Baseball Terms/Stats that you don't know

Dillagii · Post by **Dillagii** » September 20 06, 8:56 am

Stick it in here. I'll start.

Whats BABIP?

Fat Strat · Post by **Fat Strat** » September 20 06, 9:03 am

Speaking of this, how did "K" become the scoring for a strikeout? Seems like it would be an X or a SO or something like that.

docellis · Post by **docellis** » September 20 06, 9:06 am

The use of "K" for a strikeout was invented by Henry Chadwick, a newspaper journalist. The letter "S" was used to coin "sacrifice" so Mr. Chadwick decided to use "K", with "K" being the last letter in "struck." Mr. Chadwick also invented many other baseball scoring abbreviations, such as using numbers to designate player positions. Although some people use SO, that is typically used to denote a shutout.

According to wikipedia anyway.

maddash · Post by **maddash** » September 20 06, 10:41 am

I know what a yellow hammer is, but I have no idea where the phrase originated from.

I'm assuming it has something to do with the Yellowhammer bird (my in-laws are Bama fans so I can actually say I know of the Yellowhammer bird).

GatewaySnayke · Post by **GatewaySnayke** » September 20 06, 11:04 am

RC21 wrote:BABIP is batting average on balls in play.

It's batting average minus homeruns and strikeouts.

Could you write the equation out? I've known what BABIP stands for, just never how they arrive at that.

GatewaySnayke · Post by **GatewaySnayke** » September 20 06, 11:07 am

Thanks, RC.

How do they calculate VORP?

Post by **TheoSqua** » September 20 06, 11:21 am

vorp is complicated, thats all I know...

JL21 · Post by **JL21** » September 20 06, 11:33 am

GatewaySnayke wrote:Thanks, RC.

How do they calculate VORP?

That one's much more complicated. I can only take you about 90% of the way on that one because I don't know the final step.

1. For each position, they take the player with each team that has the most AB's at that position.

2. Take every player that's played the position in question as a primary position. Discard the 30 players from step 1.

3. Calculate the aggregate statistics of all players that have played that position as a primary position but are not among the 30 individuals that have played it the most on their team.

This calculation gets you replacement level. Then, and I don't know how, they convert the metrics for the replacement level production into real-world runs. This gives you the baseline (0.0 VORP). For each player, you take their metrics and give them the same conversion, which is then compared to the 0.0 replacement-level baseline.

stretch · Post by **stretch** » September 20 06, 11:37 am

RC21 wrote:(H-HR)/(AB-SO-HR)

I don't know what good that stat is for if you have to subtract HRs.

JL21 · Post by **JL21** » September 20 06, 11:42 am

stretch wrote:
RC21 wrote:(H-HR)/(AB-SO-HR)
I don't know what good that stat is for if you have to subtract HRs.

It tells you how much bad defense or bad luck has played into a pitcher's record. A pitcher with an abnormally high BABIP has gotten poor defensive support or has had an inordinate amount of groundballs/flyballs/line drives find a hole.

A pitcher with an unusually high BABIP is liable to see his ERA decrease moving forward. Contrarily, a pitcher with an unusually low BABIP is liable to see his ERA increase moving forward.