The Chicago Sports Review
By Dan Rafter

James Fraser never doubted that his beloved Toronto Blue Jays could overpower the young and promising pitchers the Chicago White Sox trotted to the mound during the 1993 American League Championship Series. And Fraser, who grew up in Toronto, was right.

The Jays-powered by an offense featuring stars such as Paul Molitor, Roberto Alomar and John Olerud having wonderful years-brushed the Sox aside in six games on their way to an eventual World Series triumph over the Philadelphia Phillies.

Fraser had heard the baseball experts, of course, the ones who had praised the Sox hurlers-Jack McDowell, Alex Fernandez, Wilson Alvarez and Jason Bere-as some of the best young arms in baseball.

These same experts kept repeating that old baseball axiom that pitching wins championships, with many predicting for this reason that the Sox would nip the Jays. They made this prediction knowing that the Sox, with a potentially strong but maddeningly inconsistent offense of their own, had been shutout more than any other team in baseball in 1993.

Jays' fan Fraser, though, wasn't concerned. He didn't believe that bit of baseball lore about strong pitching always trumping strong hitting. He didn't believe it because of Bill James.

Most baseball fans today know of Bill James. He's been publishing books and columns questioning longtime baseball beliefs since the late 1970s-his new Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract has legions of fans-and is widely considered the father of modern-day Sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of baseball.

Fraser can thank his uncle for introducing him to James. That uncle owned a bookstore and frequently brought home James' work. Fraser, as a teen, discovered them, and before long it became a tradition: Whenever Fraser's family visited his uncle, Fraser disappeared with the latest tome from James. Eventually, his uncle loaned Fraser his Bill James books. That loan has now stretched through more than 10 years.

And after reading through James' work before those 1993 playoffs, Fraser was confident that his Blue Jays would master the Sox's pitching.

"People had always been saying that good pitching is 90 percent of the formula for success in baseball," Fraser said. "Well, Bill James looked at that and found that it wasn't true. What we find is that good pitching beats good hitting about 50 percent of the time. If good pitching truly forecast winning and losing, those Blue Jays probably would have lost that series back in '93."

Sox fans, of course, remember exactly what happened. The Jays teed off on Jack McDowell-who had won the Cy Young award for his pitching work during the regular season-twice. McDowell went 0-2 in the playoffs, gave up 18 hits in nine innings and compiled a truly horrid ERA.

McDowell's two defeats were instrumental in the Blue Jays' 4-games-to-2 series win.

Fraser isn't the only baseball fan today who is turning to Bill James and Sabermetrics to disprove theories such as the one about good pitching dominating good hitting. And the Sabermetric analyses promoted by James and fans like Fraser look to gain even more prominence in the coming years.

The book "Moneyball," detailing the way cost-conscious Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane has built a perennial playoff team by focusing on player statistics-such as on-base percentage and the number of walks a player takes-that other general managers tend to devalue, has shot to the highest reaches of the bestseller lists. James himself has joined the staff of the Boston Red Sox. And general manager JP Ricciardi of the Toronto Blue Jays is yet another devotee of Sabermetrics.

If that isn't enough proof that Sabermetrics has become hot, consider that before the 2004 baseball season started, Sports Illustrated featured a long cover story detailing the impact disciples of James are having on the game, and on the careers of players such as Twins third baseman Corey Koskie, who were once devalued because they didn't drive in 100 runs a season, clout 40 home runs a year or regularly hit over .300, but are now in demand because their plate patience and high on-base percentages make them perfect players for the new statistical age.

The Internet has only boosted the popularity of Sabermetrics. The Society of American Baseball Research, which provides the "Saber" part of "Sabermetrics," has a busy home page at www.sabr.org, where members can read detailed statistical studies, discover that Ted Williams actually had two more walks than previously thought in his historic 1941 season, or find a local chapter of the society (Societies exist across the country, with several in the Chicago and Indiana area).

But fans like Fraser, and many others, have been devotees of Sabermetrics long before it became cool (Yes, that is a relative term here). What attracted them to an often arcane world where a statistic known as VORP, or Value Over Replacement Player, trumps such traditional baseball benchmarks of excellence as RBI and batting average? The fans of Sabermetrics have a quick answer: They love baseball. They love to study it. And they long to understand it better. Sabermetrics, they say, helps them accomplish this feat.

