FIRE JOE MORGAN

It's a historic day. For years, man has waited for just the right term to use when insulting other men who love baseball numbers just a little too much. (What are they, gay for numbers? Probably.) And now, just like the wait for Shrek 3, that wait is ogre.

Jon Heyman has called us VORPies.

Sorry VORPies, Rollins was the right choice

I can't decide what the funniest voice to read this in is. Prohibition-era gangster? '80s-movie-antagonist-and-eventual-ski-race-losing-preppy? Daniel Plainview?

Rollins acknowledged that his brash "team to beat'' prediction probably helped him win the MVP. Of course, it didn't hurt that he hit 30 home runs, scored 139 runs and slugged .534 while batting leadoff and playing a superb shortstop for a division champion.

He had a very good year and an even better storyline. That he won the MVP was wholly unsurprising, I suppose. But I am a VORPy, sir, and VORPies wear the VORPy family crest (a ThinkPad with a griffin's tail) and sing the VORPy national anthem ("God Save PECOTA (Not That We're Certain God Exists)") and by God (if He exists), above all a VORPy abides by the VORPy code, which we sing thunderously from the mountaintops and tattoo onto our left biceps:

Be reasonable, and be reasonably objective. Please. At least try.

We're working on pithy-ing it up.

The Rockies' great slugger, Matt Holliday, finished second, but even a Rockies person told me in the playoffs last October that Rollins deserved the MVP, just as that Rockies person believed their shortstop Troy Tulowitzki deserved the Rookie of the Year (the Brewers' Ryan Braun wound up winning a close vote for that award).

Hear that? Hear that, VORPies? One person -- a Rockies person! -- would have also voted for Rollins! Disband the VORPies! Cancel our convention (VORPyStock 2K8) at the Twentynine Palms Holiday Inn! Defenestrate in perpetual shame!

A Rockies person quietly whispered softly in Jon Heyman's ear, and like that, the debate was over.

That person believed that great offense combined with stellar shortstop play should have been enough to take the awards, not a bad thought at all.

Not a bad thought, maybe. Not really a great thought, either, if you think about what kind of thought it is.

Great offense + stellar shortstop play = MVP

What about Even greater offense + stellar catcher play? Or Best offense in history + okay left fielding? Or Slightly better offense + slightly worse shortstop play?

Even non-VORPies might admit that we need a more versatile equation than

Great offense + stellar shortstop play = MVP

if we're going to be serious about discussing the MVP. But that's me talking. I'm trying to be reasonable and reasonably objective. Such is my burden. I am a VORPy.

Even so, I wasn't shocked that stats people

Please -- VORPies.

have taken issue with Rollins winning the MVP award.

Very diplomatic of Heyman. Even though ONE ROCKIES PERSON told him he preferred Rollins, he refuses to be shocked that anyone else would disagree. Open mind full heart can't lose.

There are numbers crunchers

VORPies

out there -- including a firejoemorgan.com author

That's me! Please, "firejoemorgan.com VORPy" will do next time. Whatever I am currently doing, "authoring" is way too generous a term to describe what it is.

who wrote a guest piece in Sports Illustrated last week -- who believe baseball writers rank somewhere between morons and idiots for voting Rollins as MVP over David Wright, who had a higher VORP.

To be fair to this firejoemorgan.com VORPy, the piece was a little more indignant about Juno, Crash and Forrest Gump. Rollins over Wright is wrong, I think, but within earshot of being debatable. It's not Dawson-wrong or perhaps even Morneau-wrong.

But you're right, David Wright had a higher VORP than Jimmy Rollins. And a higher EqA. A higher OBP. A higher OPS. More Win Shares.

The stat people

VORPies. Come on, not that hard -- you're about to mention VORP in four words --

seem to believe VORP -- a Baseball Prospectus statistic that stands for Value Over Replacement Player -- defines a player,

Sure, I'll look at VORP. And EqA. And OBP. OPS. Win Shares. Various fielding assessments. Games played.

Somewhat counterintuitively, the Additional Credo of the VORPies along with the "Be reasonable" one is "Don't just look at VORP. That would be stupid."

but why haven't many of them championed last year's VORP leader (Hanley Ramirez) as MVP instead?

Hanley Ramirez is terrible at defense. All of the different fielding metrics and all of the guys who judge fielding-type things often disagree to the point of cacophony, but they seem to be pretty in sync on this point: Hanley is a Bill the Butcher-level butcher in the field. (Yo, two DDL characters in one post. Big ups, yo!)

So yeah, H-Ram led Wright by 8 runs of VORP (which already makes a positional adjustment), but by most estimates he gives that away and more in the field. Reasonable, huh?

I assume the stats guys favor Wright because he played for a contending team. I guess the rule is this: Highest VORP wins unless the VORP champion is playing for a loser.

Nah. Defense.

If Wright's offensive stats were slightly better than Rollins', and I will accept that they were,

Sweet. I know about this club. It's pretty exclusive. We have an awesome secret building, though, and on Thursdays we get drunk and watch Yahoo! Gamecasts. If you're open-minded enough about baseball, we just might let you start the application process.

What's the name of our club? I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with WORPies and is VORPies.

shouldn't Rollins get points for playing a superb shortstop compared to Wright's slightly-above average third base?

Yes. Defense counts. And both Rollins and Wright are very good at it. Rollins is probably a little more valuable in the field. By Win Shares and WARP, which both include defense, Wright still comes out significantly ahead. By John Dewan's Revised Zone Rating and Out of Zone plays made, Wright and Rollins both score relatively well, which doesn't indicate that Rollins should overcome a pretty large offensive deficit.

And shouldn't Rollins get credit for showing extraordinary initiative and leadership?

