The Performance Of Baseball Data And Analytics - 2304 Words

Introduction Statistics in baseball have always existed on a player and team basis, with some common statistics being hits, runs, earned runs, runs batted in, home runs, etc. Since the publication of Bill James’ abstract (1986), however, there has been large growth of interest in baseball data and analytics, and, more specifically, a large growth of interest in a branch of baseball statistics known as sabermetrics. This branch of statistics has been further spurred on by the publication of Moneyball (Lewis, 2003), and even more so by the movie debut of Moneyball in 2011. Sabermetrics uses baseball’s common statistics and creates a statistic that more efficiently determines the performance of baseball players.However, there is still some†¦show more content†¦For example, if two teams are versing one another and one pitcher has an ERA of 1 and the other an ERA of 6, the pitcher with an ERA of 1 may seem more likely to give up less earned runs, and thus more likely to win the game. An author in the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) journal, found this notion of ERA to be true as he found ERA to be a statistically significant predictor of team wins for National League MLB teams (Ault). Joe Watson (2011), a reporter for the sports news site bleacherreport, claims that ERA is the supreme statistic for examining pitchers because it gives a better insight on a team’s probability to win. Due to the theoretical example and the different articles, the assumption is made that ERA is the best predictor of a pitcher’s ability to achieve a win. This assumption has led experts and laymen alike to use ERA in their comparison of pitchers because the ultimate goal of any sports player is to win. Due to the major use of ERA there is a driven importance to predict ERA and establish what factors cause changes in it. CBSSports interviewed their staff experts to examine what was the best statistical measure of pitchers. The majority stated that WHIP was the best measure of a pitcher’s actual performance (Snyder, M., Rosecrans, T., Perry, D. 2012). A number of medical articles as well use WHIP to evaluate a pitcher’s ability to assimilate back into the MLB after surgery (Gibson, B. W., Webner, D., Huffman, G. R., Sennett, B. J.