Sabermetrics 101: An Introduction

Let start off with the Wikipedia definition of the term, Sabermetrics. Sabermetrics is the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially baseball statistics. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. It was coined by Bill James, who was among its first proponents and has long been its most prominent and public advocate.
In the next few posts that I do here in RBI Magazine, we will explore some traditional sabermetric tools of the trade. This methodology was made famous by Bill James, but it really didn’t get public notoriety until Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball hit bookstores. In his book, Lewis follows the change in methodology in evaluating talent in the Oakland A’s organization that was spearheaded by GM Billy Beane.

Beane changed his methodology in an attempt to find a creative way to compete with the big market teams such as the NY Yankees, Boston Red Sox, NY Mets, LA Dodgers and Angels (to name a few).

And it worked! The small market team from Oakland, CA became annual participants in October baseball by either beating out the Angels for the division title or via the Wild Card slot. This has worked for them until, as usual, the rest of baseball caught up with them, including the big market teams like Boston.

What does this mean for the average fan? You no longer have to rely only on offensive statistical categories such as batting average (BA), runs scored (R), runs batted in (RBI), home runs (HR), but now you have on base percentage (OBP), on base plus slugging (OPS), runs created (RC), value over replacement players (VORP) and a host of others.

These tools can make or break your fantasy team if you have the time to delve into it deeply enough. They are also to stat geek’s tools of the trade and the love of baseball economists everywhere.

If you love stats and don’t yet know much about Sabermetrics, you’re going to love this series and if love is too strong of a word for you, then we’ll say that you’re really going to enjoy the next few posts in this series.

If you’re a novice with Sabermetrics, feel free to ask me to cover a specific statistic and I’ll be happy to give it a go or point you in the right direction if it’s beyond the scope of this series. See you next time…

Peter also writes once a month for Seamheads.com and on a regular basis on his own site, Baseball Reflections.com.

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http://www.baseballreflections.com