To the extent that you believe he leadershipped J.C. Romero to a 1.35 post-ASB ERA and initiative-d Ryan Howard to a 1.043 September OPS, sure. You can give him some credit. Me, I'm not doling out entire wins for that kind of stuff. Maybe in the case of a tie? I don't know. Trying to be reasonable here. KT would kill me for even suggesting intangibles could break a tie.

For helping his team barrel into the playoffs from seven games back with 17 to go, as opposed to Wright's team, which perpetrated a historic choke?

Very enjoyable to read "perpetrated a historic choke" followed immediately by the words:

Though the Mets' collapse was no fault of Wright's,

A little gunshy, huh? Just go the whole fucking hog: blame Wright for the choke. Do it. Feel the dark power coursing through your veins. Yes. Feels good, doesn't it? Soon you will be able to shoot lighting bolts from your hands. Unlimited power!

for the MVP to come off the all-time choke team, he'd better have a greater advantage in stats than this: Wright outhit Rollins .325 to .296, but both hit 30 home runs and Rollins beat Wright in Runs Created by 13.

Heyman is using Runs Created in the sense of Runs + RBI - HR. This is bad. Do not do this. There's an alternative: actual Runs Created. That's right. It's the one you get if you type "Runs Created" into Google and click I'm Feeling Lucky. You're already arguing using a stat called Runs Created. Why not simply use a better one?

According to their Baseball Reference pages, Wright out-run-created Rollins in the better sense of the term Runs Created, 146 to 135. This is, completely unsurprisingly, in line with their standings in essentially every other semi-robust offensive statistic ever invented.

Wright's big advantage apparently comes down to the fact he got on base more often (his on-base percentage was significantly higher, .416 to .344),

Yes! Hooray! You've been inducted into the VORPies! (Pops champagne cork, cues Handel's "Messiah.")

usually via a walk (he had 94 walks to Rollins' 49). To the stat guys, walking is more thrilling and much more valuable than actually winning the pennant.

Ooh. (Stuffs cork back in champagne, cues comedy record scratch sound effect.) Jon, as one VORPy to one near-VORPy, let me just say: for us, it might not ultimately be about what's more thrilling. We, the VORPies, are sort of trying to figure out who was more valuable at playing baseball, and sometimes this means looking at things that aren't that thrilling. Non-VORPies are telling us this all the time: taking the extra base, sacrificing, hit-and-running -- these things aren't thrilling, yet they're constantly heralded as intensely, team altering-ly valuable.

Well, walking is definitely kind of valuable. It means you're not out-ing. David Wright was spectacularly, thrillingly good at not out-ing last year. And he hit the ball far. And he ran the bases well. And he was a good defender. And hey, his team wasn't unconscionably shitty. I think he was good enough to be MVP. I guess we could agree to disagree, but there's no fun in that. Let's disagree to agree.

Labels: david wright, jimmy rollins, jon heyman, mvp, vorp, VORPies

Phil Rogers believes it is the solemn duty of a baseball executive to be a party animal. Seriously.

Meetings change ... for better?
Unlike the old days, action lags, though possibilities remain

Love when a guy straight up says "unlike the old days" -- it's a handy heads up that I should immediately bookmark the article and start ridiculing.

Back in the day, before the Internet, digital music and VORP ratings, baseball's winter meetings used to be almost as much about debauchery as business. They were not considered to be in session until some well-known executive had fallen flat on his back off a bar stool or a trade had been made in a washroom, just before somebody vomited.

Doesn't this sort of sound like the 24-year-old who comes back to his old high school and brags about how crazy it used to be at Eisenhower High when him and Mikey Rags and Paul Shutson used to drink beer while doing the rope climb and remember that one time when Mikey took a shit inside the guidance counselor's file cabinet? That was awesome!!!

We're talking about baseball executives. Executives. But Phil is straight-facedly saying that he misses how often they used to vomit.

There were some downsides to this, of course. Fistfights weren't that uncommon. You could oversleep and miss the Rule 5 draft. And sometimes the owner of a team would get confused and trade for Domingo Ramos when it had been Damaso Garcia his scouts had recommended.

Those brown people all look and sound alike! Again, just to be clear, Phil's getting misty-eyed about guys getting drunk and violent and basically completely fucking over their team's fans by overfuckingsleeping. Can you imagine if Brian Sabean held a press conference and was like, "Sorry, friends, I missed out on some great trades because I had to have myself a fourteen-hour whiskey nap." Actually, Sabean might be better off completely horse piss drunk.

It wasn't a perfect world, but at least then the people who took themselves too seriously stood out. And things happened.

It wasn't a perfect world, but at least guys were punching each other in the face and vomiting into each other's butts. And there warn't no fucking computerfaces nerding up my field of vision!

I wonder why general managers tend to take themselves seriously these days. Is it because they're responsible for multi-million dollar assets and they aren't professional fuck-ups for a living?

At last week's meetings in Nashville, the Ivy League numbers crunchers and lawyers paraded around the Opryland Hotel like accountants on the eve of an audit. In the end, nobody covered themselves in glory except perhaps Detroit general manager Dave Dombrowski.

Dave Dombrowski went to Cornell, an Ivy League school, for a while before transferring to Western Michigan. He was a wunderkind who became general manager of the Expos at age 31 -- the youngest in baseball at the time. I bet he has crunchered numbersons, or at the very least has gentlemen who cruncher them for him.

Phil, I'm sorry the baseball winter meetings are no longer the rootinest, tootinest, topsy-turvy pastiche of the Old West you believed them to be in the past. These men have jobs to do. They may wear suits now. They may even -- gasp -- wear glasses or have college degrees. Some of them use statistical analysis, perhaps because it helps them avoid doing things like proposing that the White Sox trade Mark Buehrle and Joe Crede for A-Rod, Melky Cabrera, and a couple of live arms. Or believing that Kevin Millwood (WHIP of 1.62 last year!) from ages 31 to 35 at 12 million dollars a year is a good deal. Or telling us, point-blank, before the 2007 season: "Don't be surprised if Erstad's play is bigger than the headlines given his signing." (Erstad, 2007: .645 OPS.)

