The pros/cons of Total Average aside, what struck me from that Boswell piece from 1978 was the the player names from that time and the style in which Bos wrote.
I was a longtime WaPo sports section reader in those years and remember reading first Shirley Povich’s column and then Boswell coverage of the O’s game from the night before. Just having two of the greatest baseball writers sharing the same sports desk was pretty awesome. George Solomon was a genius sports editor.
It is a right of passage for every person first getting into baseball analytics to re-invent Total Average (bases per out, bases per PA, etc) and think they’ve created a brilliant new stat. (I’ve done it myself, lol)
There’s a whole section on the site of the guy who invented PythagenPat about debunking the so-called “bases fallacy” for that reason: https://gosu02.tripod.com/id10.html
This is really good - and is something I'd never read before.
Looks like the page is over 20 years old as well. He links to an old Chris Dial piece on the old Baseball Primer, which really brings back memories (I remember browsing Primer in high school back in 2001, lol).
I don't think there's a simple way to convince people that the Total Average approach simply doesn't work. However there might be a creative journalistic way to explain Boswell's folly that might stick...
The impact of stolen bases might be a reflection of how much they were valued in the late 70s and 1980s. The leadoff hitters and guys that could steal made up a lot the biggest stars in the 1980s
Dodgers won 1981 World Series - the infamous ‘split season’.
The pros/cons of Total Average aside, what struck me from that Boswell piece from 1978 was the the player names from that time and the style in which Bos wrote.
I was a longtime WaPo sports section reader in those years and remember reading first Shirley Povich’s column and then Boswell coverage of the O’s game from the night before. Just having two of the greatest baseball writers sharing the same sports desk was pretty awesome. George Solomon was a genius sports editor.
It is a right of passage for every person first getting into baseball analytics to re-invent Total Average (bases per out, bases per PA, etc) and think they’ve created a brilliant new stat. (I’ve done it myself, lol)
There’s a whole section on the site of the guy who invented PythagenPat about debunking the so-called “bases fallacy” for that reason: https://gosu02.tripod.com/id10.html
This is really good - and is something I'd never read before.
Looks like the page is over 20 years old as well. He links to an old Chris Dial piece on the old Baseball Primer, which really brings back memories (I remember browsing Primer in high school back in 2001, lol).
I don't think there's a simple way to convince people that the Total Average approach simply doesn't work. However there might be a creative journalistic way to explain Boswell's folly that might stick...
The impact of stolen bases might be a reflection of how much they were valued in the late 70s and 1980s. The leadoff hitters and guys that could steal made up a lot the biggest stars in the 1980s