John Freyer, who runs a marketing company in Chicago, has long been a fan of baseball, and in 2003 he and fellow fan Mark Rucker published the book 19th Century Baseball in Chicago. Like Fraser, he, too, looks at the game through the eyes of a Sabermetrician. Like Fraser, he also credits his relatives with introducing him to the endless charms of studying baseball statistics.

Freyer, though, gained his love of stats by playing Strat-O-Matic Baseball, the famous board game where players use dice and cards printed with rows of numbers to simulate their own baseball seasons. Freyer's uncle and grandfather taught him how to play the game, and today Freyer still plays, usually taking on his son.

These days Freyer can't go to a baseball game-He counts the White Sox as his favorite team, the Cubs as his second favorite - without keeping score, a skill that served him well last year when he worked a total of 40 home games for the two local squads as a scorekeeper for Major League Baseball.

Freyer was a stats junky long before anyone had ever heard of Sabermetrics. He found a home, though, in the late 1990s when while searching the Internet he found the online home of the Society for American Baseball Research. It didn't take him long to decide to join.

"I remember thinking you'd have to pass some sort of test to join. I figured it was a pretty elite group. I wrote them a letter expressing my interest, and they said, 'Great. Send us $50 and you're in,’" Freyer said.

Freyer draws upon Sabermetrics to analyze his two favorite teams, and says that his love of statistics has made him a better educated baseball fan, which he is why he continues to pore over box scores in each morning's newspaper. By analyzing the stats, Freyer considers Moises Alou of the Cubs, for instance, to be an overrated player but considers the less-heralded Todd Walker as a perfect fit for Wrigley Field.

He can also look at the White Sox's opposition and confidently predict whether the Sox will win or lose. When the Sox face lefthanders who rely heavily on curve balls, they usually score tons of runs, Freyer said. On the opposite side, when they face righties with good curves, their offense tends to go into a funk.

This sort of analysis is common in Sabermetric circles, something that suits Freyer just fine.

"I look at the Sabermetrics community as a nurturing community. I feel that I am part of something. Does that make me a sports nerd? I don't know. I guess it does," Freyer said. "I know that I am not just a casual fan of the game. I go to games all the time with people who don't know what's going on. They talk and talk. They don't even know who's winning half the time, and here's me sitting there charting pitches."

While Sabermetrics has only recently gained a wider acceptance, it's interesting to note that baseball managers, fans and players have been studying the game's statistics since the 1800s. Just ask Alan Schwarz, the well-known writer with Baseball America and ESPN. In July he published his new book "The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics," which, like its name suggests, explores the surprising history of the way baseball pros have looked at stats throughout the years.

Those who think today's stats geeks, with their love of VORP, OPS and other rocket-science-sounding statistics, are obsessed with the minutiae of the game should check out Schwarz's book. He writes, for example, that baseball statisticians in the 1870s kept track of the number of foul balls each batter hit and charted how many times a runner was put out at each base. Talk about minutiae. It took several years, Schwarz says, before early baseball pioneers really figured out what stats were important to the game and which ones weren't.

"The mistake people make is thinking that the computer made all this fascination with statistics possible," Schwarz said during a telephone interview. "But there were people doing the exact same thing in 1908 and even before that, and they displayed the same intellectual curiosity and the same intellectual zeal that today's stat lovers display. People were arguing over batting average, slugging average and total bases per game since the earliest days of the sport."

Today's Sabermetric junkies are a diverse group. It may surprise you to know that many of them even have actual lives. They are married, have children and claim hobbies not related to baseball. Not surprisingly, many of them love all manner of statistics, even when they're not related to baseball.

Cyril Morong, a former Chicagoan who now lives in San Antonio, is an example of this. He's a professor of economics at San Antonio College who runs his own Web site devoted to Sabermetrics. Located at chisport.com/morong, Morong's site is chock-full of interesting tidbits, a link to old-time baseball legend Branch Rickey's then radical thoughts on the way some baseball lifers overrate stats such as batting average, stories debunking clutch hitting as a myth and the impact lineup combinations have on scoring. He even includes an essay he wrote debunking one of this country's most cherished myths: that the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's win over the Soviet team was a miracle. Morong's essay calls it an upset, yes, but by no means a miraculous victory.