You know who did do these things, Phil? You did.

But to your credit, you did so with vomit all over your fucking shirt.

Labels: phil rogers, vomit, vorp

I am convinced that 80% of recalcitrant old baseball men's aversion to VORP and WARP and the like can be attributed to the fact that the acronyms sound sort of dorky. Or specifically, dorpy. If the stats were called something cool, like Thunderbird Number or Obsidian Blade Value, I think more guys would get on board.

Anyway, remember that week in 2006 when Ken Tremendous went to Argentina and made a big deal out of it? I just got back from Brazil and did not make a big deal out of it, mainly because I failed to post anything about deficient baseball commentary or gormless sportswriting while in Brazil. I consider this an enormous failing on my part.

But I'm back now, and Jon Heyman has welcomed me home with a big dumb load of stupid.

Your title:

What the VORP?
Performing under pressure a big factor in MVP debate

Yeah. It's that sweet an article. Actually, it's a mailbag, and Carolyn from Boca Raton, Florida (beautiful, charismatic, saintly Carolyn) starts us off right:

Regarding your NL MVP candidates, how about those two guys in Florida? Yes, the Marlins are not in playoff contention, but it's hard to ignore Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera, especially considering they're first and second, respectively, in the NL in VORP, and rank in the top three in Runs Created. It looks like you went through all the playoff-contending teams, and chose a "good" player from each. Let me ask you: If Cabrera were on a playoff-contender this season, would there be any doubt who the MVP was?
-- Carolyn, Boca Raton, Fla.

Carolyn makes a lot of good points, and I imagine she lives in a gleaming white Spanish-style home in Boca Raton and rides horses bareback in the springtime. But back to the point: yes, Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera sit 1-2 in the NL VORP standings (BP subscription req'd), followed very closely by Misters Wright, Jones (Larry, not Andruw), Utley and Pujols. A San Francisco outfielder ranks seventh.

So yes, Carolyn, Cabrera would be a very strong MVP candidate if his team were any good, as would Hanley. As for your accusation that Mr. Heyman only looked at playoff-ish teams --

Actually, you're right. That's exactly what I did, and how I came up with Prince Fielder as my NL MVP leader. His "good'' year is actually more than good, and the Brewers are right in the thick of the playoff race.

Prince is having a terrific year, and he probably actually is the lead dog in the NL MVP race because it's an award voted on by guys exactly like Heyman. Is this just?

Well, he's 10th in the league in VORP, a full 21 points behind both Cabrera and H. Ramirez. He has an excellent EqA (.322 -- lower than Cabrera's, Pujols', Bonds', Utley's, Jones', heck, even Hanley's), and he plays indifferent to bad defense at the easiest position on the diamond. To be honest, I don't think he's all that strong a candidate.

But wait, says Heyman. I have more to say --

While I understand your sentiments, I am more interested in "wins created'' than runs created.

Really. Wins created. What, exactly, is Prince Fielder's wins created on the year? How about Gabe Gross'? His team is in the thick of the playoff race. They have wins -- well, some, anyway. They actually have a losing record. If they were in the AL East, they would be 15 games out. Prince Fielder is also on this team. I wonder if Heyman's considering any Blue Jays or A's for AL MVP? They're neck and neck with the Brew Crew at this point.

Since you totally made up the phrase wins created and it's meaningless, I will say Gabe Gross has 10 WC and Fielder has 68.4. (The rest of the Brewers account for negative wins.)

And the day I consider VORP is the day I get out of the business.

Enthusiasts of sabermetrics often get accused of zealotry. This, my friends, is zealotry of the highest level. Doesn't this sentence sound like some Sinn Fein IRA terrorist shit or something? "The day I break bread with the Protestants, Danny, is the day my bonny Irish heart stops beating." Or something. I don't know anything about Ireland.

The idea of the MVP is to honor the player who has had the biggest positive impact on the pennant races.

This line is perfectly acceptable if it's changed to "Jon Heyman, and Jon Heyman alone's idea of the MVP is to honor the player who has had the biggest positive impact on the pennant races." And a useful disclaimer would be: "Jon Heyman does not acknowledge any leeway for nuance, subtlety, evidence, or critical thinking in the determination of the MVP."

Here's a fun thing: from 1911 to 1914, Hugh Chalmers of the Chalmers Automobile Company handed out a sort of proto-MVP called the Chalmers Award, given to the player who "should prove himself as the most important and useful player to his club and to the league at large in point of deportment and value of services rendered." Sounds a lot like the nebulous BBWAA MVP award, doesn't it?

The 1913 NL Chalmers, the third (and second to last) ever, went to one Jake Daubert of the Brooklyn Superbas. The Superbas' record that year was an underwhelming 65-84, good for a winning percentage of .436.

Today, Miguel Cabrera's and Hanley Ramirez' team, the Florida Marlins, sit at 58-75, for a winning percentage of ... also .436.

Eerie, isn't it? Aren't you glad I'm back from Brazil? I am.

Labels: brazil, brooklyn superbas, hugh chalmers, jon heyman, vorp

I would guess that something like ninety percent of people still consume all of their sportswriting in the form of newspapers. (I mean, factor in old people and casual fans, right?) They wake up in the morning, pour themselves some orange juice, sit down and read drivel like this willfully uninformed screed from cantakerous, crotchety Murray Chass.

