So Many Statistics Are Just Meaningless. Meaningless!
On Sunday morning, The New York Times printed a list of statistical leaders from the 2004 interleague schedule. I bet you did not know that Derrek Lee of the Cubs led all batters with a .444 average in games against the other league, and that both Francisco Rodriguez of the Angels and B.J. Ryan of the Orioles sported 0.00 ERAs in interleague games, best among pitchers who threw at least 10 innings. These things are nice to know, aren’t they? Actually, no they are not.

Besides natural rivalries (Yankees vs. Mets, White Sox vs. Cubs), the interleague schedule changes every year. If a team plays the other league’s Central division in 2004, it plays the West in 2005. Different teams, different pitchers, different hitters, different ballparks, meaningless numbers. So here is today’s Aflac trivia question: What is the value of printing last year’s interleague statistics? Answer: None. Please print something more important, like the number of Hebrew National hot dogs sold during Wednesday Spring Training games in which the temperature was at least 79 degrees.

Baseball statistics in general – which I love to look at and analyze as much as anyone – are, sadly, often meaningless. Anybody in a sports bar who ever tries to form an argument using a pitcher’s win/loss record should have his pint glass rammed up his eye. Randy Johnson was 16-14 last year, but his ERA was 2.60. With a good team, he might have won 25 games. With the Arizona Diamondbacks, he was lucky to win 16 of their 51 games. “Oh but this guy,” the old Jack Morris argument used to go, “just knows how to win.”

For the most part, that argument is bologna. If a pitcher gets a 7-0 lead and then winds up winning 7-6, he won not because he “knows how to pitch to the scoreboard,” he won because he got good run support. Yes, some pitchers are better in clutch situations, and have the knack for getting a strikeout or double-play grounder when they need it, but wins and losses are the most overrated statistics for what they really say about an athlete’s performance.

Some of those crazy Society of American Baseball Research statistics such as “wins above team” and “runs per hitting win” or whatever the hell they are called, are fun to calculate if you have a graphing calculator and a protractor, but they are entirely too complicated to ever become mainstream. But some of the overly simple statistics like wins and losses are just the opposite – they are too simple and explain too little.

So let’s meet in the middle. Let’s not print last year’s interleague statistics (did you know the Devil Rays were 15-3 against the National League last year), let’s not base an argument on wins and losses (Bob Welch won 27 games in 1990, that says it all), and let’s not purchase a mathematics textbook for the sole purpose of figuring out how many singles to center David Eckstein would hit if he were playing in Japan.

Numbers do tell a lot of the story. Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth are the two best home run hitters of all time, because they have the most homers. Ty Cobb was the best hitter for average that has ever played, because he has the highest average.

But just looking blindly at numbers and judging a player based on them is a mistake that is made too often. Ask anyone who has played fantasy baseball. “Oh, Roberto Hernandez has an ERA of less than 1.20,” I said earlier this week of the New York Mets’ new setup man. So I picked him up, and played him on Saturday. The result: One inning, two runs and four baserunners allowed for Hernandez, and a drop in the standings for me.

Numbers are fun, but they do not mean everything, and they often mean nothing. Good luck trying to remember that when you are fumbling for evidence in your next sports argument. Just remember: wins and losses and interleague stats do not mean much, and neither do spring training frankfurter sales.