"To me, the fascination with baseball statistics is the same sort of fascination you get whenever you unlock a secret," Morong said, explaining his long love of the baseball analysis. "You unlock a secret to what happens in baseball. It's like solving a puzzle."

Morong, who still keeps tabs on the White Sox even though he's lived in San Antonio since 1996, occasionally gets irritated with baseball managers who ignore the lessons he says he's learned through Sabermetrics. There's the sacrifice bunt, for instance. Sabermetricians disdain this strategy, and Morong is no exception. He sees no value in intentionally making an out simply to move a runner up one base.

"When I see someone like Jose Valentine, who has real power, get up and bunt, I can't believe it. When I see that, that is the kind of thing that floors me," Morong said. "Casey Stengel used to say that there are three outs in an inning. Use them wisely. I don't think a sacrifice bunt is a wise use of an out."

Morong, like other Sabermetricians, also has strong opinions on players he thinks are overrated and underrated. The Seattle Mariners' Ichiro Suzuki, he says, is overrated because his on-base percentage isn't high enough for a lead-off hitter. Meanwhile, Morong bemoans the fact that Jason Giambi of the Yankees is labeled a disappointment in the Bronx because his batting average hovers around the .250 range.

Morong, though, considers Giambi, because he takes loads of walks and hits with power-he slugged 41 homers for the Yankees last year-a far more valuable player than Suzuki. Giambi, for instance, recorded a very strong on-base percentage of .412 for the Yankees last year, thanks largely to the 129 walks he drew. Suzuki's on-base percentage last year for the Mariners was only .352, thanks largely to the fact that he drew just 36 walks.

"When I'm watching or listing to a game, the biggest annoyance to men is listening to announcers who constantly regurgitate the conventional wisdom that pitching wins, this guy is a clutch hitter, you have to win the close games to win a division," Morong said. "These are all things that have been either disproved or never proved."

Sometimes it sounds as if Sabermetric fans are a cranky bunch. But they're really not. They just view the game a little differently than do baseball's traditionalists. Consider RBI, for instance. Baseball traditionalist view hitting the 100-RBI mark as one of the most important milestones for any slugger to reach. Sabermetricians, though, say that the number of RBI a player hits gives little indication of that player's actual batting prowess.

RBI, devotees of Sabermetrics say, is more a function of where a player bats in the lineup than it is of how good a hitter a slugger actually is. Most players stuck in a solid lineup's third, fourth or fifth spots will rack up 100 RBI, Sabermetricians say. Therefore, there's nothing inherently special about this feat.

Another stat that Sabermetric fans discount? A pitcher's win total. Starting pitchers sometimes earn wins when they pitch poorly, and other times are tagged with losses even if they pitch exceptionally well, these fans say. The stat, then, means little.

"If Bill James had invented the 'win' stat, people would be calling it the dumbest stat ever," said Lee Sinins, a Sabermetric fan who run his Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia on the Internet at www.baseball-encylopedia.com. "Because it was invented in the 19th Century, though, people have been brainwashed to believe it is the statistic that most defines a pitcher's quality."

Sabermetric fans also tend to be honest about their baseball heroes.

Fraser, the Blue Jays' fan, freely admits that Toronto hero Joe Carter, who blasted the game-winning homerun in the Jays' World Series-clinching victory in 1993, is a Sabermetrics nightmare.

"There is no love for Joe Carter in Sabermetric circles," Fraser said. "He rarely walked. And he earned a reputation as a clutch hitter solely because of that one home run. He is by no means a player that any fan of Sabermetrics would rush to have on his team. Of course, people here in Toronto love him. He did hit that game-winning home run."

Even Sabermetricians, it seems, have a soft spot in their hearts for local heroes.

Unfortunately for the Cubs good pitching is more than 90% the reason for success. Not only do the starters have to hold an opponent down, they have to contribute offensively as well to earn a win............unless of course Dusty does something to screw it up then they have no chance.