As Season Approaches, Some Topics Should Be Off Limits

Things I don’t want to read or hear about anymore:

Let's cut to the juicy part.

Statistics mongers promoting VORP and other new-age baseball statistics.

"New age" is touchy-feely. New age is spiritual. New age is intangible. VORP, Mr. Chass, is not new age. It may be relatively new, but it is not new age. It is the opposite of new age. It is an attempt to quantify, to measure, to analyze. You know, a more scientific approach to knowledge. Science -- that thing that humans do to find out more about the world around them. Not new age -- a fake thing that involves pan flutes and rubbing crystals on your body.

I receive a daily e-mail message from Baseball Prospectus, an electronic publication filled with articles and information about statistics, mostly statistics that only stats mongers can love.

You can feel the sneer curling on his face as he writes "electronic publication" with a quill pen in Olde English, then rolls up the parchment and sends it on its three-day horseback journey to his publisher, Lord Sulzberger, Jr.

He's kidding about the e-mail of course. He doesn't have an "e-mail address." E-mail is for new age wack jobs.

To me, VORP epitomized the new-age nonsense.

Sir. Sir. You're still using "new age" incorrectly. Excuse me, sir?

(Murray Chass ignores me and continues brushing his teeth with a small rubber fish.)

For the longest time, I had no idea what VORP meant and didn’t care enough to go to any great lengths to find out.

That's cool. You're just a baseball writer for the fucking New York fucking Times. Thanks for caring about your fucking job so much you won't type "define:vorp" into Google, hit return, and then read the literally two sentences that result. I just did it ten times in the last three seconds. You're right, though: I guess those are "great lengths" for a 479-year-old member of the tribe of living undead.

I asked some colleagues whose work I respect, and they didn’t know what it meant either.

Those colleagues:

Tim McCarver
Branch Rickey
Abner Doubleday
Alexander Joy Cartwright
Scoop Jackson
Herodotus
John Kruk

Finally, not long ago, I came across VORP spelled out. It stands for value over replacement player. How thrilling. How absurd. Value over replacement player. Don’t ask what it means. I don’t know.

If you read this paragraph again, you'll find that it doesn't really contain an argument in any sense of the word. Since when are baseball statistics supposed to be "thrilling"? How thrilling is ERA, a thing you presmuably think is fine? And you still don't know what VORP means, even after writing about it in a professional column in a professional newspaper, professionally?

I suppose that if stats mongers want to sit at their computers and play with these things all day long, that’s their prerogative.

In their parents' basements, not getting a date for prom, wearing nerd glasses and playing the violin. Even at age 9,354, Murray gets a thrill out of nailing these dorks. Good luck getting laid, dorks! Gotcha!

But their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game threatens to undermine most fans’ enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein.

Murray Chass: New age new age new age new age the end. My column's done!

Nurse: Very good, Murray! We're going out into the garden now for some fresh air. The garden. Won't that be fun?

Saying that VORP undermines "enjoyment" and the "human factor" is like creationists saying that evolution takes away the "wonder" and "mystery" of the universe. It doesn't. It makes it awesomer.

People play baseball. Numbers don’t.

I actually believe that goofy, anthropomorphic numbers with arms and legs and silly oversize white gloves play all of the games we know of in what we call professional baseball. Call me crazy, but that is what I believe.

Murray Chass: proof that there is still a reason we behave like true dickheads on this site.

Labels: mother's basement, murray chass, new age, vorp

It's time for Ned Colletti, Quipmeister General:

''Do I use VORP?" Colletti said, referring to one such sabermetric tool, Value Over Replacement Player. ''I may be using it and not even know it, and if I am, it's nobody's business. There are a lot of different criteria in judging players. I think I use, um, esoteric qualitative mathematical review times five. That's one of them."

You would think if you were a baseball general manager, and you hadn't bothered to learn anything about baseball statistical evaluation, you might just keep your mouth shut. Or at least, be 1% respectful of what might be a useful tool in your line of business. Instead, Colletti sounds like an old codger mistrustful of the newfangled ideas in this day and age. If Ned Colletti were alive in Islamic Spain in the 11th century, he would be saying, "Astrolabe? I don't be needin' no damn astrolabe! I gauge where the sun and stars are gonna be usin' my gut and my peepers and my pointin' fingers!"

Also, I think he means quantitative, not qualitative. Numbers are quantitative. Math is quantitative. An old guy sitting in the stands judging the symmetry of a prospect's face is qualitative.

That was Colletti's way of saying he still does it the old-fashioned way. ''I like scouts with 20, 30, 40 years experience who can tell if a player knows how to play the game, who read how a guy's body works, who knows how he responds in big situations, who knows how to examine a medical history, who can take the measure of a guy's desire to be great."

Knows how to play the game.
Empty cliche.

How a guy's body works.
Vague. Probably impossible to judge.

How he responds in big situations.
How often will a scout see a guy in a "big situation"? 3 times? 5? 15 if he's lucky? Good luck judging a dude's hypothetical clutch factor with that sample size.

How to examine a medical history.
Yes, people should do this. Doctors, mainly.

The measure of a guy's desire to be great.
Well, yes, if a guy is obviously a lazy slob, he probably won't be that good for your team. But let me ask you, could you tell me which of these guys has more desire to be great (DTBG)?

Michael Young or Derek Jeter
Alex Gonzalez or Alex S. Gonzalez
Josh Willingham or Jarrod Saltalamacchia
Ken Griffey, Jr. or Gary Matthews, Jr.

I bet there are differences in their VORPs, though.

Labels: astrolabe, ned colletti, vorp

Simmons: It bothers me that I don't know what VORP is, I feel inadequate. No wonder they don't take me seriously on the SOSH Red Sox board.

