From WAR to WHIP: Baseball’s “new” statistics and acronyms are confusing
Christian Yelich has another MVP-like year
Don’t ask Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich about his stats. He says he doesn’t know them. Those who do know them know he’s having an MVP-like year.
Confession: I not follow baseball. Not the Brewers, not the league, not the World Series.
There are many reasons for this: the disillusioning 1994 strike, the boring ultramarathon games, and the fact that Robin “The Kid” Yount couldn’t play again until his retirement years. I always celebrated my birthday at County Stadium with my softball glove and Cecil Cooper and Ben Oglivie buttons. Then I grew up and left the Mark McGwire game altogether to cover football, basketball, and everything else.
Decades passed. And the game has evolved so much in that time, and statistics, specifics, and hyper-specific scenarios followed, giving rise to analytics and metrics. There are things called WAR, WHIP, and OBP+. There’s a “hard hit rate” that kind of makes sense, but what the heck is rOBA?
There is Pull%, Cent% and Oppo% – something about batters and their tendencies – and Standard field game Pos and lgRFGs. Yuck.
I look at baseball now the way a baby boomer looks at an Uber. They tell me to trust it, but I don’t… and I can’t remember my app password anyway.
Still, there’s something special about this year, 2024. Major League Baseball finally got pitchers and batters to pick up the pace in 2023, and this season, these National League Central-leading Brewers became… fascinating. Everyone in the clubhouse talks about the super-low expectations, and we all know that underdog journeys really do make the best stories. It was time to face my fear – I don’t know this game, I don’t understand these subtleties – and see if I can return to baseball and learn its peculiar language.
Where should I start?
Two places, of course.
Media. Watch games, listen to shows and podcasts, and read coverage.
And statistics – because no other sport is as dependent on data as this one.
A natural starting point was Gold Glove winner, MVP and all-around good-attitude guy Christian Yelich.
OK, one of the stats websites – baseball-reference.com – is 12 pages long. Batting average, batting appearances, home runs, stolen bases, RBIs. It starts with the usual stuff, it all makes sense.
And then… OBP, OPS and OPS plus. And… Player Value Batting.
Runs from the field.
Is he fleeing from a lack of position?
Runs better than average.
Wins above average.
Runs from replacement level.
“Like programming a VCR”
My nervousness is getting stronger. This is clearly a foreign language. I turn to Jeff Levering, the Brewers’ very friendly and very knowledgeable radio announcer. He will help translate.
“I need to get to grips with it, some of these statistics are like programming a VCR,” he replied via text message, and that’s funny in more ways than one.
OK, in the meantime, we can always rely on commentators Brian Anderson and Bill Schroeder. They were commentating on a Brewers-Boston Red Sox game on June 2nd and discussing the National League slugging percentage leaders when they asked the question: Does Yelich have a shot at the NL batting title?
Anderson: A player must bat 3.2 times per team game to qualify for the batting title. Yelich missed some time in mid-April…
Schroeder: … I’m not sure how they got to 3.2 …
Anderson: That’s a good number…
Schroeder: …Can we talk to Dom about this?
Anderson: He probably knows it; he will sound as if he knew it, even if he didn’t. That’s the best thing about him…
Schroeder: … It has something to do with the 162-game schedule, I don’t know.
Anderson: So 3.2?
Schroeder: A kind of mathematics, yes.
Anderson: They said there was no math class on Sundays.
While I am doing a Google search − who is Dom, Brewers? − Anderson and Schroeder jump back to the topic. Her husband, Dom, reports that the number is actually 3.1, not 3.2, and… what were we even talking about?
Christian Yelich.
“I have no idea. I mean, no idea.”
He rolls his eyes – just a little. It’s four hours until the next game in a summer of endless games, and the 32-year-old veteran has probably heard every question there has ever been. God, this has to get boring. But those stats! They make for endless talking points and debates, and Yelich is a newly inducted member of an elite 200 club – career home runs and steals. So Yelich has to have a good handle on all of that; which stats are good and which are a joke; and which ones are really meaningful and which ones are helpful and…
“Yeah, I don’t know… I don’t even know how… how she collected”, Yelich said hesitantly.
Uh. Sure. But they’re interesting, right?
“I don’t even look at my stats. I couldn’t tell you a single one of my stats right now. I have no idea. So no idea,” he said. “I don’t care about them until the end of the season because they change so often. So I don’t look at them.”
Oh. But… in general, there must be some statistics that are valuable?
“Not really. People talk about them – the media and the fans. I don’t know. The players, well – we don’t really care.”
Awkward silence. It’s not a closed door for this story idea, but wow, if He does not matter, should We? My fear alarms are ringing. This is the MVP who came to the Bucks games to other MVP in town. This is a respected guy in Milwaukee. And he’s killing this stat story project before it even starts. Is he serious? One last weak attempt: BABIP? Does he care? Does he care about anything?
“Wins.” He grins.
OK Bye.
But it makes sense. If someone like Yelich works, trains and plays the way he does, what would be the point of looking at numbers and trends?
“I don’t know why you should bother looking at your stuff every day,” Yelich said. “I’m all about winning and helping the team win.”
OK. That’s fine. Everything is fine.
That’s actually good.
This means that for the rest of us, there is an opportunity to decipher the game’s numerical quirks and statistical peculiarities without the pressure of having to pretend we know it.
Let’s go to the yard. Hey, at least baseball is an inviting sport for the spectator, unlike the dizzying rush of football and the frenetic pace of basketball. Baseball is polite, you can gather your flock, find your spot and settle down to enjoy the weather, the people around you and the smell of the roasting hot dogs before you have to be alert. Because nothing ever happens in the first inning.
(Checks the facts). Oh. Uh. Sorry. Wrong. It turns out that the first inning is actually the highest-Scoring inning in baseball – typically and historically, therefore in some ways the most action-packed.
Of course there are statistics for this.
Available this week:
- Part 2: What do the Brewers think about the statistics? The players and the manager have slightly different views.
- Part 3: A note from the nerds: These are the stats you should be tracking.
- Part 4: Statistics still confuse you? Ask the kids to explain the questions to you, just like you do with your technology questions.
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