Look at the formula for QB Rating. It's a fucking nightmare. Yet NFL fans -- NFL fans! -- are smart enough to realize that regardless of how hard it is to compute, it gives us a basic overall understanding of how good a quarterback is. It may not be perfect, but it's better than just looking at a QB's, say, completion percentage.
Sure. EqA is also tough to compute (though I would argue actually easier than QB rating). But it's a very useful statistic. So why can't baseball fans latch onto it a similar way?
Say it with me: "Oh, okay. It's a weird equation, but at least now I have a pretty good sense of how good this particular position player is at hitting. .260 is average, .300 is really good, and .350 is like top of the league shit. This is like QB rating only better because it's about baseball and baseball is better because it's untimed and beautiful and doesn't feature guys hitting each other super hard and people like John Updike write about it more and stuff!"
Labels: eqa, qb rating, statistics
