Statistical significance: ‘Stat masters’ fill a role for serious baseball fans

Published April 2, 2006, in The Palm Beach Post

For millions of baseball fans, poring over the previous night's box scores while pouring out some cereal is a part of life.

Those numbers leave many questions, though: Why does this team struggle even though it seems to have the most talent? Why has that player ripped up pitching this season when the rest of his career, he's been a part-time guy at best?

For answers, it's best to call in the baseball version of CSI, or Comprehensive Statistical Investigators. These are the people - we'll call them "stat masters" - who have added scores of statistics to the game, the very same people who have taken ridicule from traditional baseball fans who say they have added too many numbers without meaning. 

Test yourself! Take our quiz to find out how much of a stat master you are

Surely, they must spend all their time in darkened rooms hunched over a computer with reams of statistical data covering every square inch, right? Well, not quite. Turns out most of these stat masters not only live relatively normal lives, but also enjoy simply watching a baseball game and think the game has too many numbers/

"Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not," said Bill James, often considered an icon in baseball for his work advancing stats. "But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics."

Glenn Guzzo, a 54-year-old author who also trains high school and college journalists, said that most fans of baseball statistics simply can watch a game without constantly thinking of numbers. But he also contends that those numbers make baseball enjoyable.

"To say you enjoy baseball but are oblivious to statistics is to say you like being in the open air with green grass in front of you while talking to strangers," Guzzo said. "Statistics help give things context and add to the excitement. Otherwise, baseball, with its three-game series, its 162-game season, it's a pretty repetitive exercise."

James' groundbreaking work in the late 1970s has led to both a full-time job with the Boston Red Sox and a wave of fans of baseball numbers building upon his ideas.

Take, for example, Marc Normandin, a 20-year-old Boston Red Sox fan studying communications at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. Normandin, who played baseball into high school, started and writes for Beyondtheboxscore.com, a popular site for stats fans.

"There seems to be this perception that 'mathy' people can't simply enjoy a game," he said. "I love watching a game, cheering along, yelling at the TV sometimes. I'm not always worrying about the statistics and numbers during a game."

Those "mathy" people aren't all about math - James readily admits he has no interests in stats outside of baseball - nor do their lives revolve around numbers.

Normandin said he has a stack of books he has bought, but yet to read, ranging from astronomy to Lewis Black. Guzzo plays Strat-O-Matic baseball, but also follows most major sports, news events and rock music. James spends as much time as he can with his wife and children.

Dave Studenmund, 51, a semi-retired baseball writer in the Chicago area who runs www.baseballgraphs.com, has kids at home, enjoys watching TV shows such as Lost and 24, and tries to get to as many live games as time allows.

"When I tell people I'm a baseball writer, I sometimes get funny looks," he said. "My kids give me funny looks sometimes, too. But having a hobby that you can turn into a job is a really good thing."

Even when that hobby or job involves doing things that make most people shake their heads or simply back away.

Studenmund knows his interests can brand him a bit of an oddball, which isn't a reach when one considers this September entry he posted on his Web site: "Here's a great look at how Win Probability Added is a better way to look at the bunt situation than your basic Runs Matrix."

"That is one of my geekier times, I do admit," he said with a laugh. "I do have a fondness for tinkering with numbers like that. If you're interested and really get into the nuances of if a team should bunt and when they should bunt, then it's worthwhile. But if you're not, and most people aren't, then no."

That's not to say that those who get their kicks by working with numbers are complete geeks. The annual conventions for Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), according to Guzzo, aren't all about computing the minutiae of baseball. He says they're more like family reunions, minus the petty bickering.

Of course, it does take a special kind of person to become so involved in numbers that spending days at a time figuring a way to quantify a player's overall value to a team seems worthwhile. Most, if not all, found a fascination with numbers and the way they related to baseball players' performance during childhood and it has grown from there.

"I do have a family, and obviously I spend as much time as I can with them," James said. "Though even when I'm with my family, my mind tends to drift toward baseball or a question I have."

Guzzo said it would be too tough to tally the time he spends thinking about baseball or baseball stats.

"If you count my dreaming, I'd say it's incalculable," he said with a laugh. "Sometimes I fall asleep thinking, 'Who would be on the all-time Pittsburgh Pirates team?' or something like that."

It wasn't so long ago when James' ideas were novel, when considering anything beyond batting average and ERA just wasn't done.

Normandin and others think the next great step in the statistical revolution involves some serious glove work. Fielding clearly affects games, but its value largely has escaped pinpoint statistical formulas.

"Defense certainly seems to be the next thing," said Normandin, who said he'd like the money to buy raw batted-ball data. "If I had that, with the other guys from the Web site, it would probably help the stats we have, like net runs above average, and help make a more accurate statistic."

And so stat fans will continue to tinker with numbers, pushing to find the ultimate stat that will tell the exact value of a player in all aspects, down to how he contributes to the team's overall mood, even though they know that may be impossible.

"Numbers are part - part, not all - of what it can tell you about a player," Guzzo said.

James called the stat master's task an endless job, "because there is no way to measure everything about baseball."

And therein lies the greatest draw for the stat master, the striving for an ultimate stat that may not ever exist.

"I think that some people have the idea that we understand baseball and there are some gray areas we just have to tidy up," James said. "My notion is that baseball is an ocean and what we have figured out is about the size of a swimming pool.

"That's not just about baseball. It's about the world in general. What we have figured out is really insignificant compared to everything that's out there, but it doesn't diminish our ability to get it done."