Sabermetrics

Major League Baseball is broadcasted into the living rooms of thousands of American fans each year. For those with MLB network channel, baseball can be watched on a daily basis. Rivalries formed over decades of the sport and the question of who the better team is always arises. Once a year teams from across the country play for the title of the World Series Champions. Two world series ago, the New York Yankees earned their 27th title.

However, because the Yankees have such a popular franchise, they are able to afford big name players. This isn’t the case for all of Major League Baseball teams. Especially since the state of the US economy has dropped, some teams struggle to pick up players who have enough talent and can create a buzz with an affordable price. Fortunately, there is a way to economically sign players who are efficient and successful. The philosophy of creating a team has changed drastically from the birth of baseball to the present. A concept used today is Sabermetrics. One team that has adopted this technique is the Oakland Athletics. The question is: Has the use of this method been successful?

When the American league began in 1901, the Athletics debuted as a team representing Philadelphia. During this time, the Athletics won 8 World Series. In 1954, the Athletics were sold to Kansas City, where they spent thirteen years without any distinguishable accomplishments. It wasn’t until 1968 that the Athletics were moved to Oakland. The early ‘70’s were big years for the A’s where they won 3 consecutive World Series in ’72, ’73, and ’74. It wasn’t until ’88 that they would win 3 consecutive more. Although the team is the second most successful team in the Major Leagues, with the New York Yankees reigning, the franchise is not one to pay large sums of money to recruit players ("Baseball almanac," 2009) . This says a lot about the franchise.

Sabermetrics, though not used by all baseball teams, is an efficient method of analysis to find the value of a player based upon more than just “speed, defensive range, arm strength, the ability to hit for power, and the ability to hit for average” (Harvard Law Review Association, 2004) . Sabermetrics is a strategy used to determine how well a player performs in comparison with players. The idea of sabermetrics has been around for some time, but a man by the name of Bill James coined the name deriving it from the abbreviation for the Society for American Baseball Research, or SABR (Talsma, 1999 ) . James founded sabermetrics in 1977. He began to explore new avenues for determining the value of a player. He also came up with more efficient ways to win baseball games (Gietschier, 2005) .

Another nickname more widely recognized in the world of baseball for sabermetrics is “Billy
Bean Ball” in honor of the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. James believes that sabermetrics is “the search for objective truth in baseball” (Saccoman, 1996) . Because baseball is widely known for keeping statistics of every baseball player of each game played, sabermetrics is very useful in determining the value of a player.

New measurements have become factors in finding the value of players. A couple of the terms for the measurements include “OPS,” on-base plus slugging percentage, and “WHIP,” walks plus hits per inning pitched. “OPS” is found by the number of times a player reaches a base and how accurately he hits doubles, triples, and homeruns. “WHIP,” a term used for pitchers, is the number of walks and hits a pitcher gives up per inning pitched (Harvard Law Review Association, 2004) . For example, if the pitcher has a “WHIP” below 1.2 he is considered an effective player (Harvard Law Review Association, 2004) .

In addition, James contradicted the conventional idea that sacrifice bunting is an efficient way of creating runs. Instead, he believes bunting should not be utilized as a strategy to create runs. As an alternative strategy, he feels that on-base percentage, or the ratio of how many times a batter gets on base compared to his at bats, is a better way to measure the success of a batter. James believes that solely using batting average, or the ratio of the number of times a player receives a hit compared to how many times he gets up to hit, is ineffective. James conjured up a statistic called “runs created” that combines all offensive categories into a formula that measure how many runs a player actually contributes to the team’s offensive output (Gietschier, 2005) .

Billy James once stated “The value of baseball statistics… is not that they answer all of the questions involved, but that they provide definitive answers to some of the questions involved, which enables us to focus on the others.” In other words, statistics can answer the question of whether or not a player has power, can steal bases, or can throw out runners on the base paths. Once some of the answers are established, they can be factored into equations along with other factors such as on base percentage and fielding percentage to determine the definitive value of a player.

These equations are utilized by the Oakland A’s to find players that will be effective in creating wins. This past year, Andrew Bailey, age 25 received the honor of Athletics Rookie of the Year as a pitcher. Also in the past decade, the A’s have produced two other Rookie of the Year award winners, Bobby Crosby (2004) and Hudson Street (2005), a Cy-Young winner, Barry Zito (2002), and Two MVP’s, Jason Giambi (2000) and Miguel Tejada (2002) ("Baseball almanac," 2009).

Sabermetrics also gives teams an economic advantage over other teams not using it. For example, the Oakland Athletics signs undervalued and under priced players to build their team rather than signing big name super stars that produce at about the same level. This strategy works for low-income small market teams who want to compete with the higher income big market teams. The stark opposite example of a non-sabermetric team is the New York Yankees. For each win, the Yankees Pay tenfold the amount the Oakland Athletics pay per win. Ironically, the Yankees signed Jason Giambi in 2002.

According to James Sarowiecki, author of The Buffet of Baseball, in reference to the economic advantage Sabermetrics carries, “This [sabermetric] strategy wins games and equally important, saves money, because even though the players Bean likes are as productive as many high profile stars with the gaudy stats, they come a lot cheaper.” Also James Maslin, author of Three Strikes Your Out at The Ballgame, an article in the N.Y. Times, stated, “Oakland wound up ranking highest [in its 2003 division] with the least money, demonstrating a principle that can be appreciated far beyond the realm of baseball.”

Since Billy Bean has been General Manager, the A’s have improved noticeably. According to
Baseball-Almanac.com, “They won Division titles in 2000-02-03 and a 2001 wild card slot. Although they did not get far in post season play, they had a bedrock starting staff for those four seasons featuring Tim Hudson (sixty-nine wins), Mark Mulder (sixty-four wins) and Barry Zito (sixty-one wins) and later Rich Harden. They also developed sluggers Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada (until they both sought more lucrative pastures through free agency) and Eric Chavez.”

In 2009, the Oakland Athletics ranked 4th in the American League West division. The win to loss ratio was 75-87, which created a winning percentage of .463. This left the Athletics only 22 games behind the team in first place. The home win to loss ratio for the Athletics of this year was 40-41, leaving the road win to loss ration 35-46 ("Baseball almanac," 2009).

Unfortunately when analyzing the A’s, I was unable to actually perform calculations needed to compare statistics because the formulas are too advanced for my mathematical skills. Therefore, I was limited to only research and analysis provided by statisticians. If I were to use this method of analysis in the future, I would make sure to have enough time to learn the mathematical equations to formulate better results.

However, the use of sabermetrics has proven to be a successful tool in the present day game of baseball. Using statistical information to determine the value of players is now the strategy of yesteryear. Proven success has been shown through the achievements of the Oakland Athletics in recent years. Not only are they keeping pace but often surpassing the success of the higher income, larger market teams. This more efficient and more economically sound strategy of building a winning team shows signs of continuing to be applied in future generations of baseball
franchises.


Works Cited
-Baseball almanac. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.baseball-
almanac.com/teamstats/schedule.php?y=2009&t=OAK
-Gietschier, Steve. "The Stats That Matter." Sporting News 229(2005): 5.
-"Losing Sight of Hingsight: The unrealized Traditionalism of Law and
Sabermetrics." Harvard Law Review Association 117(2004): 20.
-Saccoman, John. "Sabermetrics: The team Teching Approach." Education
117(1996): 2.
-Talsma, Gary. "Data Analysis and Baseball." The Mathematics Teacher 92(1999):
6.

Originally written Spring 2010. Edited 11/29/2010