I am a fierce believer in sabremetrics, which is the study of statistics in baseball to determine a player’s value in terms of wins, among other things.  In baseball, a game can be distilled down to a certain number of one-on-one at-bats.  These are unique battles between pitchers and hitters that can be analyzed statistically.  Since there are limited variables involved in each at-bat, those statistics can be relied upon to a great extent to determine a player’s individual value.

Many of you probably subscribe to the theory that statistics can only tell part of the story and things like “clubhouse presence”, “clutch-hitting”, “RBIs”, and “ability to close out games in the 9th” are a crucial if not the most important factor in judging a player’s value (StevieY and all the other jocks are included in this category).  Although I joke that there is no such thing as clutch-hitting, I don’t believe that completely.  There is overwhelming evidence, however, that things like clutch-hitting do not even exist given a large enough sample size.

Whether you fall on the side of the jocks or the stat nerds, everyone can agree that the variables in baseball are limited enough to such things as defense and ballpark (both of which can be accounted for pretty easily).  Statistical analysis, therefore, is a great way of determining a player’s value, though obviously StevieY and others think it is less important than intelligent people like myself, Bill James, Bill Simmons, Rob Neyer, and the guys over at Baseball Prospectus.

Which brings me to basketball.  In the last few years, John Hollinger has spurred a mainstream effort to utilize statistics in basketball in a similar way to how they have been used in baseball.  The problem is basketball is a game of variables above all else.  As any statistician knows, the more variables there are, the harder it is to control for all of them in a statistical analysis.  Where baseball is limited to a one-on-one at-bat, every single play in basketball is affected by the other players around, the offensive philosophy, the defense, the pace, and many other factors.  Bill Simmons explained the problem with trying to use stats as a predominant factor in assessing value in basketball:

In my mind, basketball lends itself to the perfect blend of objectivity and subjectivity. Statistics help only so much; we still have to interpret what we see. Take Jason Kidd. Why has he suddenly become a deadly three-point shooter at his advanced age? Because he isn’t carrying an offense or taking contested shots with the shot clock winding down like he had to in Jersey, that’s why. In Dallas, all he has to do is distribute the ball and shoot … when he’s open. Now look at poor Dwyane Wade. He misses 70% of his threes — the only blemish on his MVP résumé — because his teammates stink, which means he has to hoist one or two contested, beat-the-clock bombs each game.

While the recent use of statistics by teams such as the Rockets and players like Shane Battier, along with John Hollinger’s PER and others, have pushed the use of stats to the forefront of basketball analysis, we have to be careful not to rely on those stats like we do (and should do!) in baseball.

The point here is that as much as I have utilized statistics to illustrate players values and how good teams are in my coverage of the Bulls and the NBA (using stats ranging from points per game and fg% to +/- and PER), I never truly believed those statistics could be used exclusive of other types of analysis to determine a player’s value.  In the upcoming baseball season, that will change drastically.  Statistics like walks and slugging %, as well as almost completely spurning things like RBIs and steals (useless and harmful respectively) are extremely important to proving what a player brings to the team.  I get excited as much as anyone about a walk-off homerun. a crucial late-season save, or a great clubhouse presence (DeRosa’s value in the clubhouse cannot be downplayed) but those kinds of things alone are not determinative of how good a player is over the course of a season (in my opinion).

Oh and StevieY and you other jocks that hate statistics?  Stop saying us stat geeks are ruining the game and making it less fun.  Just because we would rather value a stat like OPS and want our players to draw walks instead of attempt steals (which, by the way, means we want our team to win since it is PROVEN that walking more and stealing less leads to more runs and thus more wins), doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy a hot dog and a beer at Wrigley Field while watching Aramis Ramirez hit a bomb in the bottom of the 9th to win the game.

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Tags: Geeks, Jocks, OPS, PER, Sabremetrics, Statistics