I love baseball, but a few days ago I was told Todd Zeile just beat Gus Zernial’s HR record, & now leads all Z surnames in HR’s. It was obviously rehearsed ,because the other announcer then said, but Gus dated Marilyn Monroe. Was it just a straight line or does baseball really think fans care about such minutiae? (“Z” hitters, I mean,I liked the MM comment, if true I learned something)
For some diehard baseball fans, statistics are a big part of the fun of the game. Figuring out new ways to parse the same old numbers, and memorizing all the rankings that result, becomes a sort of homage to the game.
That said, I’ve heard many of the same fans decry modern baseball stats as largely meaningless, thanks to the mostly unchecked, but fairly well-established, use of steroids, corked bats, and other boosters by modern players.
So, yes and no, I guess… depends how you look at it.
Baseball has 35.8% too many statistics.
Statistics seems about the only fun part of the game, in my opinion. 
The “homers by letter of last name” list has been around for decades. I remember reading that Zernial was the top Z man when I was a kid.
Baseball fans DO eat this stuff up. Baseball statistics have always been far more advanced and numerous than in any other sport, partially because the sport is just more intrinsically suited for counting things, and partially because the nature of the game is suited to appreciating the counting of things; it’s slower paced, played over the course of a very long season, and it’s not always easy to visually tell who’s a better player than who without the help of knowing their performance as measured in statistics.
Haha, man, we aren’t even getting into things like runs above replacement, equivalent average, DIPS, zone rating, range factor, etc.
Well, the use of steroids has been alleged, not established. And the use of cork is not something invented by modern players. Baseball, for the time being anyway, looks at it as a relatively minor rule infraction.
BTW, has it ever actually been shown that you can hit a ball farther with a corked bat?
The use of stats really took off when fantasy baseball became uberpopular. Those guys need to quantify everything.
Things like the Z home runs are what I call “Monday Night Football stats.” In MNF, they always seem to mention stats like:
“He just ran for the most yardage by an Alabama grad with a last name beginning with a C in twelve years!”
Many of the actions in baseball are discrete, so it’s possible to quantify them in a way that isn’t as easy in most other sports. What’s fun is watching how sportscasters change their usage. “Blah blah batting average,” becomes “blah blah on-base percentage” becomes “blah blah OPS.”
And I’m all for it! (Though Win Shares continue to baffle me)
Julie
All sports have too many statistics. Every hockey game I watch, they have to point out something like “The Red Wings have never lost a game playing in Joe Louis Arena on a Tuesday that falls on an odd-numbered day of the month if it’s raining in Norfolk and the opposing team has just come from Canada and lost 3-0 to one of the Original Six.” It’s the nature of obsession.
55.3% of fans who watch more than 67.2% of their home team games feel that statistics are an important part of the game.
This year of accountants whose last names begin with Phl 89.2% know the ERA and RBI lists to the 13th place for the last three seasons, but last year it was 88.1% …
Plus a lot in baseball isn’t as team dependent as other sports…especially the offensive stats.
It’s not so much that there’s too many statistics as that they’re used wrong.
Hardcore SABR-ites (The Society for American Baseball Research) are continually looking at new means of cracking performance numbers to actually get a feel for what’s going on. The traditional numbers like batting average, earned run average, etc simply don’t tell any worthwhile story. But the new one’s are beginning to.
For an example I’d recommend anyone interested go read Moneyball by Micheal Lewis. It’s a book about the approach that Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s used new numbers to evaluate a set value on a players past and predicted peformance.
Here’s a link:
I second Jonathan’s recommendation–Moneyball’s a great book. Every sport has junk stats. Baseball has more in part because it’s been around for so darn long, and in part because more people amass statistics in baseball than in any other sport. Think about it: twenty-five man rosters, and everyone either bats or pitches. Compare that to basketball, where only twelve people ever get to play on a given team, or football, the rosters of which are necessarily littered with players whose positions don’t afford much chance at stats–offensive and defensive linemen, for example.
In baseball the same stats apply to everyone.
Just recently I noted a new stat in a , yep, I’m guilty, box score-H for I presume hold-a “pre save.” Another , informal now- quality start- 6 or 7 innings w/ 3 runs allowed or less.
Holds are ridiculous stats, I agree. But what exactly is your complaint, doctordoowop? That there are so many ways to quantify baseball performance through statistics, that people pay attention to all the stats, or that people pay attention to the silly ones?
There’s a difference between a hold or even a save, both essentially crude, useless stats, and, say, earned run average or on-base percentage, which can tell you something helpful about a player for purposes of prediction, comparison, or evaluation.
There ARE some ridiculous stats, of course, but there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Baseball is a slow-moving game. That’s NOT to say it’s a boring game (though some will always find it so)- it simply has many stretches where not much is happening. And those are the moments when a fan can easily strike up an interesting conversation with a complete stranger sitting nearby! When your home team’s pitcher is getting into a jam, it can be fun to strike up a light-hearted argument with a fellow fan over what to do next (“Bring in Schwartz, he has an ERA of 0.98 vs. left handers.” “No, leave in Houlihan- his stats show he always gets stronger in the later innings.”)
You can’t carry on such conversations at a hockey or basketball game, because you don’t have such lulls in the action. Take that away, and you’ve eliminated part of the charm of baseball and part of the fun of attending a game.
- At least in baseball, the stats generally DO mean what they appear to mean. When you watch a football game, though, you’re constantly bombarded with stats that DON’T mean much to begin with, and are wrongly interpreted.
I mean, if (this is purely hypothetical) a baseball announcer says "The Braves are undefeated this season when they score 4 runs or more, that IS meaningful! It proves the Braves have excellent pitching, and don’t need to score all that many runs to win. On the other hand, when a football announcer tells us “The Cowboys have been 15-0 over the last 6 seasons when Emmitt Smith carries the ball 40 times,” that does NOT mean what the announcer pretends it means! The announer is implying that he Cowboys won all those games because they kept handing off to Emmitt, when in reality, it was just the opposite: they had the luxury of handing it to Emmitt again and again because they were winning!
Actually Gadarene not a complaint, more a question of “a little too much.” Hey, I was there wnen Tatis hit 2 grand slams in one inning a few years ago. A great feat. I saw the 1st ball hit out of Dodger Stadium by Stargell. (off Alan Foster). What is interesting is WHO sets some of the records. Baerga was the 1st to hit HRs in one inning , left & right. Then Bellhorn did it. You’d figure Mantle or Murray.
I still don’t understand. What do you mean, “a little too much”? You’d prefer that most of the records were held by HOFers?
If so, you can start by recategorizing some of the things you’re talking about–they’re not records, but “firsts” or “oddities.” The person with the most homers whose name begins with Z–that’s an oddity. It draws from an extremely small field of possible canddiates…small sample size, in other words. It’s meaningless except as a curiosity. Same thing’s wrong with those The-Mariners-are-6-and-1-on Tuesdays-this-season-if-their-mascot-got-laid-the-night-before kinds of numbers. The first ball hit out of Dodger Stadium–that’s a first. Neither an oddity nor a first is really a “record,” per se. The records–especially the career records–are held by the likes of Mantle and Murray.
So I guess I still don’t get your question. Sorry in advance if I’m being dense.
But by the same token, looking only at statistics, as some people tend to do, does not give the full picture of how well a person is playing. A hitter can be swinging well, and making good contact with the ball, but still fail to get on base regularly. By the same token, another hitter might be swinging poorly but is lucky enough that his blooped shots are continually dropping in open space. Of course, over a long period of time such aberrations are likely to be less significant, but they can still be important in getting a feel for a player’s potential.