What is Sabermetrics?

Bill James introduced Sabermetrics in 1980. Since then there has been countless research on his studies to find out exactly what Sabermetrics really is. There will always be different views and definitions of it but in general, Sabermetrics is just a fancy term for advanced stats in baseball. The basic stats would be the common categories such as batting average, homeruns, runs, hits, doubles, walks, strikeouts, ERA, wins, innings pitched, etc. Advanced stats would be numbers that calculate into a pitchers WHIP, a batter’s OBP, OPS +, total bases, etc. Stats of all current and former players can be found anywhere on the Internet or from other sources, but detailed stats like what a player is doing in an exact situation during a game is what Bill James studied heavil. An example of a detailed Sabermetric would be the following: what is Allen Craig’s batting average against a left handed pitcher when the count is 0-2 and there is a runner on first? The answer to that question is extremely hard to find for a regular fan, but not for a front office executive, coach, scorer or scout. Each team has scorers who are hired to crunch numbers during each game so for the next game the manager knows what to do in almost every situation presented because he has the evidence right there on a sheet of paper in the dugout; hypothetically speaking. Each manager has to study the stats of his players and the other teams so he knows how to set the lineup, who to pinch-hit for whom, how to position the defense, etc. Yes stats have always been the biggest part of this great game, because as the books show it, a good amount of the same statistics were kept tract of since the first pitch of baseball, but they have never been as detailed and depended on until 1980. Since Bill James, teams have been adopting the strategy all the time and it has proven to work multiple times. Teams still spend money like crazy on players because that is the nature of America, but teams that don’t have a lot to spend use Sabermetrics for the most part. And guess what? It works, as the low salary teams are still able to compete and sometimes defeat big market teams. There is proof everyday in baseball. To give one of many examples, the Kansas City Royals built the 2014 team for quite some time and their payroll is around $88 million. Their highest paid player makes just under $10 million/year. Their World Series opponent (the Giants) has a payroll of around $142 million. It’s not everyday that Moneyball works out, but it does work out fairly well every year for at least 3 or 4 teams.