Statistics Discussion

[Forza]

Hi All,

I have no doubt that this would have been covered many times (possibly dozens?) over the years but I thought there might be some value in revisiting it to see if the approach of the majority has changed.

My question is simple, which statistics do you use to evaluate the performance of your batters and pitchers? Are you old-school or do you favour a more modern approach with advanced metrics?

I fall into the former camp but I am keen to move into the latter, hence my creating this thread to crowd source inspiration.

Looking forward to your answers.

[Mr. Marlin]

I play with ratings turned off so stats are my only metric. For batters I'm mainly looking at OBP & OPS. No rocket science there. For pitchers it's WHIP and K/9 since those are pretty much on the pitcher alone. How many base runners is this jerk going to saddle me with and what is his likelihood of striking out the batter. For defense ZR is my main stat.

[TomVeal]

For the most part, WOBA for batters and FIP for pitchers. For lead-off batters, I give some weight to OBP, and I check pitchers' FIP-, just in case FIP has been distorted by park effects. Also, one must bear in mind that FIP disfavors pitchers who are able to induce "soft contact" with the ball. Therefore, I don't completely ignore ERA and RA/9 or WHIP. (There are sabremetricians, of course, who insist that "inducing soft contact" is a myth. I don't know whether the OOTP programmers agree with them.)

For fielding, the expanded stats, showing how well the player did on "routine", "likely", etc. chances are more enlightening than any of the other statistics, though they show only part of the picture (getting the ball into the glove, as opposed to what happens next).

[cavebutter]

For pitchers, WHIP, K/9, BB/9, HR/9. As said above, these are measures that are almost exclusively attributable to the pitchers' actions. I look at FIP and FIP-, but those 4 are my go-to stats.

For batters, its wOBA, K%, BB%. I will look at counting stats and AVG too, but if I need to quickly get the measure of a batter, it'll be those.

I don't look at fielding stats at all. I use ratings and hope for the best.

[TwinsGuy11]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marlin

I play with ratings turned off so stats are my only metric. For batters I'm mainly looking at OBP & OPS. No rocket science there. For pitchers it's WHIP and K/9 since those are pretty much on the pitcher alone. How many base runners is this jerk going to saddle me with and what is his likelihood of striking out the batter. For defense ZR is my main stat.

I tried this approach but I just don't have the time to really dive into the stats. I look at ratings similar to how teams use scouting/analytic departments to give an overall rating or opinion of a player.

[Mr. Marlin]

Originally Posted by TwinsGuy11

I tried this approach but I just don't have the time to really dive into the stats. I look at ratings similar to how teams use scouting/analytic departments to give an overall rating or opinion of a player.

There is no wrong way to do it. The ratings are only as good as the scout (unless accuracy is 100%) so even with ratings there is still a "fog of war" effect. It's not more challenging one way or the other. Just different.

[ederemer]

I find K% and BB%, for both pitchers and hitters, something I look at first most the time, as well as BABIP

[jimmysthebestcop]

pro everything fan graphs rates their players on