[Aaron's Aron]

* I know there is a thread for new features, but since this isn't really a feature but just changing what is displayed, I thought it could use it's own thread.


I would really enjoy it if the statistics that are displayed in various areas of the game are changed to entail more modern sabermetrics and analytics. I am mainly referring to Player Profiles, but it also could be applied to places such as the leaderboards next to the standings when simming or in-game lineups. It simply takes too many clicks to find some of the most useful stats for evaluating players.

To use a very basic example and not a stat that is too fancy: FIP for pitchers. ERA is displayed everywhere, but FIP is not found on the in-game screens or the standard leaderboards when simming. To find it on the Player Profiles, it takes multiple clicks. I think it is fine if you want to keep ERA on the front page to not overwhelm people to quickly (gradual change), but considering that FIP is an objectively better statistic for indicating pitcher performance, it should certainly be included as well. For hitters a good example of a similar issue would be with wRC+. It takes multiple clicks to find this.

I am not saying we should get rid of the traditional statistics, but considering they don't all correlate well to player performance and helping a team win (please remove RBIs from the leaderboard when simming and in-game lineups and put something more useful!), we should either add more stats to more easily accessible places or be able to edit which stats are shown ourselves.

I am aware that you can edit views when looking at your roster or a list of players, and I do do that. However, that is really only useful when looking at my current roster and not if there is a random player I want to click on from a random screen and quickly see.

I understand the reason that many people aren't used to modern analytics and prefer the traditional stats is because TV broadcasts and stadiums (for the most part, although stadiums are getting slightly better) continue to use them and feed them down our throats. Even a lot of baseball reporters will list things such as "X player just signed with Y team and he hit .247 with 17 homeruns and 56 RBIs last year." People are used to these stats and I understand that. However, they don't correlate well to runs, so we should use the stats that do. I know some older folks would hate this, but that is how you learn. If it is never presented to you, you will never change and grow accustomed to it. Right now, by spewing batting average, RBIs, and ERA down our throats everywhere stats are shown, we are setting bad examples and teaching bad stats to people. People think these stats define a player when really they don't at all. As a strong community of people who love baseball, I think it is our responsibility to teach people the proper way to view baseball stats.

Whether it is the option to edit the stats in these areas ourselves, or just have things added by default (such as how things like OPS+ and WAR were added, which is a good start at least), more information needs to be more easily accessible.

When I was younger and played this game for years, I was fine with these traditional stats. However, now as someone who is in a sabermetrics and multiple business analytics classes in college, it drives me crazy when people comment things using the traditional stats mentioned previously. People don't know better because they're not told otherwise. I don't want to change the whole game, but simply educate people, as well as make it less of a huge frustration to actually look up useful stats for players while I'm playing the game. It takes too many clicks to find a lot of the most useful stats for a given player. Maybe some will disagree, but I do hope some people understand where I'm coming from.

Which stats should be added to a main screen could certainly be discussed, but there certainly needs to be some changes because it is currently a bit frustrating having to go to the second or third page of stats in the profile.

Thank you to anyone taking the time to read this, and I love this game. :]