The New Ballgame: Understanding Baseball Statistics for the Casual Fan (18 page)

Although these hobbies and the people who enjoy them were once
shunned by the baseball establishment, they are now embraced. This is due,
in no small part, to the fact that they have successfully infiltrated major league
front offices, baseball media, and ballparks everywhere.

Don't let this scare you away. After all, millions of people also watch
"reality" TV, take Prozac, or spend countless hours creating online characters
in Internet virtual worlds. You too can enjoy playing in a Strat-O-Matic or
Rotisserie Baseball league without having to conceal it from your boss, family or girlfriend/boyfriend (although you may want to wait until after the first
date to bring it up).

"Heroes Are Hard to Find," the band Fleetwood Mac declared on a
mid-1970s album of the same name. Lots of baseball fans began thinking that
way in the '70s, too, when hometown favorites started scattering through free
agency and salary-induced trades.

The start of free agency coincided with an era of labor problems that
disrupted seasons. The proliferation of artificial turf and cookie-cutter, multipurpose stadiums added to the feeling that baseball had become artificial.
Many regarded (and still regard) the tradition-changing designated hitter rule
as sacrilegious. When star players began leaving town to join the highest
bidder, favorites looked like mercenaries. When teams began allowing star
players to leave, or trading them for untested prospects, rather than pay the
salaries set in the new market, owners looked too much like the boss who wouldn't give you a raise.

Feeling disenfranchised and helpless, fans seized what control they
could by playing simulation games and launched a revolution that became
known as fantasy baseball. This way, the fan decided which players were on
his team and what rules they would play by.

Driven by player statistics, both fantasy baseball and simulation games
have in turn been key elements in the statistics revolution in baseball, changing the terminology and the way players are judged.

Although simulation games and fantasy baseball are closely related,
they are not twins. Time to define our terminology:

Games such as Strat-O-Matic and APBA simulate the performances of real
teams and real players, usually based on completed real seasons. As board
games, they accomplish this with player cards and an "activator" (typically
dice or a spinner). Computer versions of these games replace the cards and
automate the activator with key strokes or mouse clicks.

The best of these games produce quite accurate results for batting, pitching, baserunning and fielding, both individually and league-wide. The fan plays
the part of manager, making all in-game strategy decisions (lineups, pitching
changes, pinch hitters, stolen bases, intentional walks, etc.). The dice provide
an element of chance, but also the math probabilities that allow some players
to be rated for a higher average, others for more power or more strikeouts. The
games can be played head-to-head or solitaire. Because the games are based on
completed seasons, fans can play teams and players from distant historical seasons. At the same time, baseball players are rated individually in these games, allowing fans to divide them in drafts to create fictional teams, thus adding the
role of general manager to their resume. By playing in draft "keeper" leagues,
simulation garners become as interested in the current season because that will
fuel the statistics for next year's cards and computer ratings.

In Rotisserie and other fantasy baseball leagues, the fan is the general manager only-the fan drafts individual players by outbidding others, then gets
credit for the players' future achievements in the real games. It's a bit like
choosing stocks in the financial markets. There are no in-game strategy decisions and most fantasy leagues do not have to concern themselves with their
players' defense, or the lefty-righty balance in their lineups and bullpens the
way simulation garners do. Instead, fantasy leaguers collect players they think
will do well in several predetermined batting and pitching categories.

Because fantasy leagues are devoted to today's and tomorrow's statistics,
they do not include historical players. Nor do they use real teams-fantasy
baseball, by definition, creates fictional teams of individually drafted players.
Although simulation garners can play for money, they usually don't. It's the reverse for fantasy leaguers, who generally bid for major leaguers by the fictional
salary they will pay them. This is all about competition-no solitaire play.

Fantasy baseball evolved from simulation games. Fantasy's simplicity-no
in-game decisions, almost no learning curve to begin play-has made it even
more popular and successful than its ancestors.

Simulation games that rate real players date to 1931 and a board game
called National Pastime. The first annually published game was All-Star Baseball (the creation of former Major Leaguer Ethan Allen), which debuted
in 1941. The first "full-featured" game-rating players in all phases of the
game-was APBA, which enhanced the National Pastime model and debuted
in 1951. Strat-O-Matic debuted in 1961, soon became the sales leader, and
has remained the board-game leader for two generations. The company estimates that four to five million fans have played its game.

Bill James, the clever author who ignited a national passion for answering questions about player value and baseball strategy through statistics,
got his start because he wanted to be better at the simulation board game he
played-Ballpark Baseball, a derivative of Strat-O-Matic.

Even more fans play computer games. The most statistically accurate
computer simulations are text games, either enhanced conversions of board
games, like Strat-O-Matic's PC game, or computer-only games like Diamond
Mind. Computer games that combine real-life players and their statistics with
arcade-like action-games such as Electronic Arts' MVP 2005 or the earlier
High Heat-owe their extreme popularity more to lifelike graphics and action than to statistical accuracy.

