State of Play: The Old School Guide to New School Baseball
I’m not sure what to make of this contribution by Bill Ripken, the former major leaguer and now and ESPN analyst. On the one hand, he expresses a number of sentiments I share about the new metrics and how they are used to measure the competence — or lack thereof — of the way the modern game is parsed. On the other hand, the way he makes his case makes me think of the old guy who wants you get off his lawn.
Ripken played from 1987-1998, a full generation ago in terms of baseball service. His family is famous for the devotion to detail and hard work, aka, “The Ripken Way.” So it’s not that far-fetched that he would object to these analytics that have come along since he hung up his spikes.
Among the topics he rails against: spin rate, launch angle, catchers framing pitches, defensive runs saved, Wins Above Replacement (WAR), and the dismissal of batting average, among several other things.
For example, on launch angle: “[A] better way of looking for [it] is to rename it or think of it as an ‘exit angle,’ because the angle of the ball off the bat is what’s really being measured.”
On pitching wins: “In yesteryear it was assumed that a starting pitcher’s job was to go deep into the game or even finish it. That type of outing is almost gone from the game now.”
On WAR, he notes that Gary Sanchez, whom the Yankees called up in 2016, “was worth three wins…over a freely available minor leaguer or AAA player from their bench. But Gary Sanchez was himself a freely available minor leaguer at the time of his call-up, so are we saying Sanchez was three wins better than himself?”
Ripken also notes, regarding WAR, “that there isn’t any consistency from source to source. The way Baseball-Reference.com calculates the statistic is different than the way FanGraphics.com calculates it….”
One of my favorite passages deals with expansion and its affect on the product and how it extends to the media.
I believe this watering down is happening in the baseball commentary being produced 24/7 in this new media age. Having baseball available all the time isn’t a problem, but it seems like with all the different outlets and ways for the fan to access baseball, we’ve doubled or even tripled the number of voices being heard. If I stay with the premise that that there is a finite number of major league players, can’t I make that assumption that there should be a finite number of people qualified to speak about the game professionally? I ay yes, simply because in all areas or professions that require a certain level of expertise, there is a finite number or at the very least, a certain number of ‘”grade A” players in the field they represent. Bs and Cs naturally follow.
I think of this every time I tune in a pregame for the playoffs. All of a sudden there are four or five former players yakking. Just because you played the game doesn’t mean you can talk about it well. Kind of like what they used to say about great players being managers.
State of Play kind of reminds me about the state of politics these days. You can have the same information, but people will interpret it differently to fit their preexisting theories. I can’t say that this “Ripken Way” is more or less valid than any other book that seeks to turn the old statistical guard on its head (Keith Law’s Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball
UPDATE: Couldn’t find he information yesterday but wanted to add it now. The forthcoming “Bookshelf Conversation” will feature Jason Katzman of Skyhorse/Sports Publishing who worked on the latest edition of The Baseball Maniac’s Almanac (and coincidentally was the editor of Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War
During our chat, Katzman mentioned a new book due out in May that is right up my alley as an older fan who is arithmetic-challenged: A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics: Why WAR, WHIP, wOBA, and Other Advanced Sabermetrics Are Essential to Understanding Modern Baseball
I usually don’t quote from the press release, but in this case I’ll make an exception.
Broken up into sections (pitching, fielding, hitting), this authoritative yet fun and easy guide will help readers young and old fully understand and comprehend the statistics that are the present and future of our national pastime.
We all know what a .300 hitter looks like. The same with a 20-game winner. Those numbers are ingrained in our brains. But do they mean as much as we think? Do we feel the same way when we hear a batter has a .390 wOBA? How about a pitcher with a 1.2 WHIP? These statistics are the future of modern baseball, and no fan should be in the dark about how these metrics apply to the game.
In the last twenty years, an avalanche of analytics has taken over the way the game is played, managed, and assessed, but the statistics that drive the sport (metrics like wRC+, FIP, and WAR, just to name a few) read like alphabet soup to a large number of fans who still think batting average, RBIs, and wins are the best barometers for baseball players.
In A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics, MLB.com reporter and columnist Anthony Castrovince has taken on the role as explainer to help such fans understand why the old stats don’t always add up. Readers will also learn where these modern stats came from, what they convey, and how to use them to evaluate players of the present, past, and future.
For instance, what if we told you that when Joe DiMaggio had his famous 56-game hitting streak in 1941, helping him win the AL MVP, that there was, perhaps, someone more deserving? In fact, the great Ted Williams actually had a higher fWAR, bWAR, wRC+, OPS, OPS+, ISO, RC . . . well, you get the picture. So, streak or no streak, Williams should have been league MVP.
An introductory course on sabermetrics, A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics is an easily digestible resource that readers can keep turning back to when they see a modern metric referenced in today’s baseball coverage.
Greatly looking forward to this one.
is available on Amazon.com,
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