Labels: bill simmons, vorp

Ever since Fire Joe Morgan was founded back in 1881, FJM readers have been clamoring for a glossary of the statistical terms, acronyms and abbreviations we toss around here. Such a thing already exists, but we're going to write a new one anyway.

FJM is far from a comprehensive or even occasionally accurate source of sabermetric information, but we will mention OPS+ from time to time, and if you don't know what that is, our site won’t be as informative or amusing. If you do know, the site is nearly always balls-to-the-wall genius, so it’s really in our best interests to help you all learn our terminology. A lot of sites, like ESPN.com’s MLB stats page, and baseballreference.com’s stats page, keep up-to-date records of many of the stats we use here, if you want to go and look up stuff for yourself.

So, here's a glossary of terms, statistical and otherwise, that you might encounter from time to time while reading the site. Like the Constitution, the FJM Glossary is a living document that will be updated as necessary, but unlike the Constitution, its contents can be used to befuddle the greatest second baseman of all time if you happen to run into him.

Let's get started.


BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play)
Exactly what it sounds like -- a player's batting average on the balls he puts into play. BABIP doesn't include strikeouts or home runs because those balls aren't in play. Make sense? This stat is helpful to show the effect of luck on a player's batting average. For instance, if two weeks into the season, Yuniesky Betancourt is hitting .573 and John Kruk is proclaiming him the next Honus Wagner, you can calmly point to the fact that his BABIP is an astronomical .494 (along with the two facts that it's two weeks into the season and John Kruk has never been right about anything). One way to calculate BABIP is (H - HR) / (AB - HR - SO + SF).

This stat can also be applied to pitchers. There's a guy named Voros McCracken who was, a few years ago, literally like living in his mom’s basement, and he was noodling around with a computer and he discovered something that made people freak out in re: pitchers, which is: pitchers can’t really control much of what happens when a ball is put into play. In other words, pitchers can basically control their Ks, BBs, and HR, but even the best pitchers in the world cannot really control how many hits they give up year-to-year. One year Greg Maddux will give up a ton of hits, the next year very few, the year after a ton again. It’s counterintuitive, but true. (If you want to read his article, here’s the link.) This is why the pitchers who are really good over a long period of time are guys who are good at the few things they can control: they strike a lot of guys out, don’t walk very many people, and give up few HR.

What does this all mean? Well, if your favorite pitcher gets off to a terrible start, but he is striking out roughly the same number of guys per 9 innings that he has in the past, and he’s walking about the same number of guys he usually has, and he’s giving up HR at the same rate he usually has, but he’s allowing a BABIP of like .390, do not despair – he has gotten a little bit unlucky, probably, since the league is not going to have a .390 BA overall for the whole year. His BABIP will probably regress a little over time, and his ERA will “magically” go down. And then Kevin Kennedy will attribute the decrease in ERA to “getting his confidence back” or something, and you will smile knowingly.

For some reason, by the way, ESPN uses “BIPA” instead of “BABIP.”

In 2005, the MLB leader for BABIP was Barry Zito, at .236. The average BABIP is about .290, which is what Matt Clement and Victor Zambrano put up last year. The worst in the league was Zach Greinke, who had a BABIP of .326.

BA (Batting Average)
Hits divided by at-bats; also, perhaps the stat that makes Ken Tremendous' blood curdle the quickest. Okay, maybe that's wins. Batting average is the backbone of traditional hitting metrics, and amazingly, is still looked upon as a good way to determine whether someone is good at hitting baseballs. It is not a good way to determine this. Why? Well, you already know why. You know it intuitively, and you always have. Because a guy who hits .250 but clubs 40 HR and 40 doubles and walks 100 times a year is way way way more valuable to his team than a guy who hits .310 with 2 HR and 19 doubles and 15 walks. That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? I agree. So why should we keep talking about batting average, ever? We shouldn’t? Okay, we won’t. But Tim McCarver will, and that’s why he should be selling cookware door-to-door instead of talking to the country about baseball every Saturday.

In 2005, the MLB leader for BA was Derrek Lee, at .335 (Placido Polanco was 2nd). The median BA for players eligible for the batting title was about .280 last year, or what Raul Ibanez and Mark Kotsay were able to produce. (Incidentally, this sort of helps confirm my belief that Mark Kotsay is the perfect “average” player. Maybe it’s his name.) Nick Swisher and Mike Lowell tied for last among eligible batters at .236. Because their batting averages were so low, both of these players were unable to recover, and never had a productive season in the Major Leagues again.

BA / OBP / SLG
Nothing more than a popular way of presenting a player’s 3 most oft-cited hitting averages. If you see three averages split up by forward slashes, chances are you’re looking at their Batting Average, On-Base Percentage, and Slugging Percentage, in that order.

DERA (Defense-adjusted Earned Run Average)
A pitching metric that attempts to be a defense-independent – in other words, it uses things a pitcher can actually control, like his BB-rate and HR-rate and stuff that doesn’t involve defense, and tries to calculate what his ERA is absent the influence of defense. 4.50 is average.

EqA (Equivalent Average)
I'll just quote Baseball Prospectus here: "A measure of total offensive value per out, with corrections for league offensive level, home park, and team pitching." EqA incorporates baserunning but not defense. EqA is derived from something called Raw EqA, which is calculated by (turn away, Rob Dibbles of the world) the following formula:

(H + TB + 1.5*(BB + HBP + SB) + SH + SF) divided by (AB + BB + HBP + SH + SF + CS + SB)

And you thought things weren't going to get that nerdy around here. EqA is basically like what you used to think BA was – a true measure of how good a hitter is. EqA is purposely formulated to be on a similar scale to BA so it won't scare off the normal people. .260 is average – which, as a point of comparison, is what Craig Counsell was able to sport in 2005. Guys like Albert Pujols and Travis Hafner can top .350. That's why Travis Hafner should be talked about ten times more than he is. Somehow, Alex Rodriguez was able to block out the back pages of the NY Post well enough to post a MLB-leading EqA of .350 in 2005.

