Which Baseball Stats ACTUALLY MATTER?
Baseball stats can be extremely difficult to understand, so if you’re a beginner, or just want some more information about what are the most important stats to be looking at for Baseball, this is the video for you. From Aaron Judge’s Baseball Savant, to Mookie Betts MLB Statistics. If you need to know whether to look at ERA or Home Runs, just watch this video and then you’ll know for the future!
#mlbb #mlb #baseball #yankees #sports
Really helpful vid, much appreciated as someone who’s trying to wrap their head around the more basic and talked about stats 👍
Is there a way to overlap all the pitches one pitcher has in one of those maps of the strike zones?
War
Offense: Ops, Ops+,wrc+, hr
Pitching: era, fip, whip, whiff rate
One mistake WAR isn’t based off the average player it’s based off the r3placement level so a war of 0 for a whole season is actually worse then average it would mean your as good as a replacement level player
If someone breaks the WAR single season record literally no one outside Uber baseball stat fans will care and writers….but if someone breaks the single season home run record, hits over 400, or like Ohtani hits 50/50 everyone cares….argument done. Away with giving WAR so much attention is a flawed stat
Who is your favorite baseball player of all time
5:30 you have to check it again because 4 runs through 18 innings would be a 2 era. Thats 2 runs per nine innings pitched
I just subscribed. Thought I already was. Lot of great baseball channels out there. You’re one of them.
Please make more like this I like it a lot and it helps me as a capper
i see a lot of people here talking about the "replacement level player" instead of the average player, but nobody here is defining what a replacement level player is, by a good way to think about it in your head, if you took the average triple a guy and called him up, that’s a 0 WAR season, but to actually define it as the stats did: a full team of people who had a 40 win season is a team where everyone produced 0 war
batting average all always matter idc what stat nerds say
I don’t like FIP as an isolated stat. If you induce a lot of contact that turns into ground balls the fact that your team has a lousy infield may in fact affect the outcome of the game, but that’s really on the infield, not the pitcher. A better stat would consider ERA+ in a way that adjusts where the pitcher gets the ball hit vs. the differential between the average dWar for that position vs. his teams dWar.
The problem with the eye test is that a player who gets a late jump and runs slowly but who lays out every time it looks close, can look good to the eye. Jeter may have had a great looking jump throw, but a lot of short stops would have gotten to those balls easily and not needed a jump throw. (Now, on the other hand, his famous hustle throw near home was good hard play).
ERA+ is good to compare eras, but I think we need a K+/BB+ and WHIP+ because the different eras make the stats hard to compare. Nolan Ryan getting 300 plus Ks in an era where strikeouts were viewed as evil is far more impressive than getting 300Ks in this era.
walk =/= single, singles are way more valuable. A single can bring a runner in from 2nd,3rd, even 1st sometimes. As a Padres fan, I feel way better with Arraez and a runner on in the clutch than I ever did with Soto, cause I knew Soto was searching for the walk.
That’s why stats can be overrated because eye test tells whos a good defender and I prefer a firlder with a good arm because they don’t get tested as much as outfielders plus they have a better chance of throwing runners out.
Average home runs and rbi the way it has ever been for years now those are truly the only stats that matter there is a reason why the triple crown is the triple crown
Era has always matter more than win loss which is obvious.
4 runs in 18 innings is not a 4.5 era its a 2 era
slugging and whip wins championships.
If u give up 4 runs in 18 innings isn’t ERA a 2 ..?
Ceddane rafaela is a bad defender at least right now. He does make incredible diving plays, but he makes way too many errors. just today he costed us a run against the o’s on a bad throw. However, he is a great defender when. he’s in center, he just needs to work on infield defense. His defense in the infield will be elite in a few years, but there are growing pains and as of now, I would rather have a league average shortstop defensively-wise
Just got into baseball this is very helpful, thanks
This was an very interesting video where you covered everything a Baseball Fan should now! I really enjoyed it great job
Just t let you know no one ever said we should JUST look at pitcher wins. In the 80s people would still look at ERA and strikeouts and see DeGrom as a tough luck pitcher with no run support. People judge pitchers in a more sophisticated way now (especially since we have access to so many more advanced metrics) but it’s not as extreme as you make out here
The most important stat in all of baseball is Gross Wins Above Replacement, or GWAR.
Came here to hear your opinion on pitcher record. Couldn’t have summed it up any better
This video is exhibit A of why most folks who think sabermetrics are good don’t know an actual thing about baseball.
