No one cares about batting average or ERA anymore?

[StlMike1969]

As an average, everyday schmo that never played outside of high school, I am just a fan now at the age of 56. I can say that I rely on a few things for my evaluation of hitters, Batting average, Strike Outs and over all power numbers. I have just as much value in a hitter that hits 20 HR's and 40 doubles as some one that hit's 30HR's and 25 doubles. They are either hitting the gaps or over the fence. If they strike out 200 times a season to hit 30HR's but carry a .230 average I am not calling that guy a complete hitter. A lot can be learned about a hitter using just those stats. No need to over complicate it.

As for pitchers I look at Innings Pitched, strike outs vs walks and ERA for starters. Again no need to over complicate it. A guy is giving you quality 6 inning starts or he isn't. Relievers are obviously hard to evaluate because as others have pointed out there are numerous factors. I tend to avoid those discussions to not speak on what I don't know. Truth is, if a guy is not effective as a starter then he is a reliever. I do think though there should be more juggling in and out of guys in the reliever role. I am afraid managers get too attached to one or two guys for too long and ignore their bad days too much until they have just blown the wheels off. Fitzgerald this year is a good example. He got about 3 weeks too much exposure.

[Bob Kunush]

Home runs are also dependent on the park. Some parks add hime runs and some take them away. If you play half your games in one of the easier ones you should hit a lot of home runs. In St. Louis I will take a constant doubles hitter over a all or nothing hone run hitter.

[WeeVikes]

How come?
What are the most relevant stats today
to assess hitting and pitching performance?
I always used RBI's HR's and batting average.
And ERA walks and strikeouts.
Now what is the best measure and
what are good numbers to attain?

BA is a far better measurement of a hitter than OBP (walks, while possessing some limited value, over-inflate OBP and OPS since they are often to the advantage of the pitcher and the defense,
Though rarely referenced anymore, "total bases" is the best offensive counting stat (though I would include SB in that total).
Run Production (Runs + RBI - HR) is best at measuring individual value to the offense.
Those 3 are the gold standard for hitters and always will be.
For starting pitchers, ERA, WHIP, number of starts, and innings pitched are the 4 most important metrics.
K's/9 and (of course) Wins are important.

Mel — do you tweak your assessment of pitcher effectiveness for relievers?

Relievers are all trash because they abysmally fail the critically important "number of starts" metric.

In all seriousness, first thing I look at in relievers is K/9, second is HR/9. I want a guy out there who can miss bats and isn't overly susceptible to a big inning.

Brilliant!

Seriously, though, I concur with your opinion. And as suggested later, BB/9 makes sense, too. I just wanted to see if Mel made a distinction.

Yes, BB/9 have importance... I just don't give them much weight with RP. If a guy has a low BB/9 but his K/9 is under 8, I'm probably not using that guy at the back end as a high leverage guy. That's more a bulk innings middle reliever. A fireman has to be able to get a strikeout.

I can see that logic. It makes sense.

[mattmitchl44]

All stats are important if they don’t include subjective factors. One of the most overrated is WAR or any version thereof.

WAR is a complete fiction invented by fantasy baseball participants who never played the game.

WAR is not used in fantasy baseball.

People continue to not understand what WAR sets out to do.

WAR is a GM-level metric to make roster decisions. For example, if a GM knows that he needs to sign a starting 2B and a SP one offseason, and he has only $X million to do that with, there may be many combinations of 1 2B and 1 SP that he can sign for that amount of money. So the question is - which combination should he sign? He should likely sign the combination that he can expect will add the most wins for his team.

So WAR establishes a common measure (wins above replacement) that allows you to compare the expected contributions to team wins from players who do very different things (like a 2B and a SP). You simply can't do that with "conventional" statistics.

Without something like WAR, you are left with less information to decide whether you should sign this $10 million 2B and this $15 million SP, or that $15 million 2B and that $10 million SP if you want to give yourself the best chance of winning the most games next year.

[Melville]

All stats are important if they don’t include subjective factors. One of the most overrated is WAR or any version thereof.

WAR is a complete fiction invented by fantasy baseball participants who never played the game.

WAR is not used in fantasy baseball.

I did not say otherwise.

[Melville]

How come?
What are the most relevant stats today
to assess hitting and pitching performance?
I always used RBI's HR's and batting average.
And ERA walks and strikeouts.
Now what is the best measure and
what are good numbers to attain?

