Clipping:A critique of the system of scoring and pitching stats
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| Date | Sunday, April 2, 1876 |
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| Text | Fallacy of Base-Ball Averages at Present Computed The league move in the direction of reforming base-ball matters and purifying the game of some of its foulness, has not yet done all it might have done. It has failed to show how utterly absurd is the present system of scoring, and deducting therefrom averages which are unreliable. First take the pitcher’s average, which is given on a ratio of hits per game. There is no mention made of the ratio of called strikes, or of called balls per game, or of the ratio of balls pitched to either called strikes, called balls, or base hits. Take, for instance, 100 balls pitched by A and B. A pitches 5 called balls, 30 called strikes, 25 foul strikes, 20 balls not called, 7 in-field outs, 5 flys-out, and 8 safe hits. B. Pitches 15 called balls, 9 called strikes, 14 foul strikes, 45 balls not called, 6 in-field outs, 6 flys-out, and 5 safe hits. A has two men put out on strikes, and B lost a base by balls; yet, according to the present way of computing an average, A is worse than B, as 8 is greater than 5, that is to say that A is 3/8 a worse pitcher than B, which no man in his senses who knows anything of the game would say. Deduct from the 100 balls pitched the unstrikable balls not called, and we have A to have pitched 80 balls, and B 65. Deduct again the balls called, we have A 75, and B 50 good balls pitched. Now take the base-hit average, and A has an average of 8.85, or one base-hit to every 9.375 balls pitched. On the same principle B has one base hit in every ten good balls pitched. Each has had twelve men put out in the field, but A has put out two men by strikes, so he has got fourteen outs, but B has lost a base by bad pitching, so he has only eleven men out to his credit. The average should then stand: A pitches 75 balls for 8 base hits and 14 outs; B pitches 50 balls for 5 base hits and 11 outs. This makes a vastly different showing than under the rule adopted by base-ball writers last season. The batsman’s average should also show the number of balls pitched to him, good and bad, to the number of outs and safe hits. Then there is a deal of nonsense in averaging the play of fielders. Second base, third base, and short stop get each about twice as many balls to field as the out-fielders, yet ever man is judged on the number of errors he has made and an error in the out-field is looked upon as even with an error in the in-field. Now, as an in-fielder gets twice as many opportunities of making mistakes as an out-fielder, his errors are only half as heinous, two errors in twenty plays of the former being equal to one error in ten plays of the latter. Then, again, the pitcher and catcher and first base are measured by the same error-standard as the other players, which is a preposterous as measuring a wheeler in a team by the leader, or vice versa. The whole system of charging men with errors for every ball that escapes them (says the Chicago Field) is nonsensical in the extreme. How is a reporter in a far-off stand to know just how that ball came up to a man? How can he say that the ball which just passed C was any harder or easier to stop than the ball that was stopped by D? To reckon errors against individual players in that way is all a fraud, and tends to lower the general standard of play rather than raise it. There are some men who go for every ball with all the force and ability that is in them, and take no heed to its hotness or its difficulty, while there are others who do not. The system of counting errors would have no effect upon the first-mentioned class of men, who delight in overcoming difficulties, but it has a very bad effect on those playing merely “for pay”–men who keep as far away from a difficult play as they decently can, so that the sapient scribblers in the reporters’ gallery may see plainly that there was no error. To these latter the sneer or praise of a base-ball reporter is life or death, but in the former there is no such feeling, and all they dread after the game is that their employers or future employers may be guided by the press nonsense instead of actual facts. A score sheet is now in preparation which will do away with a great deal of the difficulty hitherto surrounding the understanding of the ball game. |
| Source | New York Sunday Mercury |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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