WAR is killing baseball, tangible stats bring the competition, and the magic, for over 100 years we cared about Home Runs, Hits, Wins, ERA, Strike outs, Steals….thats what has brought the magic of baseball and it creates tangible goals for players, Ohtani was trying to hit 50/50 we were all exited. Not a single human cared if his war outside of baseball Uber star fans was 10 or 9 lol we cared about tangible stats, it also brings competition, why do we care that Judge hit 62 because is tangible stats that has been around for 100 years
Id like to mention 2 more things for pitchers: 1. Ground ball percentage is good, because SLG on ground balls is significantly less than SLG on fly balls. 2. Stuff, Location, and Pitching+ show how well the pitches move, how well they are placed, and a combination of the two things basically show how good you are with your pitches. Its better than movement profile in my opinion
5:28 its not a 4.5 era, you divide the innings pitched by 9 and then the runs allowed by that number. so 18/9=2 and then 4/2=2 it is a 2 era
It should be noted that hit by pitch is also accounted for in obp
Love yur videos
K% and BB% are way better than K/9 and BB/9.
war compares you to a replacement level player, not an average player, so zero war is actually below average. waa (wins above average) would compare you to an average player
am i correct or false in assuming that ops is your average bases per at bat? so if a player has a 500 ops they average 0.5 bases per at bat and a player with a 1000 ops averages 1 base per at bat? it makes sense (to me anyways) because the max ops is 4000 if you hit a homerun every at bat
Baseball nerds use stats like war and ops and all this other extra stuff but some extra stats are interesting and looking at a players fan graphs.
Wait a minute. 4 earned runs in 18 innings should be an ERA of 2.00, not 4.50.
I think your calculator is broken.
Hey! I’m LaMonte Wade! 👋
I agree a lot with what you said about the W/L stat. Unfair for pitchers since it also depends on offense
Does savant have a page with the top say 100 players in the league in hitting stats? I went on the site and it looks like you have to just type in a players name to get his stats. That’s fine but I want to know the top 100 hitters as of this second with all their stats
The stats that matter are the ones that favor the player I’m defending
For me, Era, BA, HR total, OBP are the ones i look at to assess players.
OPS+ OBP, Slugging, OPS, wOBA, WRC+ are basically everything you need to measure a hitter. It’s nice to look at stolen bases & extra base hits as well for more context. It’s also nice to know how many games they played & plate appearances they had. WAR/offensive WAR/defensive WAR are great for comparing player of the same position. For pitchers just look at ERA+, ERA, WHIP, FIP, also K/9 H/9 & BB/9 are great to look at & add context. Also innings pitched is important but that’s a given
You know what stat matters? Team W & L and standings. It is a team game. The rest, for the purposes of fans, is a participation trophy.
Baseball Reference has a splits page too. Though Fangraphs has more control and information despite being generally unintuitive.
I find FIP to be among the least helpful stats. It’s not luck, it’s the game. Many pitchers (like Greg Maddux) knew getting weak contact was smarter than going for K if you want to work longer in the game. Teams have strategies for their starters, and spend millions to build great defenses. A stat that pretends the game is simply batter vs pitcher with no one but the catcher on the field is inherently useless. When your team has a sucky bullpen and you need to go deeper into games, relying on defense (and yes some luck) is more important for winning the game…which is tbt ultimate goal. It’s just a silly stat.
The issue with WAR is accounting for defense, across eras especially since we don’t have advanced metrics.
But the reality is dWAR is still a mess because there remain a great divergence in calculating them. Especially in funky fields like Coors where there is a huge outfield, or Fenway, with its odd
Dimensions. So, WAR isn’t as perfect as it’s treated. Again, for players before 2010…dWAR is a mess.
Ops is one of the most overrated stats I prefer batting average ops is why people except guys batting only .220 which is not good especially when those .220 hitters strikeout too much. You can’t drive in a run or 2 with lower batting average from 2nd and 3rd if you’re getting out especially with 2 outs but you can if you get hits more regularly.
we😂
I appreciate your information on the "advanced stats" that you like or use but you left off one of the most important stats in the game; RBI’s. If you don’t have anyone knocking in the runs, you don’t win. Sounds elementary I know but it had to be said. Which brings me to my second point, Batting Average. Batting Average is absolutely, positively way more important than On-Base Percentage. Don’t get me wrong, Oo-Base is extremely important but a hit is way more important than a walk as you may have a chance for the aforementioned RBI’s or to move a runner already on base from first to third. I really like the OPS+ stat but it’s not taking into affect the things I mentioned. So, just consider that for the way you think about baseball. Btw, FanGraphs is awesome as I compare some of my favorite players like Joe DiMaggio with today’s amazing Yankees like Juan Soto or Aaron Judge. 👍 🇺🇲
You’re in a really weird spot with this video where it could easily be 3 hours long just explaining a third of what was covered in this video but you’re also introducing stats and metrics to people who are trying to learn/deepen their understanding of baseball and you need to explain it in a quick and engaging way. Overall a good video though. I think you found a good middle ground.