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Understanding Advanced Stats in Baseball and for Detroit Tigers

By Gwen De Young

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Oct 5, 2014; Detroit, MI, USA; Postseason base during game three of the 2014 ALDS baseball playoff game between the Detroit Tigers and the Baltimore Orioles at Comerica Park. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

If you have been watching the random Hot Stoves and High Heats on the MLB Network you might have heard about the ever constant debate that is advanced stats in the sport of baseball. Like other sports, mostly hockey there is a divide about if they are worth anything or not. You have usually the older people, or “purist” who are against advanced stats and think they are not worth much more than the paper they are written on.

Then you have the usually younger generation of people who think they are one of the most important things in the world and will die on the advanced stats hill to make their point. Of course there are people on all sides of the spectrum and many different views by many different people. I personally look at advanced stats as important but you have to take them hand to hand with many other factors. They are confusing at times but sometimes they can be useful in finding things about players. If you run a fantasy team advanced stats are your best friend because they help with your end result of finding players who will accumulate the most points. So this post we will look at and hopefully explain advanced stats to you or as they are called in baseball Sabermetrics

Firstly, the simple thing to know is there are simple stats and sabermetrics. Simple stats are the stats of earned run average, W-L percentage, slugging percentage, batting average, and fielding average. Also magic numbers are considered baseball basic stats 101. If you want to read about any of them, you can do so on the MLB website here.

They are basically what they say, they are the simple stats of the sports and are stats that monitored by baseball and are tracked and are the basics of baseball. You will more than likely find them on the back of baseball cards and are how must fantasy sports are tracked when you have a team.

Other simple stats are things such as runs batted in, hits, stolen bases and other stats that you see anytime you see an info-graphic of a player when you are watching Sports Center or any other sports show.

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So with those again, I think we are all pretty familiar with those stats and we essentially won’t talk much about them because well we all know about them already. The main focus we want to look at is understanding the sabermetrics of baseball and we will relate them back to our

Detroit Tigers

team.

So where do we start? Well one sabermetric stat that I think is interesting and useful is wins above replacement or WAR/WARP. Basically this measures a player’s contribution over the guy that would have replaced him at his position. Every player can have WAR and having the higher number is better. Ian Kinsler and Miguel Cabrera lead the team with a WAR of 5.4. Which with starters like them you would expect and want because 9 out 10 times those guys will be starting for your team. Mike Trout showed his value thanks to WAR in 2012 and 2013 when his WAR was over 10.

Next is Isolated power or ISO, which is calculated by extra bases per at-bat. It maxes out at 3.000 which if you wanted that, you would have to hit a home run every at bat and that is pretty impossibly. Typically power hitters fall between .240 and .300. Last season J.D. Martinez led the team in ISO when he hit .238.

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I tell people about this stat because I always hear “you can’t measure a players raw power with advanced stats” well actually I can and this stat shows it. If you want a formula for ISO you take a players slugging percentage and minus their batting average. A useful stat that I think can help you see a guys raw power.

Stepping away from the offensive side of the ball we can look at defensive efficiency or Def Eff. I’m going to give you the formula to find this because mostly it is interesting to just see baseball in terms of math. So here is the formula: = 1- (H-HR)/(AB-SO-HR+SH+SF). If you want to know how effective a guy is in the field this stat is for you and can help you see the rate at which balls put into play are converted into outs by your team’s defense. Obviously the higher number you have is better means you create more productive outs for your team which is what you are supposed to do. Kinsler and Alex Avila led the team in this category, more so because they end up getting more of the outs but if those guys had negative def eff you would have to be worried.

Because you can not talk about the bull pen when it comes to the Tigers there is an advanced to help look at bullpen pitchers and that is inherited runs also known as IR. It is basically the number of runners a pitcher inherits that end up scoring while the pitcher is in the game. I like this stat because it helps you see where a pitchers runs given up are coming from. Also if he is effective in a late inning pinch, if he has a high IR then maybe he won’t be the late inning choice and you can look into getting someone else in there.

So that is a pretty minimal look at some advanced stats and if you want to know about more let us know below. Sabermetrics are a very interesting thing and I think if you have the time you should look into them because you can learn a lot about the sport and learn it in a new way. Are there any other stats that you think are important? Let us know below.

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