some of the newer stuff like swinging strike %’s integrated into a FIP/tRA-like metric? If we use some of these stats can we reduce the volatility we see in pitchers or are we always going to be doomed to the fact that pitchers are just inherently very unpredictable?

I’m hoping Hit f/x will help us distinguish batters that have fluke seasons and batters that have gotten better. I think this has been one of the traditional debates we always have over young players because most of the stats require a significant sample size to be accurate and if a player only has a few years in the majors it can be difficult to come to any conclusions.

It is interesting to know who hit in the most runs. It may not interest you because your motives with stats are very different but that does not mean it is not interesting to the rest of the public.

RBI, while it can be (and often is) applied poorly to analyze players, at least is what it says it is. It’s not necessarily any more devious than hits. For whatever reason, everyone accepts that we should look at batting average instead of hit totals at the end of the season, but God forbid we try to adjust raw RBI totals for number of opportunities presented to a player. (Which, even then there are problems, but I digress.)

Other stats, like say the Game-Winning RBI, are not really what they purport to be. The GW RBI depends on one run being more than all the rest of them, which I assert is a dubious proposition. The only time an RBI can unequivocally be described as the game-winner is if you have a 1-0 game.

In a similar vein, saves imply first of all that the game was in some kind of danger, when there are quite a few save situations where the closer’s team has an overwhelming probability of victory with even an average pitcher on the mound. Past that, there’s no good reason to why the limits on the save are set in precisely the way that they are. Why not 4 runs instead of 3? Why not 2? Why require 3 innings instead of 2? Why not require 4 innings? Why have a long-save at all? A more honest stat would be something like games finished or even games finished in wins and games finished in losses. At least that would open the argument to “well pitcher X pitched in closer games than pitcher Y.”

Or for pitcher wins/losses, the pitcher is always being given more credit or blame that he deserves. The pitcher didn’t actually win or lose the game and there’s no reason to ascribe something like that to the pitcher. On top of that, the criteria for awarding pitcher wins/losses could easily be changed to something more reasonable (in particular, it never made sense to me that a pitcher who threw 4 good innings but had to leave due to injury should be excluded for consideration for a win) and tradition is the only reason to keep it the way that it is.

I appreciate that there is value in stats that are just for funsies, but it seems like we could easily do that and get rid of two or three especially misleading stats.