schröder: …I don’t know where they come up with 3.2…

Otherwise: It’s a good number…

Schröder: …Can we hold Dom accountable for that?

Otherwise: He probably knows; he will sound as if he knows that, even though he doesn’t know it, that that’s the best thing about him…

Schröder: …It has something to do with the 162-game schedule, I don’t know.

Otherwise: So 3.2?

Schröder: A kind of mathematics, yes.

Otherwise: They said there would be no math on Sundays.

While I’m doing a Google search − who is Dom, Brewers? − Anderson and Schroeder jump back on topic. Their man Dom reports that the number is actually 3.1, not 3.2, and… what were we even talking about?

Christian Yelich.

“I have no idea. No idea.”

He rolls his eyes—just a little. It’s four hours before another game in a summer of endless games, and the 32-year-old veteran has probably heard every question there ever was. God, it must be getting old. But these stats! They make for endless conversation and debate, and Yelich is a newly inducted member of an elite 200 club—career home runs and steals. So Yelich must have a great perspective on all this; which stats are good and which are a joke; and which are actually meaningful and which are useful, and …

“Yeah, I don’t know… I don’t even know how… how they collected“, Yelich said hesitantly.

Uh. Sure. But they’re interesting, right?

“I don’t even look at my stats; I can’t tell you any of my stats right now. I have no idea. No idea,” he said. “They don’t matter until the end of the season because they change so much. So I don’t look at them.”

Oh. But… generally speaking, there must be some statistic that is valuable?

“Not really. People talk about it – the media and the fans. I don’t know. Players, like – we don’t really care.”

Awkward silence. It’s not a slammed door on this story idea, but wow, if He doesn’t matter, should We? My anxiety alarms are blaring. This is the MVP who has been coming to Bucks games to other MVP in town. This is a respected man in Milwaukee. And he’s killing this statistics project before it even starts. Is he serious? One last lame attempt: BABIP? Does he care? Does he care?

“Wins.” He grins.

Okay bye.

But it makes sense. If someone like Yelich works, trains and plays the way he does, what is the purpose of looking at numbers and trends?

“I don’t know why you would want to subject yourself to looking at your stuff like every day,” Yelich said. “I care about winning and trying to help the team win.”

Okay. This is fine. Everything is fine.

That’s actually quite good.

That means the rest of us have the space to try to decode the game’s numerical quirks and statistical quarks, without the pressure to pretend we know the game.

Let’s go to the yard. Hey, at least baseball is an inviting spectator sport, unlike the dizzying rush of football and the frenetic pace of basketball. Baseball is polite, you can gather your herd, find your spot, and settle in to take in the weather, the people around you, and the smell of grilling hot dogs before you have to be alert. Because nothing ever happens in the first inning.

(Does a fact check) Oh. Uh. Sorry. Wrong. Turns out the first inning was actually the highest-scoring inning in baseball – usually, historically, so it’s the most action-packed in some ways.

Of course there are statistics for that.

Available this week:

Part 2: What do the Brewers think of the stats? The players and the manager have a slightly different opinion.
Part 3: A message from the nerds: These are the stats you need to follow.
Part 4: Still confused about statistics? Just like with your technology questions, ask the kids to explain.

VaselineJuly 16, 2024

0 5 minutes read

‘Like programming a VCR’

“I have no idea. No idea.”

Vaseline

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