A rant on Sabermetrics.

Like any other stat, it's using it and applying it appropriately.

If Adam Dunn is the extreme, then I have to submit Carlos Pena as another reason why I don't like Contract Rate due to its lack of consistency.

Pena struck out 182 times (40 less than Dunn) last year which gave him a .633 Contact Rate (.045 better than Dunn), but his batting average was .197 (.007 worse than Dunn).

You would think that with a .633 Contact Rate Pena would be a better hitter but his batting average was even worse than Dunn's.

Now do you see why I really don't like Contact Rate and put more emphasis and attention on sabermetrics like Runs Created and OPS.

If Adam Dunn is the extreme, then I have to submit Carlos Pena as another reason why I don't like Contract Rate due to its lack of consistency.

Pena struck out 182 times (40 less than Dunn) last year which gave him a .633 Contact Rate (.045 better than Dunn), but his batting average was .197 (.007 worse than Dunn).

You would think that with a .633 Contact Rate Pena would be a better hitter but his batting average was even worse than Dunn's.

Now do you see why I really don't like Contact Rate and put more emphasis and attention on sabermetrics like Runs Created and OPS.

odd, I thought, according to some......that all sabermetrics know no wrong, and are all perfect.....according to some.

odd, I thought, according to some......that all sabermetrics know no wrong, and are all perfect.....according to some.

Uh, no. According to no one actually. Why don't you go find me some comment where someone said sabermetrics is PERFECT and is God's gift to baseball?

It's not, just like any other stat.

 

Now do you see why I really don't like Contact Rate and put more emphasis and attention on sabermetrics like Runs Created and OPS.

Because you're still not applying it correctly. It only tells you if someone was getting lucky or not. Plus, you have to look at their career norms to see if it falls within line. It does NOT directly correlate with average for a single year.

Let me give you an example. Curtis Granderson has always had an extremely low contact rate. Yet a number of years ago, he managed to hit over .300, and even some years he hit in the .280s. Looking at his low contact rate, one would be able to reasonably surmise that he got extremely lucky that year, and that him hitting that high was an aberration. Well guess what? It was accurate. Since joining the Yankees, Granderson is the .230s-.240s hitter one would expect.

Mark Texeira is another example. A guy who used to hit for high average, but had always had a contact rate that didn't quite match up with his production. Now he's been a .250s hitter, which isn't surprising at all.

On the other hand, guys like Miggy and Ryan Braun haven't had great contact rates, and yet they have always been phenomenal .300+ hitters throughout their careers. Well, in this case you simply refer to their career norms. Because they are such gifted natural hitters, they are able to get away with a low contact rate and still be successful. However, I will throw this caveat out there for guys like them. They could hit sharp declines when they hit their mid-30s if their supreme skills begin to erode.

 

Because you're still not applying it correctly. It only tells you if someone was getting lucky or not. Plus, you have to look at their career norms to see if it falls within line. It does NOT directly correlate with average for a single year.

There in lies the problem with Contact Rate. You have to apply it with something else like BABIP or the player's entire career performance.

I like WHIP because it tells you what the traditional ERA does not which is which pitchers exhibit good control and which ones had luck on their side.

I also like OPS because it tells you what the traditional BA does not, which is which player is a slap hitter and which one hits the ball with authority.

In my opinion an individual sabermetric by itself should be able to say something that the tradtional stat does not say and not have to rely on other tradational or sabermetric stats to even begin to become effective. Contact rate does not do that.

There in lies the problem with Contact Rate. You have to apply it with something else like BABIP or the player's entire career performance.

How is that a problem? ANY stat on its own is useless. Would looking at Adam Dunn's HR total alone tell us he's a great hitter? Or as I mentioned before with Andruw Jones when he led the league in RBIs. Would that tell us he was clutch at driving in runs? Not really since he hit .240 with RISP. Or the several years when Bonds couldn't even top 100 RBIs. Does that tell us he sucked at producing runs? Not really since he had very few opportunities.

Or heck, what if I tell you a guy has 150 RBIs? Could you tell me what that means about that player?

And furthermore, you should ALWAYS be looking at a player's entire career. Hell, let's just use traditional stats. Let's say a guy has hit around the .260s with 15 HRs and 60 RBIs his entire 7 year career as a starter, and then all of a sudden hits .330 with 35 HRs and 120 RBIs. Are you telling me that means he's firmly entrenched himself as a superstar? Let's say he was a FA that year. Would you want YOUR team to sign him to a mega deal?

In my opinion an individual sabermetric by itself should be able to say something that the tradtional stat does not say and not have to rely on other tradational or sabermetric stats to even begin to become effective. Contact rate does not do that.

And that's where your problem is. No sabermetric stat does that. Not even WHIP or OPS. For example, OPS is not considered a perfect statistic because it equally values OBP and SLG, whereas a lot of people believe that OBP is more important. OPS+ is a better version, but it still has that inherrant flaw.

I think part of the problem that people have is complete ignorance or a total misconception of what sabermetric (or even stats in general) are supposed to do. No one stat is definitive. EVER. In any walk of life. It's not supposed to provide a single solution. They are just more tools to use in player analysis, and just like any other tool, they can be misunderstood or incorrectly used.

It seems that a lot of critics of sabermetrics have the completely wrong idea about them. I'm happy to educate and remove those misconceptions.