LOOGY (Lefty One-Out GuY)
A left-handed reliever usually called upon to retire just one batter, usually in a critical situation. See Mike Myers (actually, don't, there's no entry for him here), who led all pitchers in 2005 with a LOOGY raw index of 137/133. (Yes, sorry, this is a fake stat).

OBP (On-Base Percentage)
1. Read Moneyball.
2. OBP is the difference between Kevin Youkilis and Jeff Francoeur.
3. It's also the reason Adam Dunn is vastly underrated.
4. Very simply, OBP is a way to tell how good someone is at not making outs. It’s the total number of times a guy gets on base without being responsible for making an out (except for reaching on errors), divided by his plate appearances -- which are simply times a guy comes up to the plate and tries not to make an out. See why it’s valuable? (Plate appearances in this case are defined as At Bats + Walks + Sacrifice Flies.)

In 2005, Todd Helton led all players with a .445 OBP (Giambi was 2nd). Adam Everett and Pudge Rodriguez tied for MLB-worsts of .290. That’s really bad. The league median among eligible batters in ’05 was .348 (Melvin Mora; Grady Sizemore; Rafael Furcal). And for historically ridiculous reference, in 2004, Barry Bonds’ OBP was .604; in 2002, it was .581.

OPS (On-base percentage Plus Slugging percentage)
It's not perfect. But on the plus side, it's not batting average. OPS gives you at least some idea of how patient and how powerful a hitter is. Unless, of course, you're a hidebound 263-year-old who enjoys ridiculing any advancement in human knowledge. In that case, OPS is your three-letter way to sneer at anyone who dares question the value of batting average, which was good enough for George Sisler and will be good enough for you, dammit.

Hard-core nerds will snivellingly tell you that OPS is stupid because OBP is way more important than SLG – Bill James himself, the king of all things stat-related in baseball, thinks that it is four times as important. Nonetheless, OPS has achieved some small toe-hold in popular parlance, so it’s important to know what it is and when to use it. If you really want to know how good a hitter is, however, EqA is way better. OPS is often cited with a “.” and sometimes without. Don’t be confused – if you see a number between like 700 and 1000, with or without a “.”, chances are it’s a player’s OPS.

Derrek Lee was MLB’s 2005 OPS champ at 1.080; Adam Everett posted the lowest OPS at .654. Eric Chavez wore the OPS Median crown at .794. The OPS Median Crown, by the way, is one of those Burger King crowns for young children.

OPS+
Anytime you see a “+” sign in front of a stat, it means that the stat has been adjusted for the specific season(s) to which that stat applies. OPS+, for example, is simply OPS measured against the league average OPS for that year/years, and adjusted for park factors (see below). 100 is defined as average. So, an OPS+ of 115 means that the player in question was 15% better than the average player who played in his league during the time he played. It’s a quick and dirty way of comparing hitters on a level playing field, because it accounts, obviously, for the general offensive trends that mark baseball history. In 1968, Carl Yastrzemski hit 23 HR and had a .922 OPS, which is very good. But his OPS+ was 171, which is excellent, because offense league-wide in 1968 was hard to come by. For contrast, Mark McGwire hit 65 HR in 1999, but his OPS+ was “only” 178, because the whole world was juicing balls into the stratosphere that year, so compared to his peers McGwire was roughly the same amount as awesome as Yaz was when he hit only 23 in ’68.

Derrek Lee was also the 2005 OPS+ champ at 177. Pronk was your AL champ at 170. To give a little more cross generational perspective, your career OPS+ leaders are: (1) Babe Ruth (207); (2) Theodore Ballgame (190); (3) Barrold Bonds (184). Those guys were all really good at baseball.

ERA+
See OPS+. Same deal, but for ERAs.

Clemens led eligible pitchers in MLB last year with an insane 221 ERA+. Johan was first in the AL at a “mere” 153. The all-time ERA+ champ, is, would you believe, Pedro Martinez at 166. (Think of all the ridiculously low ERA’s he posted in a hitter’s ballpark at a time when balls were flying out of the park.)

Park-Adjusted or Park Factors
Baseball is a funny sport where human men play on fields that aren't all exactly the same. That's why it may not always be useful to compare raw statistics accrued in vastly different spaces. Say you have 16 HR and I have 1000 HR. I am a better hitter, right? Well, maybe not. Because you play for the Mariners in spacious SafeCo Field, and I play for the InterGlobal Moon Pirates, and we play in the MoonCo Moonadium, where there is no gravity, and so every ball hit into the air is a home run. You are probably a better hitter than me. Park-adjusted stats will help us figure that out.

It is important to look at things like Park Factors if you are a GM, because if you don’t you will trade for the entire Colorado Rockies offense and then they will come to your stadium and stink it up because their numbers were artificially inflated at Coors Field, and you’ll be like, “What the hell?!” and they’ll be like, “I don’t know, dude – we were awesome at Coors!” and you’ll be like “Ugh! I forgot to include Park Factors in my analysis!!!!!!!” And who wants that?

There are different ways to calculate Park Factors. According to ESPN, Coors Field was furthest on the Hitters’ Park end of the spectrum, while PETCO Park anchored the Pitchers’ Park side. Sounds about right to us. (Park Factors also vary from year to year more than you might think.)

