The New Ballgame: Understanding Baseball Statistics for the Casual Fan Read Online Free PDF

Williams and Manager Ozzie Guillen for assembling the parts
and getting the whole to exceed the sum (if the Sox had won only as many games as their runs scored-runs allowed differential said they
should win, they would not even have made it into the postseason).
But few people are optimistic enough to project so much simultaneous improvement by so many players.

Moving parts
    • Trades and free-agency keep changing individual and team fortunes. Despite their first World Series victory since 1917, the Sox
made significant changes after sharing the champagne bottles. Almost every Chicago player who did not improve in 2005-outfielder
Aaron Rowand, designated hitter Frank Thomas, and pitchers Orlando Hernandez and Damaso Marte-started 2006 on another team.
They were replaced principally by designated hitter Jim Thorne and
pitcher Javier Vazquez-who both underperformed for other teams
in 2005-and rookie outfielder Brian Anderson.
    Different surroundings-a new supporting cast of teammates, a
new ballpark, maybe a switch between the American and National
leagues that presents new opponents-can have dramatic effects on
player performance, for better or for worse.
The "law of averages"
    • Better described as random variation or better still as Insufficient
Sample (the two most important words in statistics), the classic illustration of Insufficient Sample is probably apocryphal, but here
goes: The chancellor at the University of North Carolina wanted to
know which degree majors produced the highest salaries in the real world. The study he commissioned returned this startling discovery:
geography. It turns out there were only three graduates with geography majors, and one of them was Michael Jordan.

    This is not the book to discuss standard deviation, regression to the
mean, and other sophisticated math (you can thank my editor for
keeping me in line), but know this: Much of what happens in a mere
500 at-bats or 200 innings pitched is subject to chance.
    Most of Podsednik's batting decline between 2003 and 2004 and his
rebound in 2005 (from a.314 batting average in 2003 to .249 and back
to .290) can be explained by normal statistical fluctuations in the life
of a player his age. It sounds like denial, but when a player dismisses
a batting slump by saying that his line drives "are just not falling in
this year," it's probably true. That's not very satisfying. We'd rather
understand that this guy has messed up his swing or that he's really
not very good. But recent studies show that balls in play behave pretty
much the same for everyone. The players who hit better put more balls
in play (fewer strikeouts) and/or hit more fair balls out of play (home
runs). Pitchers who perform better get more strikeouts, walk fewer
batters, and keep the ball in the park. We told you this stuff is simple.
    You won't find such stats in handy places, but players whose percentage
of balls in play produced an abnormal amount of hits one year are good candidates for lower batting averages the next, and vice versa. Similarly, teams that
win an extraordinarily high number of one-run games one year are likeliest to
decline in the standings next season.

    The White Sox' 35-19 record in one-run games in 2005-by far the best
in the major leagues-foretold their decline in 2006. The Sox' performance in
one-run games dropped to 24-21 and their win total dropped from 99 in 2005
to 90 in 2006.
    Yes, good teams get most of the good luck. "Luck," as famed former
general manager Branch Rickey famously said, "is the residue of design."
But abnormal good luck is one of the toughest things to reproduce. If that
wasn't true, we wouldn't have had seven different teams win the last seven
World Series.
THE SHORT SERIES
    Nothing in baseball illustrates Insufficient Sample better than the postseason.
These best-of-seven-game series are not microcosms of the 162-game regular
season. They are abbreviated competitions that often turn on a