In Support of Traditional Baseball Statistics

Now, as many of you know, I am a staunch supporter of progressive thinking in baseball. I recently reread "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis (which I have to return to my friend before he kills me), and now more than ever I still can't understand why Sabermetric statistics aren't more popular. For the unenlightened, "Sabermetrics" comes from "SABR," which is an acronym for The Society of American Baseball Research. Members of this brotherhood, founded by the immortal Bill James himself, have devoted themselves to creating a new system for determining the value of each and every action on a baseball field. To them, the most important traditional baseball statistics are On-Base Percentage, determined by adding together hits and walks, and then dividing that by at-bats plus walks, and Slugging Percentage, which is determined by dividing total bases by at-bats. By factoring these two statistics into various equations, they have created brand new statistics, which are intended to evaluate players as accurately as possible. Among these new statistics are VORP (Value Over Replacement Player, in terms of cumulative runs), WARP3 (Wins Above Replacement Player, in terms of cumulative wins), OPS+ (On-Base + Slugging as compared to the league average, taking into account the stadium and the era), BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play, excluding strikeouts and home runs), and for fielding, FRAA (Fielding Runs Above Average, in terms of cumulative runs). These statistics minimize, or even eliminate any reliability on team performance, which is in direct contrast to traditional statistics such as Runs Batted In, and Runs Scored. Az in this day and age, in the post-modern era, why are the statistics we see the most still the standard Batting Average, Runs Batted In, Stolen Bases, Runs Scored, Home Runs, etc.? Whatever the answer is, I've come up with my own reasons:

1. As an avid fan of Fantasy Baseball, these traditional statistics are essential. The average fan doesn't have the tools to be able to calculate most of the new-fangled ones. If I had my way, I would create a fantasy league in which the only batting statistics would be HRs, OBP, OPS, SLG, and Walks. But those stats are essentially all the same, az it would be meaningless. RBI, AVG, and SBs add more strategy; a below-average player like Juan Pierre, who hits 0 HRs, only hits singles, never walks, and steals a ton of bases, becomes a huge fantasy commodity. Fantasy Baseball is just more fun when you account for all of these stats.

2. The baseball records are some of the most hallowed numbers in all of sports. 73, 755, .420, and 191 are numbers that have lives of their own (For the unenlightened, 73 is the single season Home Run record held by Barry Bonds, 755 is the career Home Run record held by Henry Aaron, .420 is the single season Batting Average record held by Ty Cobb, and 191 is the single season RBI record held by Hack Wilson). If we were to start minimizing the importance of these traditional numbers, we would be minimizing the greatness of the feats of those players.

3. If we only paid attention to WARP3, VORP, and FRAA, then the winners of awards like Most Valuable Player and the Gold Glove would cease to be determined by votes. They would easily be given to the players who were tops in these categories. I'm not saying this is a bad thing; I just think it would minimize the excitement.

Anyway, we'll return to regular Schmutter inanity shortly.