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Don't you love statistics?
Whether you do or not, nearly every sport is littered with them, ranging from the obvious, to the obscure, to the absolutely ludicrous and pointless. That being said, as long as athletes play their respective games, there will be someone to evaluate their performance based on numbers and calculations. But, there are times when stats are useful, and times when they are downright inane.
Having done statistical work with various teams during the past six years, I recognize that stats provide a clear, analytical tool for coaches or fans or even the athletes themselves. They make it easy to compare different players (it's hard to argue that Shaq, with his 52.7 percent free throw shooting is better from the foul line than Jason Kidd, who shoots 77.9 percent), and are sometimes an effective measure of a player's value. The key word is "sometimes."
This winter break, I read Moneyball by Michael Lewis, which was one of the best books I've ever read. Without going into too much detail, Lewis focuses on how the baseball world determines a players worth, and how Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, focuses on certain statistics that are undervalued in the market. For example, on-base percentage has a greater impact on a team's winning percentage than does batting average, but players with high on-base percentages aren't typically given nine-figure salaries based on that stat alone.
Using this knowledge, Beane has built the A's into a contender, year in and year out, despite losing high-priced talent like Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, and the Big Three - pitchers Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder. It is clear from this example that statistics are useful.
Beane also knows how to manipulate the market using less useful statistics, however. Saves, for example, aren't that meaningful. In order to get save opportunities, the pitcher has to come into the game in a specific situation, and usually it's one guy, the closer, that gets the vast majority of save opportunities. In this way, closers build up value, and can be subsequently traded away or not re-signed, and a replacement can be found.
Look at the closers Oakland has had over the past few seasons: Jason Isringhausen in 2001 (34 saves), Billy Koch in 2002 (44 saves), Keith Foulke in 2003 (43 saves) and Octavio Dotel in 2004 (22 saves).
With the exception of Isringhausen, each one is now donning another uniform, and has found little success after leaving Oakland. Now Huston Street is the new closer, and after picking up 37 saves in 2006, we'll see how long he remains in there.
Other stats like RBIs and runs scored are also situation-dependent and don't tell as much about a player as stats like on-base percentage.
While some stats are more useful than others, there is no denying that analysis of a player based on numbers is helpful, though there is a tendency to take it too far and come up with meaningless stats. Before a broadcast, one of my sportscasting colleagues likes to collect data on both teams...over the past 50 years.
While it may sound impressive to say that over the past 20 years, Williams' football defense has allowed an average of 3.5 points in the last 10 minutes of the second half (I have no clue how true or false that statement is), it doesn't mean much since the team has changed players several times and the caliber of the opponents has changed as well.
In particular, baseball analysts often overuse stats. Since America's Pastime is primarily a game of individual match-ups, there are always several hitter vs. pitcher stats. I'm not talking about how a right-handed hitter bats against a left-handed pitcher; I'm talking one hitter against one pitcher.
Several years ago, the Mets' Joe McEwing got a reputation for being able to hit Randy Johnson, since he did well against him for a couple of seasons.
But due to the relatively small amount of these encounters (even if over a career) these numbers don't carry too much weight.
People also like to point out how a hitter or pitcher performs in a particular ballpark. There is some merit to these stats, since certain stadiums, like Shea Stadium, yield less homeruns than others; however, it's difficult to see how different parks affect other stats like batting average: a single is a single anywhere.
The moral of the story - if I were teaching morals - is to take statistics with a grain of salt.
Certainly, stats are useful, but they must be used in conjunction with good old-fashioned scouting, so the tangible and intangible measures of a player are observed, and the evaluation is thorough.