The original fantasy game is Rotisserie League Baseball, named for
the Manhattan restaurant where its charter members held their first league
draft. Rotisserie League Baseball creator Daniel Okrent came up with the
idea during a hiatus in his Strat-O-Matic play. Estranged geographically from
his Strat partner, Okrent kept the Rotisserie rules simple enough to assure its
essential role as a social activity.

That was in 1980. After feature articles in places like Sports Illustrated
and the now-defunct Inside Sports, Rotisserie spawned a national following
and an official rule book. By 1989 there were an estimated one million fans playing the game. Since then, the hobby has subdivided faster than some religions and multiplied faster than college football bowl games. Hence the generic "fantasy" baseball label is now worn by an estimated four million fanatics,
who can choose different leagues of near-infinite levels of complexity.

Michael Lewis' bestselling book Moneyball heightened interest in on-base
percentage. Studying how the Oakland A's had remained a consistent pennant
contender without an advantageous payroll, Lewis found that the A's had applied statistics to find which areas of on-field performance were undervalued
and overvalued in terms of what it cost to acquire the players with those skills.
It turned out that a player's ability to draw walks was seriously undervalued.

The economics of the strategy was fresh stuff, but the philosophy of
building an offense out of high on-base frequency and power had been successful for generations. Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver's Baltimore Orioles won four pennants and averaged 97 wins per season from 1969 to 1982
with teams built for the three-run homer: Two walks and a home run would
do nicely. His pitching staffs, guided by coach Ray Miller, were legendary for
emphasizing first-pitch strikes and avoiding walks.

The Moneyball analysis enlightened many, but veteran Strat-O-Matic
players had always known that walks were an important part of a team's offense. Each player's Strat-O-Matic card shows his on-base chances-hits and
walks-in capital letters. Batters with the most success chances on their cards
are the best at creating runs. Pitchers with the least are the best at preventing
them. The lowly walk at least adds baserunners and keeps the inning going,
increasing the odds that someone batting in the inning will drive in runs.

Very briefly, here's how to play Strat-O-Matic:

You and your opponent choose lineups, including starting pitchers.
Now it's Batter vs. Pitcher. Roll three six-sided dice. The first die refers to
columns 1, 2 or 3 on the batter's card, or to columns 4, 5, or 6 on the
pitcher's card. Add the other two dice to get a result from 2 to 12. Find
that number in the correct column and read the result next to it.

Just as at the craps tables in Las Vegas, dice probabilities dictate that
a 7 is going to come up on the two added dice much more often than
snake eyes or box cars. Johnny Damon has more hits on 6, 7 and 8 rolls
than Andruw Jones; Jones has more home run rolls than Damon. Pedro
Martinez has many more "strikeout" results than Tom Glavine, but it's
a tougher roll to get a home run on Glavine's card than on Martinez'
card. The same principle applies to extra-base hits, walks, double-play
groundballs, and more.

Some rolls on the pitcher cards refer you to the fielding rating of a
defender on his team. Roll again and refer to the fielding chart for
players at that position to get the result: out, error or hit.

In Strat-O-Matic's more advanced formats, all players are rated
separately for their performance against left- and right-handed
opponents. Other options permit results to be adjusted by the ballpark
the game is being played in, "clutch" situations and other variables.

Drafting the best player cards, building the best batting orders, and
managing the teams through games put simulation garners ahead of their time
in several ways:

• They hold on-base percentage (hits plus walks) in higher regard than
ordinary batting average (hits).

• They hold a higher regard still for OPS (on-base plus slugging).
Cards filled with success chances and extra-base hits-those are the
superstars, not the singles-hitting batting champs.

• They recognize that the components of a pitcher's earned-run average-walks, hits and home runs allowed (OPS again)-are more revealing than the somewhat useful ERA itself. Strat-O-Matic players
anticipating the annual set of new cards (based on the most recently
completed season) look at the statistics showing how many walks
plus hits a pitcher yielded per inning pitched. A "WHIP" of 1.00 or
less is outstanding. Once the WHIP reaches 1.30, that's trouble.

• They learn that there's more to a player's defensive effectiveness
than the number of errors he makes. Strat-O-Matic, for example,
rates every player from 1 (best) to 5 (disastrous) at each of their
defensive positions. Errors influence the grade, but not as much as a
player's defensive range. Immobile outfielders who seldom make errors, but who also seldom catch anything that isn't a routine flyball,
might be a 3 or even a 4. Players with more errors, but with the talent
to consistently turn potential hits into outs will be a 2 or even a 1.

While it took a considerable amount of time, the knowledge and experience gleaned from years of playing games like Strat-O-Matic eventually
changed baseball. Some of the biggest names in baseball and sports today
used to play: Bob Costas, Jon Miller and Trip Hawkins (creator of the EA
Sports video game empire).

As for Rotisserie League Baseball, Strat-O-Matic's influence is clearest
in the pitching statistics that the fantasy format uses. The "official" Rotisserie
style of fantasy baseball play-there's still an annual book with the rules and
the estimated player bid values-is a "5 x 5" fantasy league. That is, teams
will compete in five batting-statistics categories and five pitching-statistics
categories.