OED Online Word of the Day

by Llewdor on Nov 3, 2011 10:33 AM PDT

OED Online Word of the Day - Nov 2, 2011

Your word for today is: sabermetrics, n.

sabermetrics, n.

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌseɪbəˈmɛtrɪks/, U.S. /ˌseɪbərˈmɛtrɪks/

Forms:  19– sabermatrics irreg.,   19– sabermetrics,   19– sabremetrics,   19– SABRmetrics,   19– sabrmetrics.

Etymology: < sabre n. (after SABR, acronym < the initial letters of Society for American Baseball Research) + -metric comb. form: see -ic suffix 2.

Baseball.

  With sing. concord. The application of statistical analysis to baseball records, esp. in order to evaluate and compare the performance of individual players.

1982 B. James Bill James Baseball Abstr. 3/1 Sabermetrics is the mathematical and statistical analysis of baseball records.
1991 Rev. in Amer. Hist. 19 114 In the age of Bill James and sabremetrics, Scully's chapters evaluating player performance seem primitive and unsophisticated.
1998 Toronto Star (Nexis) 5 Sept. b6 Baseball is as much about sabrmetrics as it is about fanciful imagination.
2003 Calgary Herald (Nexis) 19 Oct. d1 The Oakland A's pioneered the use of sabermetrics to recruit players.

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Not to be a dick, but this would probably have fit better as a fanshot

by MilesC on Nov 3, 2011 3:13 PM PDT reply actions

What is the point of this?

by Patrick Stites on Nov 3, 2011 10:23 PM PDT reply actions

I just thought it was cool.

The OED sends me these every day, and on Wednesday the word was sabermetrics.

And I couldn’t figure out how to format a FanShot.

I like using semi-colons; they make me feel smart.

by Llewdor on Nov 4, 2011 9:45 AM PDT reply actions

This is actually pretty cool

Good to see it hitting more mainstream. I think it’s kinda funny that 99% of the SABR has absolutely nothing to do with advanced stats (and in fact, a lot of members are old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud’s), yet they’ve unwittingly contributed their name to it.

Follow @mattlock3

by Matt Erickson on Nov 5, 2011 11:22 AM PDT up reply actions