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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.
Clay Davenport is a baseball sabermetrician who co-founded Baseball Prospectus (BP) in 1996. He co-edited several of the Baseball Prospectus annual volumes and is a writer for BaseballProspectus.com. Much of his work for BP was behind the scenes, where he maintained and implemented advanced statistics for the website.
In baseball, value over replacement player is a statistic popularized by Keith Woolner that demonstrates how much a hitter or pitcher contributes to their team in comparison to a replacement-level player who is an average fielder at that position and a below average hitter. A replacement player performs at "replacement level," which is the level of performance an average team can expect when trying to replace a player at minimal cost, also known as "freely available talent."
Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It can be valuable in areas rich with recorded information; analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming, and operations research to quantify performance.
In baseball statistics, pitch count is the number of pitches thrown by a pitcher in a game.
StatSoft is the original developer of Statistica. Dell acquired it in March 2014. Statistica is an analytics software portfolio that provides enterprise and desktop software for statistics, data analysis, data management, data visualization, data mining, which is also called predictive analytics and quality control.
Statistica is an advanced analytics software package originally developed by StatSoft and currently maintained by TIBCO Software Inc. Statistica provides data analysis, data management, statistics, data mining, machine learning, text analytics and data visualization procedures.
Baseball Prospectus (BP) is an organization that publishes a website, BaseballProspectus.com, devoted to the sabermetric analysis of baseball. BP has a staff of regular columnists and provides advanced statistics as well as player and team performance projections on the site. Since 1996 the BP staff has also published a Baseball Prospectus annual as well as several other books devoted to baseball analysis and history.
Advanced statistics in basketball refers to the analysis of basketball statistics using objective evidence. APBRmetrics takes its name from the acronym APBR, which stands for the Association for Professional Basketball Research.
Murray Chass is an American baseball blogger. He previously wrote for The New York Times and before that the Associated Press on baseball and sports legal and labor relations. In 2003 the Baseball Writers' Association of America honored him with the J. G. Taylor Spink Award. He took a buyout from the Times, along with Supreme Court writer Linda Greenhouse and dozens of others, in April 2008.
Catcher's ERA (CERA) in baseball statistics is the earned run average of the pitchers pitching when the catcher in question is catching. Its primary purpose is to measure a catcher's game-calling, rather than his effect on the opposing team's running game. Craig Wright first described the concept of CERA in his 1989 book The Diamond Appraised. With it, Wright developed a method of determining a catcher's effect on a team's pitching staff by comparing pitchers' performance when playing with different catchers.
PECOTA, an acronym for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, is a sabermetric system for forecasting Major League Baseball player performance. The word is a backronym based on the name of journeyman major league player Bill Pecota, who, with a lifetime batting average of .249, is perhaps representative of the typical PECOTA entry. PECOTA was developed by Nate Silver in 2002–2003 and introduced to the public in the book Baseball Prospectus 2003. Baseball Prospectus (BP) has owned PECOTA since 2003; Silver managed PECOTA from 2003 to 2009. Beginning in Spring 2009, BP assumed responsibility for producing the annual forecasts, making 2010 the first baseball season for which Silver played no role in producing PECOTA projections.
Craig R. Wright is a baseball writer and historian who pioneered the use of sabermetrics in major league baseball.
Christina Kahrl is one of the co-founders of Baseball Prospectus. She is the former executive editor of the think tank's website, BaseballProspectus.com, the former managing editor for their annual publication, former writer and editor for ESPN.com, and is currently sports editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. She is a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Keith Law is an American baseball writer for The Athletic. He previously wrote for ESPN.com and ESPN Scouts, Inc from 2006 – 2019. He was formerly a writer for Baseball Prospectus and worked in the front office for the Toronto Blue Jays. He is a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Sig Mejdal is the assistant general manager for the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball.
Drew Cannon is an American statistician and sports writer who currently works on the Boston Celtics staff.
Muthu Alagappan is a former medical resident known for his professional basketball analytics. He was born in England and raised in Texas. During college at Stanford University, he began an internship at big data startup company Ayasdi, where he leveraged their software on basketball statistics to determine 13 distinct positions of play. After he spoke at the 2012 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, several professional teams began to use the company's software. He was given the top prize at the conference, and GQ called his work both "a new frontier for the NBA" and "Muthuball"—an allusion to Moneyball baseball statistical analysis known for revolutionizing the sport. Forbes included him in their 2012 and 2013 "30 Under 30" list of influential people in the sports industry. His work has received mention in The New York Times, ESPN, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and Slate.
Sports analytics are collections of relevant historical statistics that can provide a competitive advantage to a team or individual by helping to inform players, coaches and other staff and help facilitate decision-making both during and prior to sporting events. The term "sports analytics" was popularized in mainstream sports culture following the release of the 2011 film Moneyball. In this film, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane relies heavily on the use of baseball analytics to build a competitive team on a minimal budget, building upon and extending the established practice of Sabermetrics.
Sherri Nichols is an American software engineer, data scientist, and baseball statistician most known for her contribution to baseball's Sabermetrics movement. Growing up loving baseball and math, Nichols fused the two passions together to start analyzing baseball in a stats-driven manner. Her influence on the infant stages of the Sabermetrics movement in the 1980s-1990s can be depicted from various works such as Nichols' Law of Catcher Defense, her work collecting play-by-play data, and most notably her cocreation of Defensive Average. Nichols' assertiveness and knowledge has greatly influenced other notable baseball statisticians and paved the way for other women to enter the male dominated industry.
References
- Kristi Birth, "Cogito Interview: Keith Woolner, Baseball Statistician," Cogito.org, August 22, 2008.
- Rob Neyer, "The World According to VORP," ESPN.com, February 2, 2007.
- Keith Woolner, "In Person: A Career Home Run," Science Careers: From the Journal Science, January 11, 2008.