Topps cards and radio broadcasts.
That is how I, like many others fell in love with the game of baseball. For years, those were the two places one would go to for just about anything they needed to know about their favorite player or team. They told you what you needed to know. Short, sweet and simple.
As someone who is in his early 20s I am old enough to remember those days. However, I am also young enough to understand that it no longer works that way.
The scariest word to baseball purists is “change”.
A few days ago, my grandfather gave me a five minute lecture on how the World Series was much more enjoyable when it was a matchup between the two teams who finished the regular season with the best record. Yet, when I explained to him that an expanded post season allows smaller market teams (like his beloved Cleveland Indians) to have a chance to win it all, he quickly changed his mind.
Similar to how the playoff format has continually changed throughout the years, the game itself has never stopped evolving. However, in the last 20 years, baseball has changed more than ever. As a result, some of its most passionate fans have been left in the dark, wondering what has happened to the game they once knew.
My father is a very simple man who rarely gets angry. However, he like many others his age, has an unmeasurable (and in my opinion hilarious) amount hostility toward sabermetrics. It seems as if he’d rather me tell him that I am going off to war rather than use the stat wins above replacement in one of my articles.
It is not that my father hates statistics. He is very cognizant of the fact that baseball is a numbers game. The problem is, like my Grandfather not understanding the benefit of the new playoff format, my dad, along with many other people, do not understand the new stats for baseball.
To me, the rapid development of sabermetrics has created a noticeable divide in the game of baseball. Advanced metrics have become polarizing. On one side you have people who claim that this new method of thinking has revolutionized the game as a whole while on the other end, you have folks that will say the game has been ruined by “fancy math equations.”
This divide can be fixed by the media. Though the pro-sabermetrics writers are correct when they claim that this new data is the most accurate way to analyze what is happening in today’s game, many fail to realize that the majority of baseball fans still do not understand what these new stats stand for, let alone what they represent.
While sabermetrics have been around in the game for over a decade, they have yet to make their way into radio broadcasts, newspapers or baseball cards, which is where a large chunk of the baseball world goes for their information.
If people do not understand something, they are less likely to read about it and more likely to dismiss it. That goes for any subject, not just baseball analytics.
It is time that America’s pastime gets with the times. That will only happen if the people who understand today’s game, take the time to explain it to those who do not.
Just this past weekend, we saw MLB network broadcast the Mets and Phillies game on Friday night in what has been their fourth annual “sabercast”. Rather than displaying the traditional trio of batting average, home runs and runs batted in when a player came up to bat, they showed on base percentage, slugging percentage and wRC+. In addition to these numbers being displayed on a traditional platform, they added two extra commentators who could then explain what these numbers meant and why they are important.
This is an important start. We have already seen stats like OPS, launch angle and exit velocity have make their way into the mainstream. If more people who understand these metrics can use them and then more importantly explain them, this new game of baseball will continue to grow amongst all generations.
Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
We are not looking to change the world, just baseball. In a way, that essentially could be just as difficult. However, the information is available and the passion for the game is still very much present in today’s world. If you do understand make an effort to explain and if you don’t make an effort to learn.
PS… If you are one of those people who don’t understand the meaning behind these new stats, no need to worry. Click the links below to get a full tutorial on any statistic you can imagine
Offense
Hyperlink – https://www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/offensive-statistics-list/
Defense
Hyperlink – https://www.fangraphs.com/library/the-beginners-guide-to-measuring-defense/
Pitching
Hyperlink – https://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/complete-list-pitching/
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