Dave, thank you for passing this article along. While it does have some merit of course, it very well could be one of the dumbest articles I have ever read .

Suzuki is over rated ? Ok.

Having Toronto as an example is sure a ringing endorsement.

And my favorite "Most players stuck in a solid lineup's third, fourth or fifth spots will rack up 100 RBI, Sabermetricians say." This is perhaps the dumbest statement I have ever heard. Where did they find this guy, writing childrens books? For the record, going back to 1992, the Cubs have had exactly TWO hitters reach 100 RBI, Sosa , and Mcgriff once. thats it folks. Thats the entire enchilada, Sosa and Mc Griff. I suppose those other hitters over the last twelve years were just as good of hitters as Sosa, they probably just never came to the plate with any runners on base.LOL. Heck who need Nomar or Ramirez hitting in the middle of the order, lets just bring back old Mick Kelleher, he should be able to drive in a hundred plus runs hitting cleanup.

I am sure the sabremetricians are just overjoyed to have this guy speaking on their behalf. Brutal.

Mick might not have been able to drive in a hundred (as a career total maybe) but I loved it when he took on Kingman for that overly hard slide into second base. He instantly became one of my favorite bad Cub players. :D

While there is definitely a place for statistics in todays baseball world, we have to be careful that these statistics don't keep someone who can just play the game from getting on the field as Statistics can sometimes lie. Here is an example taken from statistics for 2002.

Player A - 27 HR, .374 OBP, .512 slugging percentage, .886 OPS
Player B - 24 HR, .352 OBP, .528 slugging percentage, .880 OPS

At first glance these players are very similar with player A appearing to have a slight advantage over player B. However, I don't think anyone of us would have chosen Mark Bellhorn (A) over Nomar Garciaparra (B) that year or any year for that matter.

The beauty of statistics is that they are pure - they take the facts and quantify them in an objective manner (in theory). The evil of statistics is that almost anyone can take a statistic and twist it to prove a subjective point. And, as the following article demonstrates, how one arrives at the numbers can sometimes be a point of contention. ;)

For those keeping score ...
Official scorers endure pressure, second-guessing
By Anthony Castrovince / Special to MLB.com
09/07/2004 12:53 PM ET

CLEVELAND -- Pitch-by-pitch and out-by-out, White Sox left-hander Mark Buehrle was creeping up on a perfect game against the Indians at Jacobs Field earlier this season.

One man had to focus intensely on Buehrle's each and every pitch. One man had a huge stake in how well the White Sox defense performed. One man had no room for error.

Was that one man Buehrle? Nah, he was calm.

Official scorer Hank Kozloski was the nervous one.

Kozloski had to hope that if the Indians were to break up Buehrle's perfect game, they would do so with a clean, non-controversial base hit.

"The guy in the stadium with the biggest lump in his throat was the official scorer," Kozloski reflected a few days later. "There's a guy who's really sitting on something."

Luckily for Kozloski, Omar Vizquel came through with an easy-to-score single up the middle in the seventh inning.

Kozloski avoided disaster in that game, but the job of a Major League scorekeeper is a lot like the sport itself: seemingly simple, yet layered with delicate intricacies.

For all the routine groundouts they record and $125-a-game checks they cash, official scorers must deal with the wrath and second-guessing of players, managers, team officials, fans and reporters. It's no wonder that scorers like to joke that their paycheck has two facets to it: $1 for scoring the game, and $124 for the aggravation they endure.

Not your average gig

Though official scorers sit in the perch of the press box, anonymous to fans, their decisions can often become the center of attention at a Major League game.

Hit or error? Passed ball or wild pitch? Earned run or unearned run?

The official scorer has the final say.

"It can be nerve-wracking," said Chuck Murr, an Associated Press stringer and one of three official scorers in the rotation at Jacobs Field. "Every game, you have two or three calls where it can go either way, and you have to make a decision."

Murr has learned two important lessons in the four seasons he's worked as an official scorer: be fair and be attentive.

He learned the second lesson the hard way, when a guy he was sitting next to in the Jacobs Field press box dropped his pen.

