Smart Baseball
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* Improved data coming from MLB’s Statcast product, available to major-league teams, provide precise exit velocities (the speed of the ball off the bat), hang time for balls hit in the air, launch angle off the bat, and more, which will allow us to be more precise in grouping balls in play into buckets for our database of comparisons and then for determining how often a new ball in play would be caught by an average fielder. I’ll discuss this product more in a later chapter.
* OOB equals outs made on the bases, which might otherwise fall into a baserunning stat.
* Baseball-Reference’s method tells you the numbers on the scoreboard—did the pitcher prevent runs in real life. Fangraphs’ method tells you what the pitcher did on a per-batter basis and strips out stuff that may have been out of his control—defense, bullpen support, bad luck—and some stuff that might have been in his control—pitching worse from the stretch, allowing more hard contact than he should have. The difference between the two tells you how much information, which is probably a mix of noise and signal, is removed when you go from B-R’s method to Fangraphs’. A pitcher whose value on Fangraphs is higher than it is on B-R might have had some bad luck or poor support, and maybe didn’t help his own cause much. You might expect such a pitcher to see his superficial stats improve going forward.
* Rogers Hornsby played 1,541 of his 2,139 career starts as a second baseman, with another 350 coming at shortstop, so he’s first in homers among players who played primarily second, while Sandberg has the most home runs hit as a second baseman.
* A few pitchers near the end of the list are outliers, like Satchel Paige, who spent most of his career in the Negro Leagues; Babe Ruth, who’s there for something other than his pitching work; or Candy Cummings, elected because he allegedly invented the curveball.