12/21/24
April 17, 2010
New York Times Tracks Four New Baseball Statistics: The New York Times has begun reporting four new baseball statistics every Friday: Batting Runs, ERA+, Total Zone and SRS. Baseball-Reference.Com founder Sean Forman explains them in today's paper. "Traditional statistics like batting average, runs batted in, wins, losses and earned run average certainly give us some of the picture," he writes. "But they do not present the whole picture."
You'd think that judging by the comments attached to the article, but can you explain which ones are giving you a headache? If you mean how the numbers are created, I can see that, but the explanation in the NYT article is so light, I can't see the problem.
Batting runs: higher number is better
ERA+: Over 100 = better than average pitcher
Total Zone: higher number = better fielder at the position in question
Simple Rating System: relative measure of team strength
posted by yerfatma at 12:11 PM on April 17, 2010
The side note to this whole thing is that Sean Forman is finally getting the recognition he deserves. He started up baseball-reference.com on his own (but now has assistants) and has turned it into the single best baseball statistical/information site on the internet. His work has put to shame such sites like MLB.com, ESPN, and every other flash-laden corporate site out there.
This is way beyond my comprehension, and I'm sure most fans, too.
Really?
Taking A, dividing it by B, then multiplying it by 100 is "beyond your comprehension"?
That's all ERA+ is (on b-r.com at least, though there is a push to change it among some people in the baseball stats community), and it gives a great comparison across different eras.
I don't understand how that is harder to learn than ERA or slugging percentage (SLG).
posted by grum@work at 12:19 PM on April 17, 2010
I think I need some aspirin. This is way beyond my comprehension, and I'm sure most fans, too.