The points are frozen, the beast is dead.
On Base Percentage if NOT really a new stat.
Heck, when you were a kid playing little league baseball, didn’t your coach yell constantly “A walk’s as good as a hit, a walk’s as good as a hit”? Even your little league coach knew that! How is it that most fans and sportswriters forget it?
Okay, that’s not ALWAYS true. In the bottom on the ninth, with two outs, a man on 3rd and your team down by one run, a walk ISN’T as good as a hit. But for a leadoff man, it’s every bit as good.
A speedy guy who bats .300 but almost never walks is frequently made the leadoff hitter. But you know what? A guy who bats .270 but works the count and gets a lot of walks may be a much BETTER choice as your leadoff hitter.
I agree that SOME of the “newfangled” stats used by sabremetricians are too complicated and don’t really prove what they’re supposed to. But the value of walks and the superiority of OBP to batting average is pretty simple, and ought to be obvious even to casual fans.
To really illustrate the point:
Two Hall of Fame third basemen, George Brett and Mike Schmidt.
George Brett batted .305. Mike Schmidt batted .267.
Which one was better at getting on base?
I prefer to phrase it as who was better at not making outs? Nothing is more important offensively.