Pythagorean Record (or “Expected Win-Loss”)
Remember the old Pythagorean Theorem? X squared plus Y squared = Z squared? Same idea, but instead of sides of a triangle, it uses runs scored and runs allowed. It turns out that this is a pretty good way to predict what a team’s record will be. The formula is RS^2/(RS^2+RA^2). If a team is 50-35 but has allowed the same number of runs that it has scored, you can bet that its wins have been a little flukey, and that it will cool off pretty soon. The Pythagorean did a bang-up job last year at predicting the precipitous decline of the 2005 Washington Nationals.

In 2005, the St. Louis Cardinals had the highest Expected Win-Loss of .617; the Kansas City Royals were last at .360.

VORP (Value Over Replacement Player)
An offensive stat only, VORP attempts to calculate the number of runs a player is contributing above what a replacement-level player at the same position would if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP is a counting stat, not a percentage stat – so, for example, as of July 22, Andruw Jones has a VORP of 31.0. That means that he has created 31 more runs for his team than the average AAA call-up guy would have by this point in the season. It also turns out that every ten runs a player creates is worth roughly one win, so Andruw’s offense alone has earned the Braves three wins. (There are other stats, like Fielding Runs Above Average [FRAA] that do the same thing as VORP, for defense.) See WARP below for more.

Old Baseball Men, this is another good one to bandy about if you're interested in tearing down a nerd's argument. Because it sounds funny. VORP. Please. What's that doing in baseball? Forget VORP, let's come up with a stat for the size of a guy's heart, am I right, people? We'll call it the Eckstein Quotient. No, wait, that sounds too nerdy. Eckstein Number. Nope. Still too smart. Eckstein Thing. How about just Thing? The highest Thing in the majors? You guessed it: David Eckstein. That's why they almost named it after him.

Once again, Derrek Lee was your VORP leader in 2005 at 95.6. A-Rod, Pujols, Ortiz and Jason Bay rounded out the top 5 (Bay at 72.6). Corey Patterson was dead last at –17.0. Mike Hampton, by the way, had a VORP of 5.2 (as a hitter), which was better than, like, Willy Tavares at 4.6.

WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player)
Sort of like VORP, but with a defensive component, as well. And it's calculated in terms of wins. It uses VORP and FRAA and all of those things to figure out how many wins a player is worth to his team, by himself, from all phases of his game. There are also WARP-2 and WARP-3, which adjust for various historical factors and stuff like that.

WHIP (Walks plus Hits allowed per Inning Pitched)
Pretty self-explanatory. Way way way way way better measure of a pitcher’s effectiveness – especially a relief pitcher’s effectiveness – than ERA or wins or anything that you’ve ever heard Steve Lyons talk about during FOX Saturday Baseball broadcasts.

Pedro was best in 2005 (among eligibles, which basically means starters) with a WHIP of .95. Jose Lima was last at 1.66. The median was 1.30, represented by Esteban Loiaza, Bronson Arroyo, Doug Davis, Jake Westbrook and Scott Elarton. Sometimes you’ll see WHIP go into the thousandths, which in this case would have been helpful to avoid writing out five names of average-ish pitchers.

Wins
1. The only stat that matters. The only way to pick a Cy Young winner. The thing Billy Beane can't get in the playoffs, no matter how many fancy computers he hires to play baseball for him.
2. A simply awful pitching statistic that should be swallowed up by the earth itself, personified, given ears, and forced to listen to a tape loop of Bermanisms for all of eternity. The reason being – and again, you know this, intuitively, even if you have never quite expressed it to yourself – if Carl Pavano gives up nineteen runs in five innings but the Yankees score 20 runs, and they hold on to win, and Pavano gets the win, is Pavano a good pitcher? No he is not. (This scenario is assuming he ever comes back and actually pitches, btw.) If Francisco Liriano throws 9 innings of no-hit ball, but gives up a run on four consecutive errors by Terry Tiffey and gets a loss, is Francisco Liriano a bad pitcher? No he is not. Wins stink to high heaven as a way to value pitchers because they are in very large part dependent on the actions of the other guys on the team.

Of course, according to Joe Morgan, "Wins and losses are how you measure pitchers" (Baseball For Dummies, p. 289).

Dontrelle Willis led all pitchers with 22 Wins last year. Good for him. And, obviously, there were about 140 pitchers who tied for last with zero wins.

>>>>Some other terms you might find helpful:

True Yankee
A leader. A guy who’s full of intangible qualities that help him triumph – with class. Derek Jeter. A guy who has a certain look in his eye, like he knows what it means to don the pinstripes with some motherfletching pride. Bernie. Mantle. Joe D. Jeter. A guy who you want in the trenches with you. Mattingly. Joe Girardi. Derek. Jim Leyritz. Posada. Derek Jeter. A guy who stares adversity in the face and says, “I play for the Yankees, and that means something, and I am going to hit a HR off BK Kim in this World Series Game because I am a New York Yankee." Scott Brosius. Tino. Dave Justice. Derek Jeter. A winner. Derek Jeter.

Here are some people who are not True Yankees: Alex Rodriguez, Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, and every other New York Yankee who has never been on a Yankees’ World Series winning team.

If you ever – ever – hear someone use the phrase “True Yankee,” for any reason, I want you to find the nearest exit, form an orderly line, and leave the premises quickly and calmly. Seek shelter. Cover head. Report the incident to your nearest FJM representative immediately. You are in great danger, because the person you are talking to is an idiot.

HatGuy
HatGuy is Mike Celizic, who writes a column for MSNBC.com. He is a very bad man who wears an old-timey fedora in his official MSNBC.com staff picture and does not know anything about anything, least of all baseball.

JoeChat
Joe Morgan does live chats with his admirers every Tuesday on ESPN.com. You have to be an ESPN Insider to view/participate in these chats. If you do not wish to be an ESPN Insider, you can check in with FJM weekly for a breakdown of all of the indecipherably weird things Joe writes when responding to perfectly innocuous questions about the game he claims to have loved for many years, but in reality has clearly never actually seen played.

