How is reading box scores is like eating corn on the cob?

Because some people eat across while others “rotate.”

I host a blog about Jews and sports as part of my day job as sports editor for the NJ Jewish News. One of the daily routines is to scan the box scores to see how the Jewish ballplayers fared, but obviously you can do this for your favorites as well. My source of choice is the ESPN coverage, which is a pretty standard layout.

The first thing I do is make sure a player got into the game. After that I check out his line. How many times did he come to bat? How many runs did he score, hits did he make, and runs did he drive in? If I see a line like Lind’s, the next thing I do is see if the hit was a home run, accounting for all three numbers. In this case, it wasn’t.

Then I look to see if any of the hits went for extra bases. In this cases, the two highlighted players are Kevin Pillar and Danny Valencia, two of the dozen Jews currently on Major League rosters. Both of them doubled.

If there are fewer at bats than seem appropriate, compared with the lineup round the batter, I look to see if he walked or was hit by a pitch to account for the discrepancy. Then I look to see the baserunning section: did he steal and or get caught or picked off?

If the batter didn’t get any hits or walks/HBP, what did he do with his plate appearances? This is where I click on ESPN’s play-by play section where I can find out if his outs were productive (did he move the baserunner along where he might score on a subsequent at bat?)

Infrequently, though, I look to see the fielding portion: any errors? The Oakland As outfielder Sam Fuld is known for his defensive prowess; did he have any assists?

It’s the same for pitchers. I’ve long said that a pitching line might not accurate reflect performance. For example, here’s what Craig Breslow did on Sept. 10 against the Baltimore Orioles:

Now at first glance, this seems pretty crappy. But when you go into the play-by-play, you see Breslow threw a perfect fourth inning, striking out two then retired the first two batters in the fifth before allowing a double and a home run. The third hit came on an infield single. Doesn’t seem to terrible now, does it?

Many years ago, I’m thinking in the mid-1990s, the Washington Post ran a piece in their science section (!) in which the challenge was to answer questions based just on the box score. If anyone has that or knows how to find it, I’d be obliged. It was a lot of fun as I recall.

There have been several good books about keeping score; here are a couple of my favorites:

* The Joy of Keeping Score: How Scoring the Game Has Influenced and Enhanced the History of Baseball, by Paul Dickson

* Baseball Scorekeeping: A Practical Guide to the Rules, by Andres Wirkmaa