Sabermetrics

= = Sabermetrics are the whole basis of moneyball. They are a new set of statistics that evaluate a players overall value to a team by looking at how he helps a team win. These stats would show that player A who gets on base 40% of the time but only gets a hit 25% of the time is much more valuable in terms of wins than player B who gets a hit 30% of the time but only gets on base 35% of the time. However, because the only stats that people paid any attention to were homeruns, batting average, and other classic stats that are easy to calculate, player B would look better on paper with a .300 batting average compared to player A’s .250. Sabermetrics say that on base percentage is more valuable than batting average. Player A’s on base percentage (OBP) is .400 while player B’s is only .350. without the sabermetric stat, OBP, anyone would obviously say that player B is the more valuable player. The moneyball philosophy says that you should want player A on your team because first, he is a better player. But more importantly, player A will cost much less money than player B would because other teams would not know that A is better than B.

The most important sabermetrics to understand are: on base percentage (OBP), wins above replacement (WAR), and fielding independent pitching (FIP). OBP just takes the number of times the player gets on base including walks and divides it by the number of times the player was at-bat. WAR is more confusing. WAR is the number of wins a player earned for his team that an average MLB replacement player would not have gotten. Runs offensively produced and runs defensively saved or given up are taken into account in this stat. Depending on the game situation one win is around 8 runs but could vary both up or down. FIP analyzes a pitcher by how good he is by himself. This is done by calculating what a pitchers Earned Run Average would have been if there was a league average defense playing the field behind him. If his defense is exceptionally good, his ERA would most likely show that he is a better pitcher than he really is, while the opposite is true if his defense is especially bad.

Using sabermetrics has made it possible for low-payroll teams, such as the Tampa Bay Rays who had a 2013 total payroll of $57,895,272 (MLB Salaries), compete and beat teams with much higher payrolls, such as the New York Yankees with a 2013 total payroll of $228,835,490 (MLB Salaries). In fact, in 2013 the Rays played in the playoffs and the much richer Yankees did not.

Fangraphs.com author, Bradley Woodrum, breaks down sabermetrics into three branches; scouting, statistics, and business. "Scouting analyzes the **physical attributes** and the **medical attributes** of a player — is he a big-bodied slugger (the type that fades early in the MLB)? does his pitching motion preclude potential elbow injuries or is he a problem waiting to happen? should he have an more open stance? is he tipping pitches?" (Woodrum). Statistics is the most commonly heard of branch and analyzes the actual performance on the field of the player. These stats include OBP, WAR, and FIP. The last branch is business. Business analyzes how much the player would cost the team. A big star like Miguel Cabrera would obviously cost a lot of money to sign because basically any team in the MLB would love to have him on their team. (Who wouldn't want a player that has won both of the last two AL MVPs?) But a much less popular player such as Carlos Gomez of the Milwaukee Brewers who led the NL in WAR (MLB wins above replacement - 2013) would (as argued by sabermetrics) help the team win more games and would cost much less money.

More and more teams are hiring sabermetric analysts to help them decide who to sign to play for them. Currently, thirteen to eighteen of the thirty MLB teams use all three of the sabermetric branches (Woodrum). In 2013, five of the ten playoff teams were in the bottom half of the league in terms of payroll (MLB Salaries). Sabermetrics is making a game, that for a very long time, was extremely unfair to the teams that did not have loads of money, fair again. The New York Yankees are infamous among baseball fans because of the perception that they would just buy championships. They had the most money so they would get the best players because they would pay the most. The Yankees have won 27 world series championships. The next most? The St. Louis Cardinals... with only 11. The game definitely favored the teams with money for most of it's history. It still does today but the influence of money is much less than it used to be.

media type="custom" key="24468332" align="left" This clip from the movie //Moneyball// shows how moneyball works to find hidden value in players.

Sources: "MLB Salaries." //CBSSports.com//. CBS, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

"MLB Wins Above Replacement - 2013." //Espn.go.com//. Entertainment Sports Programming Network, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.

//Moneyball//. Dir. Bennett Miller. Perf. Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. Universal, 2011. DVD.//NYtimes.com//. New York Times, 8 Feb. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.

Woodrum, Bradley. "What Is Sabermetrics? And Which Teams Use It? | FanGraphs Baseball." //What Is Sabermetrics? And Which Teams Use It? | FanGraphs Baseball//. Fan Graphs, 12 Feb. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.