"As I bent down to pick it up, I heard the crowd roar," Murr said. "I look up and see Omar crossing home plate from third, and I'm like, 'OK, what happened here?' I look into the outfield, the ball's not there. I look behind the plate, and it's not there. I know he didn't steal home standing up."

Murr anxiously waited for the TV monitor to show the replay, and then he saw that the pitcher had tried to pick off Vizquel at third and mistakenly threw the ball into the crowd.

"Now I know if something falls to let it stay there until the end of the inning," Murr said.

The TV cameras saved Murr on that play, and they have proved to be a benefit for official scorers both during and after games.

Because scorers have 24 hours to reverse what they deem to be an erroneous call, they can review the tape of a game and let the Elias Sports Bureau know if they decide to make a change in the records.

"There have been plays that I've scored and, after watching the replay or going home and watching my own tape, I can see things that you might not see," said Kozloski, who also uses an earpiece to listen to the radio broadcast of games he scores.

"I've known some other official scorers who are bullheaded. When they call it, they don't care who says anything."

Count Russell Schneider in that category. Schneider, a retired Cleveland sportswriter who spent 21 years as the primary scorekeeper for Indians games, said he only changed a handful of calls during his tenure.

"The first inclination you have is the correct one," he said. "Very seldom did I ever change a ruling. I think that's what it's got to be. They're given 24 hours to change a call, and I don't think that's right."

Chalk it up as just another disagreement in a job that has a history of controversy.

Big decisions

Scorekeepers, like umpires, are supposed to be the nameless, faceless decision-makers in ballgames. But, sure enough, the nature of the game doesn't always allow that to be the case.

Because baseball is a game so enamored with numbers, every hit and error has meaning attached to it.

Former Indians great Al Rosen was the victim of one of the most famous scoring controversies in 1953. That season, Rosen was in a dogfight for the AL batting title with Mickey Vernon in mid-August, when Frank Gibbons, a Cleveland Press beat writer who was working as official scorer, ruled that a hard line drive hit by Rosen that glanced off a second baseman's glove was an error, rather than a hit.

After the game, Rosen got into what he called a "hot and heavy" argument with Gibbons, before Nate Wallack, the Indians' public relations man, calmed Rosen down.

"I remember, specifically, that [Wallack] said, 'Don't worry, Al, one hit isn't going to make a difference between winning and losing a batting championship,'" Rosen recalled.

When the season was over, Rosen finished with a .336 average. One more hit, and Rosen would have come out ahead of Vernon's .337 average by a fraction of a percentage point and would have won the Triple Crown.

But Rosen said he wasn't bitter when the season ended.

"During the course of a season," he said, "you're going to get some [hits] you're not entitled to, and you won't get some that you are."

While not all scoring decisions carry as much weight as the one that foiled Rosen, scorekeepers can have a direct effect on players' salaries.

"This game is built on numbers and people who have contract issues and incentives," said Bob DiBiasio, Indians vice president of public relations. "A hit or an error goes onto a pitcher's ERA or it goes on a guy's batting average and can affect that."

Kozloski remembers a game in the late 1980s when he drew the ire of Tribe shortstop Julio Franco.

"He made a lot of errors, and I called a lot of them," Kozloski said of Franco. "We were playing the Yankees here, and I called an error on him, and he looked up at the open press box at Municipal Stadium and kept staring at me."

After the game, Kozloski went down to the clubhouse to ask Franco what the problem was.

"You're costing me lots of money," Franco told him.

The sensitivity of players eager to cash in on contract bonuses is one of the reasons Schneider said he wouldn't score a game today for even the heftiest of sums.

"It was different during my era," said Schneider, whose scoresheet from Len Barker's 1981 perfect game resides in Cooperstown. "Guys would complain, then we'd go out and have a beer together. Players are so different now. Incentive clauses and agents make it a different ballgame."

Writers and scorers

Schneider, who covered the Indians for the Cleveland Plain Dealer for more than 20 years, was one of the last full-time beat writers to work double duty as an official scorekeeper.

In 1979, newspaper editors began to forbid their reporters from doing the extra job, citing conflict-of-interest concerns.

