Baseball and the KISS method

For whatever it's worth, I dedicate the following to a guy named Al that I've never met. All I know is he reads my nonsense once in a while, and can be a pretty sharp critic at times -- which is a good thing. At any rate, his comment on my previous post got me thinking about the "old days".

I don't know who first came up with it, but there's a lot to be said about the KISS method. Keep It Simple Stupid.

Especially when it comes to major league baseball. Like every other pro sport, certain statistics are kept on players to judge their performance, but this has gotten out of control.

It used to be pretty simple. If a batter had an average over .300, he was a good hitter. More than 30 home runs and/or 100 RBIs during the course of a season made him a "slugger".  If he stole more than, say, 30 bases, he was fast. Everybody understood this.

Pitchers were judged on their win/loss records and earned run average. Everybody understood that as well.

Not any more. The people that cover MLB now have "stats from hell" coming at us. You name a way to twist numbers into indecipherable gibberish, and if they haven't found it yet, they're likely working on it.

They came out with "slugging percentage" a while back. I think I figured that one out. Take the number of total bases a batter racked up and divide it by how many "at-bats" he had. But that could be deceiving. If a batter struck out 3 times, then hit a homer in his last at-bat, his slugging percentage would be 1.000. 4 times up, 4 total bases. But batting 1.000 sounds pretty good -- right? Maybe, maybe not.

"On base percentage" was a little trickier. Hits and walks are to the batter's credit, but getting hit by a pitched ball doesn't show any skill, nor does reaching base only because an opposing player made an error in the field. When a batter grounds into a "force play", whereby another base runner is out, but the batter reaches first base by default, does it still count as getting "on base"? Beats me, but I wouldn't doubt it. Chalk up another stat.

Then the stat monsters came out with OPS. The baseball writers, columnists here and there, and the talking heads will tell you all about it, but I doubt they have a clue how it's actually calculated. All they know is .700 is pretty good, and anything above that is excellent. Albert Einstein himself would have probably had a tough time grasping the actual formula, and exactly how it translates to a player's value, which is shown at the end of this article.

Pitchers are now judged on WHIP. I think this has something to do with their average number of walks and hits allowed for every inning pitched. More worthless stats. If a pitcher walks a batter and gives up a hit every inning, his WHIP would probably be lousy. But if he bears down and is capable of holding the other team to no runs during that inning -- then who cares? Maybe the people that should be WHIPed are the folks that dream up these stats in the first place.

And somebody please tell me why a starting pitcher is normally good to throw well over 100 pitches in a game, but a reliever is burned out after maybe 30? Consider Justin Verlander. If he's still there in the 9th inning, he can continue to throw 100 MPH heat, along with a curve ball, split-finger pitch, slider, and change-up. He's been out there for hours. Bring in a relief pitcher, and he'll normally have a fastball and maybe one other pitch. Within 10 minutes, he'll be totally gassed. Doesn't that seem weird somehow? 

I agree with the legendary Nolan Ryan. Pitch counts should be irrelevant. When players are making the ridiculous amounts of money they currently do -- they're supposed to be in tip-top physical condition. If a starter's going good, forget the pitch count. Let him carry on. If a reliever is only good for one inning before needing to ice his arm down, then he's not in good enough shape. These days, we see middle relievers, set-up men, and closers. Evidently, some guys can only be effective pitchers from the 5th through 7th innings, other guys can only perform during the 8th, and the prima donna closers would likely spontaneously combust if they were ever called upon to actually, you know, pitch, before the 9th inning. Lest we forget, they have their own precious stats from Hades. I think they get a "save" if they enter the game, and don't allow all runners currently on base, the batter, the guy standing "on deck", and maybe the bat boy of the opposing club to score. Opposing batters can be hitting rockets all over the park, but if his team still wins -- he gets a save. It's just one more stupid stat that means nothing.

I take solace in two things. Cutting through the crap and always applying the KISS method is one.

The other is -- Al is older than I am. Hee hee.

Here's the formula for OPS that I promised. If you can sort this out, and make it easily understandable for the average baseball fan, then get your passport in order, because you have a trip to Oslo, Norway in your future. That's where they hand out the Nobel prizes. You will have definitely earned it.

The basic formula is

where OBP is on-base percentage and SLG is slugging average. These averages are defined

and

where:

• H = Hits
• BB = Base on balls
• HBP = Times hit by pitch
• AB = At bats
• SF = Sacrifice flies
• TB = Total bases

Although OBP and SLG have different denominators, it is possible to rewrite the expression for OPS using a common denominator. This expression is mathematically identical to the simple sum of OBP and SLG:



The next time you read a column by some sportswriter that refers to OPS, ask yourself just one question. Do you really think they have the slightest idea what they're talking about?