Let There Be Stats

The MLB All Star game brought us the first televised commercials and trailers for the Moneyball movie starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane.  On one hand the timing of the movie is a bit odd - Michael Lewis' book has been out for more than a decade, and the days of Beane's Athletics teams taking the American League by storm have come and gone.  At the same time, though, many of the advanced stats that General Managers like Beane have been using for years are just now making their way into the broader sports media landscape, making the film's September debut feel just right.

While stat freaks like me have been focused on more advanced metrics like OPS, WAR and UZR for a long time now, baseball programs like ESPN's Baseball Tonight and MLB Network's MLB Tonight have just recently begun to flood the airwaves with more sophisticated statistics.  Baseball broadcasts and highlights are now accompanied by graphics that precisely track the flight and trajectory of the baseball, and color commentators focus on much more than homeruns and batting average.  Highlight reels no longer conclude with basic reports on who leads the league in hitting or homers; now we get to break down Albert Pujols' batting average against breaking balls and Clayton Kershaw's groundball-to-flyball ratio on a nightly basis.  Given that baseball insiders have been all over these advanced stats for years, what does this mainstream stat revolution mean for baseball?

If nothing else, advanced metrics have raised the bar for the quality of sports discussions and debates.  No longer is it enough to argue that Ichiro is a superstar solely because he's always atop the league leaders in hits, or to argue that Adam Dunn (before this year, anyway) clogs up a lineup because of his low batting average.  As more and more fans start focusing on statistics like OBP and WHIP, discussions about Tim Lincecum's place among the all-time best starting pitchers or Chipper Jones' Hall of Fame candidacy have become more exciting than ever.  I'm glad that ESPN and MLB Network are making the effort to increase the stat-savvy of their viewers. Now when I argue that Derek Jeter's zone rating suggests that he's a below average defender, not everyone looks at me like I'm completely crazy.