Sabermetrics

as well as what you’ve been doing, which is to say following the discussions. Keep track of what numbers people quote and for what purpose, and don’t be shy about asking questoins; the locals are usually more than happy to share their knowledge. Also, there is a Fanpost/Diary that asks this question about twice a season so you may want to search the archives if you feel like putting in the work.

In general terms though, sabermetrics is about using stats that best demonstrate players’ actual skills as opposed to the results they produce (results being so strongly affected by luck and environment). Thus, for example, ERA and WHIP is not a good indication of how good a pitcher is because so many factors play into them.

tRA and FIP are ERA-like stats which incorporate elements considered to be true pitcher skills and scale them to ERA. Swinging strike rate is usually a good indication of stuff, (particularly out of zone swinging strikes) while called strikes (and therefore called strikeouts) tend to be more umpire dependent, with the exception of guys like Bedard, who have crazy good command of a killer breaking ball. It’s useful know a pitcher’s batted ball profile (GB=good, LD=bad, IFF=random) and there are pitchf/x tools out there that allow you to see how effective each pitch type is for a given pitcher (hilariously, Felix’ fastball has been his best pitch by linear weights).

When looking or signs that a pitcher has been inordinately lucky, look at their strand rate (LOB%) being above ~70% (72-74 for high K guys), HR/FB rate well below 11%, and batting average on balls in play, which should be in the neighborhood of LD%+.12 or so (there’s been some new research on this which I’m ignorant of so this may need to be corrected.

Hitters are much easier to analyze. wOBA is scaled to OBP and evaluates a hitter’s production independently of situation and hitting environment. Every result of a plate appearance has a certain ‘run value’ which is to say, the average number of runs that have resulted from such an event over the decades of recorded baseball games. wOBA averages those run values and gives you the production of the hitter, incorporating HR, singles, doubles, triples, walks Ks, GIDP, SB, CS, IBB, etc etc. It’s a great number for production. BABIP is also important to look at, but each hitter has his own special ‘normal’ BABIP unlike pitchers. For power, it is good to look beyond ISO and check out HR/FB (take a peek at Griffey’s over the years). Plate discipline can be examined in terms of walk rate as well as out of zone swing rate and contact rates in and out of zone, and pitches per PA is a nice number to be aware of as well.

OK, that’s a start. it is not exhaustive by any means. For defense, I suggest you mosey over to Fangraphs and read Dave Cameron’s six posts outlining the use advanced defensive metrics that he put up prior to their publishing UZR. The gist is you need about three years’ worth of data to get a meaningful number and look at the numbers as estimates rather than hard data. Players’ defensive contribution is generally thought of in terms of X +/- 5.

http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2008/8/8/589605/encyclopedia-lookout-landi

And as long as you are respectful, asking questions is the best thing to do.

I have changed my picture to me pretending to play a guitar. I hope this is less political.