BA is a far better measurement of a hitter than OBP (walks, while possessing some limited value, over-inflate OBP and OPS since they are often to the advantage of the pitcher and the defense,
Though rarely referenced anymore, "total bases" is the best offensive counting stat (though I would include SB in that total).
Run Production (Runs + RBI - HR) is best at measuring individual value to the offense.
Those 3 are the gold standard for hitters and always will be.
For starting pitchers, ERA, WHIP, number of starts, and innings pitched are the 4 most important metrics.
K's/9 and (of course) Wins are important.

Mel — do you tweak your assessment of pitcher effectiveness for relievers?

Not really, other than weighting K's/9 as clearly more important than with starters.
And BB's/9 is critical to be as low as possible for relievers.
So that ratio is key.
(Obviously, innings and wins would not be applicable metrics, since with relievers both would be indicators of preceding undesirable outcomes to a certain extent.)
One stat I do not value as highly as some is 'inheritable runners scored" - too many variables to be of any true insight (an inherited runner on 3b is much different than one on 1B, a reliever being asked to record 3 outs with a runner on is very different than a reliever asked to get one, etc.).

[WeeVikes]

How come?
What are the most relevant stats today
to assess hitting and pitching performance?
I always used RBI's HR's and batting average.
And ERA walks and strikeouts.
Now what is the best measure and
what are good numbers to attain?

BA is a far better measurement of a hitter than OBP (walks, while possessing some limited value, over-inflate OBP and OPS since they are often to the advantage of the pitcher and the defense,
Though rarely referenced anymore, "total bases" is the best offensive counting stat (though I would include SB in that total).
Run Production (Runs + RBI - HR) is best at measuring individual value to the offense.
Those 3 are the gold standard for hitters and always will be.
For starting pitchers, ERA, WHIP, number of starts, and innings pitched are the 4 most important metrics.
K's/9 and (of course) Wins are important.

Mel — do you tweak your assessment of pitcher effectiveness for relievers?

Not really, other than weighting K's/9 as clearly more important than with starters.
And BB's/9 is critical to be as low as possible for relievers.
So that ratio is key.
(Obviously, innings and wins would not be applicable metrics, since with relievers both would be indicators of preceding undesirable outcomes to a certain extent.)
One stat I do not value as highly as some is 'inheritable runners scored" - too many variables to be of any true insight (an inherited runner on 3b is much different than one on 1B, a reliever being asked to record 3 outs with a runner on is very different than a reliever asked to get one, etc.).

That all squares with what I figured you’d say. I hadn’t thought about the inherited runners, but that’s a good point.

[cardstatman]

OPS is a very nice stat for hitters. Far better than AVG, OBP, or SLG alone.

WPA (win probability added) is a nice stat for pitchers, and also for batters, but it ignores defense which is a significant part of a player's value.
I like RE24 (runs above average based on the 24 men on base / outs states even better since WPA can be influenced by opportunities. I'm not a huge believer in "clutch" and WPA is highly influenced by "clutch" which may not be repeatable.

For defense, it seems all of the stats are majorly flawed. It is not that they aren't trying hard, it is just very difficult to measure. These flawed stats of course make WAR (wins above replacement) far less accurate since WAR tries to include defense.

I like WAA (wins above average) better than WAR anyway; I like that 0 represents an average MLB player.

I like bWAR better than fWAR for pitchers since it is based on ERA rather than FIP. FIP is meant to be predictive of future probable results but I don't think WAR should be predictive, it should just report past outcomes. I like FIP, but just not as part of WAR.

[mattmitchl44]

I would take any statistics which are more "complete" - which correctly account for more things - than statistics which aren't.

OBP is more informative than BA, because OBP accounts for more important events (BB, HBP, etc.) than BA.

OPS accounts for more than just OBP, and OPS+ then accounts for park factors, so it includes even more information.

FIP includes K/9, BB/9, and HR/9, so it includes a lot of meaningful information.

Etc.

Just using statistics like BA, HR, RBIs, etc. is missing out on a lot of valuable information.

[SamTheMan]

All stats are important if they don’t include subjective factors. One of the most overrated is WAR or any version thereof.

WAR is a complete fiction invented by fantasy baseball participants who never played the game.

WAR is not used in fantasy baseball.

Absolutely AOF LOL.
But could you add WAR to rotisserie?
Also,wins for pitchers seem non-exist
I was in the Cards Talk league last year, 15 teams was a little too much

[Melville]

How come?
What are the most relevant stats today
to assess hitting and pitching performance?
I always used RBI's HR's and batting average.
And ERA walks and strikeouts.
Now what is the best measure and
what are good numbers to attain?

BA is a far better measurement of a hitter than OBP (walks, while possessing some limited value, over-inflate OBP and OPS since they are often to the advantage of the pitcher and the defense,
Though rarely referenced anymore, "total bases" is the best offensive counting stat (though I would include SB in that total).
Run Production (Runs + RBI - HR) is best at measuring individual value to the offense.
Those 3 are the gold standard for hitters and always will be.
For starting pitchers, ERA, WHIP, number of starts, and innings pitched are the 4 most important metrics.
K's/9 and (of course) Wins are important.

