Baseball Advanced Stats Explained (Sort Of): Hitting

Advanced stats continue to take over baseball, so let's take a look at the most common advanced stats across baseball to get a better understanding of what they are and how to use them. This is part one where we will talk about advanced offensive stats. Tomorrow in part two we will talk defense and pitching.
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[@kushclarkkent6669]

This is crazy. I ordered the book "Smart Baseball" like 2 hours ago to better understand advanced stats. Your channel name even sounds similar lmao. This is gonna be a good watch.

[@SmartrBaseball]

You're gonna love that book, I got a lot of this from it and he explains it way better then I can lol

[@Eli11sohn]

Who is the book by?

[@kushclarkkent6669]

@@Eli11sohn Yo! It's "Smart Baseball" by Keith Law!

[@frankrizzo9521]

Good video, only critique would be maybe visuals of the stat you’re taking about

[@redveinborneo4673]

I'm just not capable of siting a stat as nebulous as WAR. I get what it is supposed to be showing, but i feel like for as hard as people try to make a single stat that shows a players value the less the stat will show compared to the combination of the more straightforward stats. I will get a much clearer picture of who a player is by looking at their regular stat line than i ever could with something like WAR. At that point, i feel like WAR is kind of useless.

[@ron88303]

Agree; although many don't. WAR for me is just too hypothetical given that there's already a real body of work to examine. f- and b-WAR are just variations of a theme. I'm also not sold on the runs-created metric. I'd go by some combination of OBP and total bases earned, at least to measure offensive performance. Plus I'd prefer to see breakdowns like home vs away and right vs lefthanded opposing pitcher.

[@Acquirebread]

From what I know error doesn't count toward OBP regardless of hitter reaching the base or not. Same goes for fielder's choice or dropped third strike.

[@alexisborden3191]

Correction on Replacement Level, the reference point is a team with no farm system and only signing league minimum contracts for veteran free agents. This is a hypothetical player who is still available to any team on opening day, and is willing to play for a league minimum contract. This type of player generally signs a minor league deal. A team full of these players is expected to win roughly 48 games in a season, and this is then converted down to runs, and awarded to players. The reference points aren't strictly necessary to know, presenting it as a comprehensive single number to represent overall production is good enough. But another fun fact to know is that bWAR and fWAR have standardized Replacement Level. They both purport to measure the same thing. They have different opinions on what's valuable and what isn't, for example fWAR values FIP more for pitchers than bWAR does, which values RA9 in its formula. So they're still different, but they still have the same idea of a win, and the same idea of replacement that they're comparing. WAR is also zero sum over the entire league. They give out 1000 WAR for the whole league for the whole season, they are split different between Fangraphs and BaseballReference. Fangraphs, gives 570 to hitters and 430 to pitchers, Baseball Reference gives 590 to hitters and 410 to pitchers.

[@JoelFoshea-nc9up]

Reaching on an error, dropped 3rd strike, or a fielders choice do not count as getting on base in a players OBP stat

[@lazygamer4746]

Im such a stat nerd i read Bill James books when I was a kid.

[@patricknoonan3610]

You did your home work so, I subscribed. Happy new year.

[@SmartrBaseball]

That's the nicest way anyone's ever called me a nerd lol thanks for joining the channel and Happy New Year!

[@ringmasterblaze]

Excellent video. Great explanations of the various stats.

[@scottmescudi3423]

Not everybody grew up watching baseball, especially for someone born in Europe like me (France), baseball is pretty hard to fully understand. Be humble.

[@MichaelLabriola-f8s]

You can enjoy baseball without getting into statistics and just listening to the announcers on tv broadcasts. I would get a visual rule book to help you enjoy the game more. ❤😊

[@NateDoggTyping]

Random question. 20:24 How do they determine the distance of a homerun that hit something and went back onto the field?

[@BeefPapa]

Computers using trajectory, bat speed and launch angle.

[@shivamahuja11orkut]

i had a question: how do you measure which metric is good enough to evaluate a player? like how would you decide this metric is good enough to evaluate players on vs not? what conditions need to be met for the metric to be good enough?

[@NoNameNo.5]

Can you do a video….using these….to compare teams and make educated guesses on w/l….and post that video

[@BeefPapa]

xWOBA baby!!!!

[@scottmescudi3423]

Video starts at 2.20, you welcome.

[@BSland]

👍

[@MichaelLabriola-f8s]

Why not just indicate what percentage of the league the player is better than in each category. Getting specific for the average fan isnt necessary. I know fans that reject sabermetrics. Its too invilved.

[@GOgg13s]

In short, half of these stats are useless nonsense. Great job explaining it all though.

[@SmartrBaseball]

Welcome to Major League Baseball, the sport where everything's made up and the stats don't matter

[@jarrettwashingtonjw]

Ask MLB front offices are these stats useless nonsense. Drives mega contracts and huge trades

[@GOgg13s]

​@@jarrettwashingtonjw And plenty of times those mega contracts and huge trades have tanked because everyone was too focused on the numbers to actually look at the player. Moneyball doesn't always work.

[@thekingelp3551]

@@GOgg13s please go tell the astros and 2010 giants that

[@nonpolar786]

@@GOgg13s Just because they don’t hit every single time doesn’t mean they are not better than the eye test. Vibes don’t tell you how good of a hitter they are, although it may play a minuscule part in the mental game I guess