Outs

The currency of baseball

Outs

Have you ever heard people wax poetically about baseball not having a clock?

This is a relatively modern phenomenon, believe it or not. It wasn’t until sometime after the 1981 strike that fans of Major League Baseball decided that the ever-increasing length of game and ever-slowing pace of play was a good thing.

If you spend time with baseball literature, you’ll find passages that extol this “timeless” nature of the sport, such as this one from George Will’s Men At Work:

This is from page 134 in my electronic copy; I’m not sure what the page number is in the official print version.

Now, the truth is that baseball does have a clock. In fact, Will hints at it in this paragraph.

The clock of baseball is called the out.

The Currency of Baseball

Outs are the currency of baseball.

This statement is obvious when you think about it. You can’t win a game if you don’t get the other side out, no matter how many runs you score. Outs are absolutely pivotal, and are central to the flow and pace of the game.

Once upon a time, teams, players, fans, and even sportswriters had a natural understanding of this fact. In fact, the basic truth that a game would not be official if enough outs were not properly made led to some of the most bizarre stories from the early years of baseball.

When I was in high school, I used to read printouts from the old Strange and Unusual Plays section of the old Retrosheet Newsletter. The very first reference to in-game stalling shows us directly how important outs are to the game. Note, however, that this game actually took place on May 3, 1915, not May 13.

That aside, let me assure you that the stalling tactics of today are no match for this doozy:

From The Pittsburgh Post, May 4, 1915, page 13

To make a long story short, the Pirates were down big and could see the rain clouds approaching. If they could stall the game long enough, however, they could prevent 4 1/2 innings from being played and the game becoming official.

From The Pittsburgh Post, May 4, 1915, page 13

As much fun as all that is, the point here is simple. If you don’t get the outs in the field, the game simply doesn’t progress.

Keep that in mind the next time somebody tells you that runs are the currency of baseball. They aren’t. Outs are the currency of baseball, and the number of outs per inning has not changed since 1845.

Who Cares?

So what? So who cares about this stuff?

Replayers care.

If you’ve ever carefully replayed a baseball season, you know what I’m talking about. It’s absolutely important that the game you use accurately recreate the number and types of outs that actually occur in the game.

Games that skip over outs like caught stealing will suffer statistical balance issues, since those outs have to come from somewhere. Games that offer too much user leeway in terms of baserunner advancement will similarly suffer, since you won’t have enough runners thrown out on the basepaths.

In the coming week and months, I’m going to continue to dig deep into the thought that goes into creating accurate baseball simulations. One thing that is absolutely important to understand, though, is that these simulations are largely about replicating outs, not hits or runs or lefty/righty splits or WAR or whatever else you’re thinking about.

Outs are the key to accuracy.