Statistics Teach You Things You Would Never Guess About Your Team
Statistics are what you make of them. They are easy to debunk, but they can teach you a ton about your team. Every year, on every team, I have a “huh?” moment in regards to one or two players. “She can’t have that many hits”, “she walks that many batters a game?”. How often I have thought that.
Using statistics you can learn a lot about your team. I don’t mean every pitch dissected in great detail as they do in the majors, but basic, simple, easy to understand statistics. I have a few that I focus on. My favorites are:
1. Slugging %
2. Walks/Inning (or batters faced)
These are the most telling to me. I don’t know how many times someone will ask me “why is he batting 3rd? His swing is horrible and he never hits”. I pull out my stats and say, “he has the 2nd highest slugging % on the team, can you believe that?” This usually quiets the criticism, but so often I discover neat things about my teams this way.
Just when we think a player strikes out all the time, we can run an average of strikeouts/at bat and find out that, in fact, while they may not have a ton of hits, they rarely strike out. A player we think is a dominant pitcher may have a wild streak and walk a bunch of batters, stats will expose this.
More often than not though, the opposite holds true. It just “feels like she walks a bunch of batters” at times, but the stats will show that, in fact, she walks much less than the hard thrower who everyone is in love with. While the pitcher may often go deep in the count, that doesn’t mean she actually walks a lot of batters. That is told with the stats.
I recommend you set up an easy excel spreadsheet to track basic stats. If you need one, email me, I am happy to customize one for you. Stats are very telling, use them, but don’t fall in love with them. Just when you start believing all your stats, they will lie to you. This is the baseball Gods at work.
How do you use stats when preparing your lineup?
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