ANALYTICS IN SPORTS:

1
ANALYTICS IN SPORTS

• SABERMETRICS 101

History and Ideas
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What is Sabermetrics?

• The search for objective knowledge about
  baseball Bill James
• From the acronym SABR (Society of American
  Baseball Research)
• Why Baseball?

3
Early Days Pre-1920

• Chadwick invents scorekeeping, box scores
• Most-emphasized statistic is Runs
• Chalmers Award to highest batting average in
  each league
• Deadball Era high AVG, little HR power

4
Live Ball Era 1920-1950s

• Babe Ruth popularized the HR
• Murderers Row Yankees and the RBI
• Yankee dynasties

5
Beginnings of Innovation 1950-1980

• Branch Rickey- farm systems, Jackie Robinson
• Hires Allen Roth
• OBP, pitch counts, strategies
• Dodgers success with Roth, 1947-1967
• Earnshaw Cook Percentage Baseball (1967)
• Mills Brothers develop win probability

6
Bill James 1980-2000

• Bill James Baseball Abstracts 1977-1988
• Widely read, gets national exposure, especially
  by young fans and fantasy players
• Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
• Summarizes work, ranks top players of all time
• 2nd edition introduces Win Shares
• Craig Wright first sabermetrician hired

7
Moneyball

• 2003 book by Michael Lewis
• Tracks Oakland As GM Billy Beanes success
  despite one of smallest payrolls in the game
• Discusses approach to the draft, free agents,
  trade negotiations, and Jamess influence
• Brought sabermetric ideas to mainstream
• NY Times bestseller list for months, topping out
  at 2 in the late summer

8
Jamesian Revolution 2000-present

• Internet websites, blogs, fantasy publications
  embrace the ideas and run with them
• MLB slower to adopt
• Theo Epstein (Red Sox), Paul DePodesta (Dodgers,
  briefly) hired as GMs
• Bill James, Keith Woolner of Baseball Prospectus
  hired full-time by MLB teams
• BIS, Stats Inc., MLBAM provide new forms of data

9
Current Research

• Private MLB Teams
• Full-time researchers
• Access to more information
• Targets specific, applicable issues
• Public through blogs, websites, publications
• Baseball is a hobby for most motivated by
  enjoyment, curiosity
• Easily critiqued, furthered by others
• Large volume of work, daily publication

10
Sources

• Wikipedia, accessed December 20, 2007
• The Numbers Game by Alan Schwartz
• Sean Formans Baseball Reference website
  www.baseball-reference.com
• Sabermetricians slowly being added to the inner
  circle, by Rob Neyer, November 6, 2002.
  (http//espn.go.com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1456664.
  html)