Schneider saw that conflict first-hand in 1975 when his son-in-law, Eric Raich, was promoted to the Indians, and Schneider was the official scorer for one of the pitcher's first games.

In the fourth inning, Raich had yet to give up a hit, and Billy North of the A's hit a grounder in front of the plate. Both Raich and catcher Alan Ashby ran toward the ball, and both pulled back, thinking the other would field it. Ashby finally picked the ball up and threw it to first, but North was safe.

Schneider ruled the play a base hit, and the press-box phone immediately rang.

"How could you call that a hit?" the female caller yelled to Schneider.

Who was the mystery woman on the line?

"It was my wife, who was watching the game on TV with my daughter," Schneider recalled with a laugh.

While Schneider remained impartial in that situation, scorekeepers are often criticized for favoring the home team. Some historians claim Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941 was made possible by several generous rulings at Yankee Stadium.

The fact that today's official scorers, who are typically retired writers, coaches and umpires, are recommended to the league office by the individual clubs can add to this perception.

"The homerism is amazing," Schneider said. "There are so many more tainted hits, especially in favor of the home team."

And because official scorers are often unable to work each of a team's 81 home games, several scorers must be used, leading to inconsistencies from game to game.

"Finding good, quality scorekeepers is hard," DiBiasio said. "Obviously, when you have two different guys, you have two different sets of eyeballs. That's two different sets of criteria for what is or isn't an error and what's generally a normal effort. Most people have differences of opinion on what an athlete should be able to do out there."

A change in scoring

Since scorekeeping was invented by newspaperman Henry B. Chadwick in the mid-1800s, the basic rules of the art form have gone unchanged.

"K" will always stand for "strikeout," and "1" will always stand for "pitcher."

But some would like to see a change in the way official scorekeepers do their jobs.

Schneider's proposed solution for the inconsistency of decisions is for Major League Baseball to hire a crew of professional scorekeepers, composed mainly of former players. Much like umpires, they would travel to the games and be schooled in what constitutes a hit or error.

Phyllis Merhige, MLB's vice president of club relations and the person responsible for hiring scorers, said she's heard the idea countless times, and it's simply not economically or realistically possible.

Former players, after all, probably aren't willing to work for scorer's wages, and the travel expenses wouldn't be worth the effort, Merhige said.

"There's no guarantee the quality of the scoring would be any better," she said.

A far more feasible idea is the one proposed by former Indians and Orioles manager Mike Hargrove.

Hargrove, who has been known to regularly make calls to the press box to dispute official scorers' decisions, said he would like to see scorekeepers sit closer to field level to fully appreciate the speed and complexity of the game.

"Scorekeepers have a tough job," he said. "I think the perspective of where they sit makes it more difficult to do that job."

Merhige conceded that having scorekeepers closer to the field is a good idea, but she said pulling it off is easier said than done.

"As a function of stadium design, it would be hard to put [scorekeepers] in the seats," she said. "They would have to have their own booth or spot in the stadium and a microphone."

Merhige said achieving this feat might be possible in a stadium like Jacobs Field, but in the tighter confines of a building like Fenway Park, it simply wouldn't work.

For now, official scorers like Kozloski will remain high up in the press box and anonymous to fans.

But that's not to say Kozloski, who has been scoring Indians games for 33 years, wouldn't like his 15 minutes of fame. When Buehrle was inching toward perfection, the official scorer had visions of grandeur floating in his head.

"I was almost hoping he would pitch the perfect game," Kozloski said. "Because that goes into Cooperstown, and they also have to include the name of the official scorer. I wanted to have my egotistical name in Cooperstown."

Anthony Castrovince is a contributor to MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

DCT,

Great article, thanks for posting it. Homerism is deinitely prevalent when it comes to questionable plays being called hits. I remember Barry Foote being credited with an infield hit on a ball he lined toward the third baseman. The third baseman knocked the ball down and then threw it into the dirt yet Barry was given a hit. This happened even in spite of the fact that Barry had the foot speed of a sloth and would have been out by 2 full steps if the first baseman could have dug the ball out of the dirt. My guess is that was the only infield hit in Barry's career.

Chuck