Baseball statistics play an important role in evaluating the progress of a player or team.
In baseball statistics, on-base percentage (OBP) measures how frequently a batter reaches base. An official Major League Baseball (MLB) statistic since 1984, it is sometimes referred to as on-base average (OBA), as it is rarely presented as a true percentage.
On-base plus slugging (OPS) is a sabermetric baseball statistic calculated as the sum of a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage. The ability of a player both to get on base and to hit for power, two important offensive skills, are represented. An OPS of .800 or higher in Major League Baseball puts the player in the upper echelon of hitters. Typically, the league leader in OPS will score near, and sometimes above, the 1.000 mark.
In sports analytics, sabermetrics is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetricians collect and summarize the relevant data from this in-game activity to answer specific questions. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research, founded in 1971. The term "sabermetrics" was coined by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and is often considered its most prominent advocate and public face.
George William James is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he termed sabermetrics in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose.
Runs created (RC) is a baseball statistic invented by Bill James to estimate the number of runs a hitter contributes to their team.
Pythagorean expectation is a sports analytics formula devised by Bill James to estimate the percentage of games a baseball team "should" have won based on the number of runs they scored and allowed. Comparing a team's actual and Pythagorean winning percentage can be used to make predictions and evaluate which teams are over-performing and under-performing. The name comes from the formula's resemblance to the Pythagorean theorem.
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 hitter's productivity using the same scale as batting average. Thus, a hitter with an EqA over .300 is a very good hitter, while a hitter with an EqA of .220 or below is poor. An EqA of .260 is defined as league average.
In baseball, defense-independent pitching statistics (DIPS) is intended to measure a pitcher's effectiveness based only on statistics that do not involve fielders. These include home runs allowed, strikeouts, hit batters, walks, and, more recently, fly ball percentage, ground ball percentage, and line drive percentage. By focusing on these statistics and ignoring what happens once a ball is put in play, which – on most plays – the pitcher has little control over, DIPS claims to offer a clearer picture of the pitcher's true ability.
In baseball statistics, Defense-Independent ERA (dERA) is a statistic that projects what a pitcher's earned run average (ERA) would have been, if not for the effects of defense and luck on the actual games in which he pitched. The statistic was first devised by Voros McCracken in 1999.
Total average is a baseball statistic devised by sportswriter Thomas Boswell and introduced in the 1978. It was also described in his 1982 article "Welcome to the world of Total Average where a walk is as good as a hit". It is designed to measure a hitter's overall offensive contributions, on the basis that "all bases are created equal". The statistic was included in issues of Inside Sports.
Speed Score, often simply abbreviated to Spd, is a statistic used in Sabermetric studies to evaluate a baseball player's speed. It was invented by Bill James, and first appeared in the 1987 edition of the Bill James Baseball Abstract.
Frank Alfred Linzy is an American former professional baseball player, used almost exclusively as a relief pitcher. Over the course of his Major League Baseball (MLB) career, Linzy played for the San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals (1970–1971), Milwaukee Brewers (1972–1973), and Philadelphia Phillies (1974). He batted and threw right-handed.
Defense-Independent Component ERA (DICE) is a 21st-century variation on Component ERA, one of an increasing number of baseball sabermetrics that fall under the umbrella of defense independent pitching statistics. DICE was created by Clay Dreslough in 2001.
Extrapolated Runs (XR) is a baseball statistic invented by sabermetrician Jim Furtado to estimate the number of runs a hitter contributes to his team. XR measures essentially the same thing as Bill James' Runs Created, but it is a linear weights formula that assigns a run value to each event, rather than a multiplicative formula like James' creation.
The 1963 Los Angeles Dodgers were led by pitcher Sandy Koufax, who won both the Cy Young Award and the Most Valuable Player Award. The team went 99–63 to win the National League title by six games over the runner-up St. Louis Cardinals and beat the New York Yankees in four games to win the 1963 World Series, marking the first time that the Yankees were ever swept in the postseason.
In baseball, wOBA is a statistic, based on linear weights, designed to measure a player's overall offensive contributions per plate appearance. It is formed from taking the observed run values of various offensive events, dividing by a player's plate appearances, and scaling the result to be on the same scale as on-base percentage. Unlike statistics like OPS, wOBA attempts to assign the proper value for each type of hitting event. It was created by Tom Tango and his coauthors for The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball.
Component ERA or ERC is a baseball statistic invented by Bill James. It attempts to forecast a pitcher's earned run average (ERA) from the number of hits and walks allowed rather than the standard formula of average number of earned runs per nine innings. ERC allows one to take a fresh look at a pitcher's performance and gauge if his results are more or less than the sum of its parts.
Wins Above Replacement or Wins Above Replacement Player, commonly abbreviated to WAR or WARP, is a non-standardized sabermetric baseball statistic developed to sum up "a player's total contributions to his team". A player's WAR value is claimed to be the number of additional wins his team has achieved above the number of expected team wins if that player were substituted with a replacement-level player: a player who may be added to the team for minimal cost and effort.
On-base plus slugging plus runs batted in (OPSBI) is a baseball statistic calculated as the normalized sum of a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage added to their runs batted in. Former Major League Baseball general manager, Jim Bowden, created this statistic. Hall of Fame outfielder, Babe Ruth, holds both the single-season and career OPSBI records.