Mel — do you tweak your assessment of pitcher effectiveness for relievers?

Not really, other than weighting K's/9 as clearly more important than with starters.
And BB's/9 is critical to be as low as possible for relievers.
So that ratio is key.
(Obviously, innings and wins would not be applicable metrics, since with relievers both would be indicators of preceding undesirable outcomes to a certain extent.)
One stat I do not value as highly as some is 'inheritable runners scored" - too many variables to be of any true insight (an inherited runner on 3b is much different than one on 1B, a reliever being asked to record 3 outs with a runner on is very different than a reliever asked to get one, etc.).

That all squares with what I figured you’d say. I hadn’t thought about the inherited runners, but that’s a good point.

To take in a bit further, the earlier the inning in which a reliever appears, the more misleading that data is.
If a reliever is in the game before the 5th inning concludes, it is nearly always a game in which there is a high volume of traffic.
And, of course, traffic is what also drives a starter from the game in the 6th inning.
In the 7th and 8th, the first reliever of the inning is starting clean, meaning there is a zero percent chance of inheriting a runner - but any mid-inning replacement is nearly always facing traffic.
And when a closer begins the 9th, he is of all pitchers the least likely to have an "inherited runner scored" count against him.
One could easily see someone like Helsley go an entire season without ever encountering a single inherited runner - and therefore have a perfect record of zero scored.
Bottom line: silly stat and ridiculously useless.

[11WSChamps]

I guarantee you if my starting lineup had guys hitting .275 and up a lot of teams would care.

[Melville]

I guarantee you if my starting lineup had guys hitting .275 and up a lot of teams would care.

So, you are saying that having hitters with an OBP of .350 and a BA of .275, is superior to having hitters with an OBP of .350 and a BA of .230.
You might be on to something.
Of course, the OPS/OPS+ crowd will object.
But your point will remain perfect.

[Bully4you]

How come?
What are the most relevant stats today
to assess hitting and pitching performance?
I always used RBI's HR's and batting average.
And ERA walks and strikeouts.
Now what is the best measure and
what are good numbers to attain?

BA is a far better measurement of a hitter than OBP (walks, while possessing some limited value, over-inflate OBP and OPS since they are often to the advantage of the pitcher and the defense,
Though rarely referenced anymore, "total bases" is the best offensive counting stat (though I would include SB in that total).
Run Production (Runs + RBI - HR) is best at measuring individual value to the offense.
Those 3 are the gold standard for hitters and always will be.
For starting pitchers, ERA, WHIP, number of starts, and innings pitched are the 4 most important metrics.
K's/9 and (of course) Wins are important.

Never thought about the stat of total bases.
Probably a useful stat.
Currently, there are only 16 players hitting .300 or above.
That seems pretty low historically.
I remember years in the 80's we had that amount
in one league. Maybe I am wrong, but 16 seems low.

[Melville]

How come?
What are the most relevant stats today
to assess hitting and pitching performance?
I always used RBI's HR's and batting average.
And ERA walks and strikeouts.
Now what is the best measure and
what are good numbers to attain?

BA is a far better measurement of a hitter than OBP (walks, while possessing some limited value, over-inflate OBP and OPS since they are often to the advantage of the pitcher and the defense,
Though rarely referenced anymore, "total bases" is the best offensive counting stat (though I would include SB in that total).
Run Production (Runs + RBI - HR) is best at measuring individual value to the offense.
Those 3 are the gold standard for hitters and always will be.
For starting pitchers, ERA, WHIP, number of starts, and innings pitched are the 4 most important metrics.
K's/9 and (of course) Wins are important.

Never thought about the stat of total bases.
Probably a useful stat.
Currently, there are only 16 players hitting .300 or above.
That seems pretty low historically.
I remember years in the 80's we had that amount
in one league. Maybe I am wrong, but 16 seems low.

You are absolutely correct.
In 1970, among "qualifying players", there were 27 hitters who finished at .300 and above. (39 above .290) There were 24 MLB teams.
In 1980, there were 33. (47 above .290) 24 MLB teams.
In 1990, there were 22. (36 above .290) 26 MLB teams.
In 2000, there were 23. (27 above .290) 30 MLB teams
As you noted, only 16 currently at or above .300 (and 22 above .290). 30 MLB teams.
Bottom line.
Given the comparative number of teams and hitters, now and in the 1970/80 era, the number of .300 hitters has been cut in half.