Sabermetrics: Baseball by the Numbers
Baseball has always been a game of numbers. Fans of the game have grown up being able to recite them by heart; Ted Williams’.406 batting average, Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak, Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs. These numbers hold a special place in the history of the game. Statistics such as batting average, wins, home runs, and runs batted in have always been there to tell us who the best players are. Your favorite player has a .300 batting average? He’s an all-star. He hit 40 home runs and batted in 120 runs? That’s a Most Valuable Player Award candidate. Your favorite team’s best pitcher won 20 games? He’s a Cy Young Award contender. These statistics have been used to evaluate player performance since the game began. But what if we could dig deeper? What if there was a better method than batting average to determine who the best hitters are? What if we had a way to tell who the best pitchers are rather than relying on a counting statistic, such as wins? Welcome to the world of sabermetrics.
It isn’t possible to talk about sabermetrics without talking about Bill James. Bill James is widely known as the face of sabermetrics. While working as a night watchman at the Stokely Van Camp’s pork-and-beans cannery in Lawrence, Kansas, Bill James began working on his ideas about just how major league baseball games are won. His self-published newsletter, called Baseball Abstract, marked a fundamental shift in the understanding of the game. James’ methods were later adopted by Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane to build surprisingly successful teams, which Michael Lewis wrote about in his bestselling book, Moneyball (Boudway).
Sabermetrics is made possible in part because each game produ...
... middle of paper ...
...rics and New Statistics in Baseball.” Baseball @ Suite101. suite101.com, 20 Jan. 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.
Jaffe, Chris. “Bill James Interview.” Hardballtimes.com. The Hardball Times, 4 Feb. 2008. Web. 23 Nov. 2011.
Kuper, Simon. “Michael Lewis and Billy Beane talk Moneyball.” Slate.com. The Slate Group, 13 Nov. 2011. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.
“Moneyball: Tracking down how stats win games” npr.org. NPR, 23 Sep. 2011. Web. 2 Dec. 2011.
Silverman, Jacob. “How Sabermetrics Works.” howstuffworks.com. HowStuffWorks, Inc, n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2011.
Slusser, Susan. “Michael Lewis on A’s ”Moneyball“ legacy.” SFGate. Hearst Communications, 18 Sep. 2011. Web. 2 Dec. 2011.
Somin, Ilya. “Evaluating Billy Beane and Moneyball.” volokh.com. volokh.com, 20 Aug. 2006. Web. 2 Dec. 2011.
Thompson, Dick and Tom Hufford. “A History of SABR.” minors.sabrwebs.com. SABR, n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2011.
Overall, compelling points exist supporting or not supporting a salary cap in baseball. Teams have the benefit of a salary cap existing, and out of that, a balance in free agency forms and a sense of championship parity develops too. On the other side of the spectrum, teams can use the Moneyball method of recruiting and signing players, along with tax implications and revenue sharing to balance out payrolls. The main factor in deciding if a salary cap is appropriate is the factor of fairness among the teams. Therefore, based off the support the research provides, the implementation of a salary cap is necessary.
Baade, R. A., Baumann, R., & Matheson, V. A. (2008). Selling the game: Estimating the economic impact of professional sports through taxable sales. Southern Economic Journal, , 794-810.
Nemec, David, and Saul Wisnia. 100 Years of Baseball. Lincolonwood, Ill.: Publications International, 2002, Print.
The $6 billion heist: Robbing college athletes under the guise of amateurism. (2013, March 20).
Baseball statistics are meant to be a representation of a player’s talent. Since baseball’s inception around the mid-19th century, statistics have been used to interpret the talent level of any given player, however, the statistics that have been traditionally used to define talent are often times misleading. At a fundamental level, baseball, like any game, is about winning. To win games, teams have to score runs; to score runs, players have to get on base any way they can. All the while, the pitcher and the defense are supposed to prevent runs from scoring. As simplistic as this view sounds, the statistics being used to evaluate individual players were extremely flawed. In an attempt to develop more specific, objective forms of statistical analysis, the idea of Sabermetrics was born. Bill James, a man who never played or coached professional baseball, is often credited as a pioneer in the field and for coining the name as homage to the Society of American Baseball Research, or SABR. Eventually, the use of Sabermetrics became widespread in the Major Leagues, the first team being the Oakland Athletics, as depicted in Moneyball. Bill James and other baseball statisticians have developed various methods of evaluating a player performance that allow for a more objective view of the game, broadly defined as Sabermetrics.
decades or so covering baseball on the subject of steroids -- what they do, how the game
Donovan, John. "NBA on Shaky Ground as Owners, Players Fight Over Money." CNN/SI. June 24, 1998
Thompson, Teri, and et al. American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Print.
10) Wulf, Steve. “Tote That Ball, Lift That Revenue.” Time Magazine. Oct. 21, 1996. Vol. 148, Issue 19, p. 94.
... Major League Baseball - By George Harvey - Rockland - Camden - Knox - Courier-Gazette - Camden Herald."Unfortunately, Money Still Flows for PED Users in Major League Baseball - By George Harvey - Rockland - Camden - Knox - Courier-Gazette - Camden Herald. Village Soup, 2 Dec. 2013. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
Luzer, Daniel. "College Guide: The Profit in College Sports." The Washington Monthly. N.p., 18 Sept. 2013. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
Lanctot, Neil. 2004. Negro league baseball :The rise and ruin of a black institution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Information Technology has quickly became an everyday part of life. It is used in almost every aspect of our lives. It used at home to check e-mail, send text messages, and surf the web. It is used at work for networking and even many modern telephone systems. In many cases IT is simply a part of our day. Major League Baseball is no different. The league has also become very active in the IT world. It is used in almost every single aspect of the game, as well as the business. If you look back at baseball through the ages, it is easy to see just how much it has changed. The trick for Major League Baseball was they knew they had to advance to keep up in today’s world. However, at the same time, they knew that fans loved the game of baseball because of its history. Baseball has a legendary past that is appealing to fans. They want the modern technologies without losing the vintage appeal. Major League Baseball has done just that. They have become one of the most technologically advanced sports in America. Everything from how tickets are purchased all the way to just how the games are broadcast, it has all changed dramatically.
Russo, Christopher, and Allenor St John. "Money for Nothing." The Mad Dog 100: the Greatest Sports Arguments of All Time. New York: Broadway, 2004. 238-39. Print.
This game of a stick and ball has captivated the United States during good and bad times. In either time most of us today can remember stories of players from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. These are legendary figures in the sport of baseball that have are celebrated as hero’s and in scandal, i...