Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

The baseball box score was invented in 1845 and revised 14 years later by Henry Chadwick. It summarizes an individual game’s statistics, both those of the teams and specific players. Lewis writes that Chadwick, who was British, saw the game too much through the lens of cricket and devised his statistics accordingly. He also created statistics for those things that were easiest to count, not necessarily things that matter the most. In the 1970s, Bill James argued that Chadwick’s statistics, which had changed little over the decades, were inaccurate and in some cases useless to determining a team’s or player’s actual value.

This is a pitcher’s average number of runs allowed per nine innings (the length of a game). Since pitchers don’t pitch all nine innings, the number is calculated by taking the total number of earned runs allowed and dividing by the number of innings the pitcher played. That result is then multiplied by nine. This is the main statistic that evaluates a pitcher; the lower a pitcher’s ERA, the better.

This is a statistic that evaluates fielders based simply on the number of errors made (the lower the better). Bill James found this to be an absurd measurement that is the only sports statistic to count what “should have been accomplished” (66). It did not reflect the fact that for an error to be counted, the fielder had to have been in the right spot to begin with. If he had misjudged and staked out another area of the outfield or had been to slow to get a glove on the ball, there would be no error. Yet James saw both examples as a negative reflection on the fielder that went uncounted. On the other hand, in order to make an error, the fielder first had to do something right—get to the ball to try to make a play.

This is a term that Bill James coined. It means statistics that held power beyond their numbers alone. They form images in the minds of those who heard them, and they are literary, in a sense, having the power that language did in conjuring up these images. They be compared to the connotation of words, as opposed to denotation. The example he James gives was the number of hits a player had. A high number conjured up a certain kind of person with “a consistency, a day-in, day-out devotion, a self-discipline” (75).

This statistic is a measurement of how frequently a player gets on base when at bat. To calculate it, the total number of hits, walks, and times the batter is hit with a pitch (which results in the batter automatically going to first base) is divided by the total times at bat. According to Bill James and others, this is a better measurement of offensive output than hits alone (batting average). Billy Beane and his team make this a prominent part of their method for success. Often players had to be “retrained” to accept walks and not be so aggressive in trying to get hits (which contributing to more frequent strikeouts).

This was another statistic that Bill James found lacking. It measures the number of runs a player creates from his hitting that results when a player already on base reaches home and scores. The problem James had with this was that it is seen as an individual statistic and is credited to the batter alone. In fact, he argued, other players have a role in it, not least the previous batters who got on base. Coming to bat with runners on base—in other words, being in a position to create an RBI—is thus a matter of circumstance and luck.

Bill James devised this statistic, which was calculated as follows:

Runs Created = (Hits + Walks) x Total Bases/(At Bats + Walks)

It reflects his emphasis on runs being the prime offensive goal rather than hits and attempted to predict the number of runs a team would get. He used past statistics to test his formula and come up with a reasonably accurate model. A team could then work on each individual component to effectively predict the run total. James gave prominent place to the number of walks and omitted other figures like the number of bases stolen, which he found negligible to run production. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an example of an outsider taking a new perspective of the game and creating something useful. Others would later tweak the formula to make it more accurate.

This term was coined by Bill James to refer to the use of baseball statistics to rationally analyze games, teams, and players. He came up with the name based on the acronym for the Society for American Baseball Research: SABR. The term was originally written “SABRmetrics.”