The Most Important Baseball Stat?

[RaychelSnr]

Operation Sports' Chris Sanner checks in today with an article that is sure to have its fair share of opinions from the baseball world as he talks about the most important stat in baseball.

Quote:

""For years now a war has been brewing among baseball fans and professionals. What's the best tool to evaluate a baseball player's talent? Your gut and eyes, or a computer munching on the latest data."

[NYJets]

"But before you call me a Sabremetrician, let me first say a few other things about Sabremetrics. I think that the system is fairly black and white, because judging a player by one stat and one stat alone is foolish. Plus it would be silly to say there isn't a human element involved. Some guys do not perform well in big game situations or aren't good clubhouse guys."

Sabremetrics doesn't say you should judge players on one stat alone. And I think most people into stats don't feel that being a good clubhouse guy and intangible stuff like that doesn't exist, just that it is tremendously overvalued.

[catcatch22]

What happened to speed? I would put my lineup this way.

Top - Speed
Upper Middle - On base
Lower Middle - Power
Bottom - Speed

[JoeRyan33]

If I'm going to use one stat to judge a hitter, it's not any of those in current use. Basically, you must allocate value to each result of a plate appearance. You do that by breaking it down, walks (intentional and unintentional), singles, doubles, triples, home runs. Each has their value to the scoring of a run. I could elaborate on this, but I'd end up writing an article, which I have done many times on this same topic. Good post.

[RaychelSnr]

Only if that top guy is getting on base to use his speed then you have something with speed. However, having guys at the top who get on base (because they see more plate appearances than guys down the lineup) is far more important than speed. Speed would be looked at as a nice bonus, that old tired notion that a speedy guy at the top of the lineup is very much false in my eyes. You want guys that can get on base first and foremost. Of course, like I said in the article there WILL be dissenting opinions to my theory

[krishna]

Im a bit of a statistics God.

If I had to choose one, I'd choose EqA.

http://shades-of-wrigley.blogspot.com/2008/02/equivalent-average-unmasked.html

[krishna]

but only looking at traditional stats, some combination of obp and slg is the best way to go. Somewhere around k*obp + slg where 1 < k < 2.

[bcruise]

In real life I'd agree that OBP is very important, but in video games I think it's a little different. Gamers are generally a lot less patient and don't walk (or the games don't allow them to), which takes a good-sized chunk out of the OBP formula. I'd say power (or statistically Slugging percentage) reigns supreme in a video game environment - a good player can make up for a hitter's other deficiencies simply by making a good swing. But power is one thing they have less control over - a weak-hitting AAAA guy isn't going to hit HR's no matter how good your timing is.

JMO.