ON SATURDAY, the day before the first games of the 2006 season–and somehow two days before Opening Day–the Baltimore Orioles hosted the Washington Nationals for an exhibition game at Camden Yards. Sitting seven rows off the field, midway between home plate and the visiting team’s dugout, I reveled in Daniel Cabrera, the young Oriole fireballer, as he struck out the side in the top of the first. My beloved Orioles came to bat, and after Brian Roberts popped up, rookie Nick Markakis went back to the bench, and Melvin Mora singled, franchise shortstop Miguel Tejada came up to the plate. He crushed the ball about 380 feet into the right field bleachers.
Up to that point, Tejada had been having an awful spring. As the ball soared out of the park all I could think to myself was “This is the man who has been battling (and failing) to stay above the Mendoza Line for the last couple of months? I wonder what his VORP is now!”
For the uninitiated, the “Mendoza Line” is a batting average of .200, and is a component of determining “VORP,” which stands for Value Over Replacement Player (how valuable a player is to a team over a competent minor leaguer). The reason these phrases were swirling around my head is Baseball Between the Numbers, a primer by “The Baseball Prospectus Team of Experts” on the statistics employed by a new generation of general managers to construct winning teams.
Baseball has always been a game dominated by statistics. Consider the “magic numbers,” statistics that by themselves almost guarantee entry into the Hall of Fame: 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, and 300 wins. As statistical modeling has gotten more sophisticated, it has become more relevant to the development of baseball teams. Baseball Between the Numbers is an attempt to introduce casual fans with an appreciation for math to the statistical nuances that separate the professionals who build their favorite teams from mere mortals who pay to watch the game.
The book kicks off with a bang, trying to determine through statistical analyses who is the better player: Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds. Published prior to the damning exposé Game of Shadows, which purports to show that Bonds knowingly and purposefully used steroids, Baseball Between the Numbers ignores the possibility of steroid use and focuses instead on the numbers we know. How much stock you put into this chapter will likely determine if this book is for you or not.
Author Nate Silver begins by looking at the raw numbers. Through 2005, the Great Bambino has more runs, hits, triples, home runs, and RBIs, as well as a higher career batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Bonds leads in doubles, steals, and walks. As Silver says, while these measures “would seem to favor Ruth . . . any baseball fan over the age of fourteen knows the level of offense in baseball has varied greatly over time.” In order to account for factors like playing in different ballparks, Silver goes about “neutralizing the biasing effects of these environmental factors” in a process known as “normalization.” Babe Ruth still comes out in front.
Silver then subjects their careers to a battery of statistical analyses, determining the pair’s equivalent averages (“a rate statistic designed to do two things: measure the offensive performance of a player and make the result easy to understand. EqA combines a player’s abilities to hit for average, hit for power, draw walks, get hit by pitches, and steal bases”), batting runs above replacement (“the difference between the Equivalent Runs [a] player produced and the Equivalent Runs that a Replacement Player would have a produced in the same number of outs”), and defensive performance via fielding runs above replacement (the number of runs a player saves you compared to a replacement at the same position). In the end, the experts at Baseball Prospectus “give about a 100-run lifetime advantage to Babe Ruth, considering his batting, pitching, and fielding and accounting fairly for his era.” Whew.
If you buy into these statistical manipulations, you will enjoy this book. Note: this isn’t a tome that will help you put together a winning fantasy baseball team; the Baseball Prospectus team spends a fair amount of time explaining why statistics like runs, runs batted in, and batting average are hopelessly flawed and should be ignored by GMs. But if you’ve ever wondered if it would be more efficient for your team to switch to a four pitcher rotation instead of a five pitcher rotation, or bring your closer into the game with a one run lead and the bases loaded in the seventh instead of saving him for the ninth (the answer to both questions is yes), you’ll love it. Surely GMs are across the country are thrilled to have a whole new set of reasons to be second guessed by fans.
Sonny Bunch is an assistant editor at The Weekly Standard.