Do not go to joechat.com unless you are a gay man looking for other gay men.

David Eckstein
David Eckstein is 4'10" and appears to suffer from borderline albinism. Despite this, he is a mediocre MLB shortstop. After he throws the ball to first base, it looks like he needs to lie down from exhaustion. He also runs hard to first base, as most baseball players do.

Baseball analysts have interpreted this data to be somehow indicative of something more powerful than mere "tangible" baseball skills, perhaps residing somewhere deep in the (non-human?) DNA of David Eckstein.

In fact, a new wave of baseball genetic experts believes that there may be a mutant patch of genetic code on chromosome 11 in some major league ballplayers. In most cases, this causes True Yankeeism. Eckstein, they claim, was born with a mutation of a mutation; the resulting phenotype features not only acute and heightened True Yankeeism, but stunted growth and fair skin and hair.

Sabermetrics
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is like the sort of father organization for all of the stat-based stuff we use, and thousands of other forward-thinking people use, when we talk about the statistical side of baseball. Sabermetrics is a neologism that refers broadly to their/our brand of statistical analysis.

Moneyball
Moneyball is a very good book by Michael Lewis, which chronicles the ways in which Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane tries to keep his team competitive with a small payroll. The clunky and incorrect understanding of the Moneyball philosophy is that it simply involves getting players to walk a lot and hit home runs. In reality, what Moneyball deals with is the search for inefficiencies in the complex world of evaluating baseball players. At the time the book was written, Billy Beane and his crew had determined that there were players who weren’t fast runners, maybe, or were fat, or short, or otherwise had some kind of superficial thing “wrong” with them that made other GMs dismiss them as not good baseball players. But these players were actually good at baseball, and because other people had undervalued their skills (skills like walking a lot, for example) Beane was able to draft them or trade for them and not pay them a lot of money, because no one else wanted them.

These days, enough people have caught on to the idea that on-base percentage is important that such players are not undervalued anymore, and so GMs like Beane, who have to put a team together with a $50 million payroll instead of, say, the Yankees’ $200 million payroll, are looking elsewhere for value.

The book rubbed a lot of traditionalists the wrong way, because it takes the obvious and yet somehow controversial position that the massive amount of observable data we can collect from a baseball player’s performance is more important than that player’s like physical strength or speed in the 40 yard dash. Beane, and others like him, believe that it doesn’t matter if a guy looks like he should be awesome at baseball – it matters if he is actually good at baseball. It doesn’t matter if some crusty old scouts who have been in baseball for seventy years look at a guy and say, “He’s fast, he’s got a cannon for an arm, he’s got a strong jaw line – dadgummit, that thar boy’s gonna be a star!” It does matter if the guy walks a lot and can hit well or is an awesome fielder or something. Seem obvious? Try telling fans of Darin Erstad. They will tell you that he is awesome because he is intense and used to play football at Nebraska. You will blink, confused, and say, “But he can’t hit well,” and they will say, “HE WAS A PUNTER AT NEBRASKA! HE IS INTENSE AND A LEADER!” and you will slink away because they are spitting on you.

Moneyball is also famous because Joe Morgan rails against it constantly, even today, and on numerous occasions has pronounced it hogwash, despite freely admitting that he has never read it, and also for a long time believing that the book was actually written by Beane himself. When his error was pointed out to him, Morgan apologized profusely, admitted his mistake, rethought his stance, read the book and has now completely changed the way he thinks about statistical analysis. Oh, no – wait. I’m sorry. He didn’t do anything of the kind. He just dug in his heels and continued to claim that the book was hogwash.

Darin Erstad
A former punter at the University of Nebraska who had one good year for the Angels, signed a huge contract, and stinks at baseball, despite the strident arguments of hundreds of sportswriters who continue to talk about how important he is to the Angels and how he’s intense and a leader and the Angels would be nowhere without him. Trust us: he stinks at baseball.

Gallimaufry
A hodgepodge of brief reader e-mails cobbled together when the blogger is feeling too lazy, tired, or preoccupied with Turner Classic Movies to write a proper post. It's a true fact: "gallimaufry" was a word received by one of Junior's competitors in his sixth grade county spelling bee. The dude totally missed it.

“Not Hot-Dogging”
Something that ESPN Baseball Tonight commentator and 11-time Philadelphia Metro-Area Pie Eating Champion John Kruk once said should be a criterion for Baseball Hall of Fame Induction. I swear to God.

Fremulon Insurance
Fremulon Insurance is the employer of one Ken Tremendous. They currently hold offices in Partridge, KS; Los Angeles, CA; and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Tim McCarver
The Fox Network’s #1 color commentator. And, without question, the worst color commentator in the history of the world, in any sport. By my estimation, Tim McCarver has said 94 of the 100 dumbest things anyone has ever said about baseball, and worse, he tries constantly to be poetic and witty in his speech, a skill I assure you he does not possess, so what you end up getting is a lot of weird puns and aphorisms spewing forth in a lackadaisical Southern drawl. His broadcasts remind me of a bad wedding toast given by a drunk family friend who’s a high school English teacher.

"Clogging up the basepaths."
In a now infamous episode of Baseball Tonight, Harold Reynolds and John Kruk accused players like Frank Thomas of taking too many walks when they should be driving in runs. In their words, "clogging up the basepaths.” We shit you not.

Many Cubs fans have written us to point out that the phrase might more accurately have been coined by Dusty Baker, and there seems to be ample evidence to support their claim. Regardless, it belongs in the Pantheon of Dumb.

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, darin erstad, david eckstein, eqa, fjm, fremulon insurance, gallimaufry, HatGuy, joechat, mother's basement, ops, statistics, tim mccarver, vorp, wins