Sweet New SABR Statistic

[NYgiantsfan5689]

I've come up with a new, extremely complex statistic that I think will revolutionize baseball.

Let me go over how to calculate this statistic. Bear with me for a moment folks because it gets a little messy. First, you look at all the times a hitter comes up to bat. Give the hitter one point for every time they get on base by hitting the ball, except if the scorer feels like the fielder *probably* should've made the play (they get a point if the fielder is too lazy or inept to make it to the ball on time though). That's right, this statistic gives equal credit for home runs and singles, even though about 70% of the time a batter hits a single, he won't score, but a home run guarantees one run at minimum. We also don't give hitters any points for walking, because frankly, it's boring to watch, and who wants to tire out opposing pitchers and create run scoring opportunities anyways?

Then we divide the number of points accrued by the number of opportunities a batter has to get points, except we ignore some of these opportunities. Walks didn't count for anything at the beginning, so there's no reason to start counting them now, it's just easier to pretend they didn't happen. We WILL, however, count errors as opportunities, because even though the hitter succeeded in every way by getting on base, advancing runners, and not making outs... well we'll still hold it against them. If the hitter gets out but advances a baserunner, then we also don't count it as an opportunity, but only if the hitter did it on purpose, or if it's a fly out that leads to a run scoring. Ground outs that "accidentally" lead to a run scoring count as opportunities. The scorer will judge how pure the batter's heart was to decide if it was intentional or not.

What do you think?

[realmofotalk]

We also don't give hitters any points for walking, because frankly, it's boring to watch, and who wants to tire out opposing pitchers and create run scoring opportunities anyways?

Ask the Pirates who dumped Jose Bautista in favor of Andy LaRoche as their third baseman because LAROCHE WALKS A LOT!!!!OBP!!!STATS DON'T LIE!!!

[HollywoodLeo]

Except LaRoche doesn't walk a lot. Only 2 times in his professional career (Minors and majors) did he have more walks than strikeouts. (And one of those years he beat his Ks by a whopping 2 walks).

[realmofotalk]

It was his 2008 season in Triple-A that his walks-to-strikeout ratio took off and the same year he was traded mid-season as the key part of the Manny Ramirez deal, which everyone acted like we gave up the next Kevin Youkilis (aka the Greek God of Walks).

[realmofotalk]

And you can still walk a lot even if you strike out almost twice as much, a la Adam Dunn.

[Saber]

Yay, you made a jackass point about batting average. Are we done?

[NYgiantsfan5689]

Someone has their panties in a bunch

[HollywoodLeo]

Someone has their panties in a bunch

You could say the same about somebody who types up over two paragraphs in a new thread that basically says "batting average sucks".

[NYgiantsfan5689]

Didn't type it. Found it. And batting average does suck

[HollywoodLeo]

Didn't type it. Found it. And batting average does suck

Then I wasn't talking about you

Batting average doesn't necessarily suck. You just gotta keep it in context when using it. (like pretty much any other stat.)