Sabermetrics, for those of you who are not aware (or haven't read or seen Moneyball), is the specialized analysis of baseball through objective, empirical evidence, specifically baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetrics attempts to answer objective question about baseball such as, "Which player contributed most last year for (insert team name)." When looking at traditional baseball statistics, sabermetricians, such as the "founding father" Bill James,(photo right)
believe there is more than what meets the eye. That is why sabermetrics take a deeper look at statistics and brings another element of statistics to the forefront. Sabermetrics is concerned both with determining the value of a player or team in current or past seasons and with attempting to predict the value of a player or team in the future. Some examples of sabermetrics in baseball are the following statistics:
Wins above replacement (WAR)
On-base plus slugging (OPS)
Runs created
Base runs (BsR)
Some examples of notable users of sabermetrics:
Bill James - mentioned above, considered the "founding father"
Billy Beane - General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, focus point in Moneyball
Theo Epstein - President of Baseball Operations for the Chicago Cubs, former GM of the Boston Redsox
Paul DePodesta - Prominent figure in the book Moneyball, former assistant to Billy Beane
In my next post I will give a little more insight into the specific sabermetric statistics that are now used in baseball.
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