Radio Free Montone: When Baseball Was A Game
By John Montone, 1010 WINS
Every kid who grew up loving baseball in the 1960's knew this; Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown in 1956 with 52 Home Runs, 130 RBIs and a .353 batting average. But what was The Mick's WAR?
As a grumpy old baseball fan who's getting grumpier by the day, I probably should have stopped reading the statistical analysis of the Troy Tulowitzki-Jose Reyes trade as soon as I came to the line that Tulo, "…ranks a somewhat middling 66th in average velocity off the bat." In simpler times we would say, "He hit that one on the nose," or "He hit the sweet spot." But that was when baseball was but a game. When players sold used cars or life insurance in the off-season.
Now it is a division of a giant corporation which generates billions of dollars and as such its practitioners are subject to the laws of science. Average velocity off the bat or "exit speed" was born of Newton's Second Law of Motion which plugging in the mass of a baseball, the speed at which it is pitched and the power of the swing can determine the velocity at which the ball leaves the bat. And thus we have the great Tulo exposed as a "middling" performer.
And then there is the aforementioned WAR which stands for "wins above replacement." And grumpier still I recoil at the mere mention of the word "war" in the same breath as baseball. War is bloody and tragic and fought on battlefields strewn with the bodies of young men. Baseball is played on grass, under sunny skies and starry nights by young men chewing wads of bubble gum. But WAR as it is used by the game's new class of "sabermetricians" (stat nuts from the "Society of American Baseball Research") is an all-inclusive method of determining how many more wins a player is worth to his team than the guy who would take his place if he was traded or injured.
Radio Free Montone: When Baseball Was A Game
And once again Tulo falls short. It is written that his new team, the Blue Jays, will win but one more game the rest of the season with him at short stop than they would have with Reyes playing the position. This is based on Tulowitzki's .173 ISO. Ah yes, the ISO, his batting average subtracted from his slugging percentage which is not to be confused with his OPS, his on-base, plus slugging percentage or his OPS+ which factors in the park where he plays his home games.
And don't forget BABIP, batting average on balls in play. Or DIPS, defense-independent pitching statistics which is what a pitcher's earned run average would most likely be if you removed all of the fielders except the catcher.
So maybe Yogi was right when he said, "90% of this game is half mental."
