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NOTE: The following article has appeared on the Red Sox mailing list, and in the Baseball Prospectus newsletter (the latter under the title "From Innovation To Battleground"). It originally appeared on the Red Sox list on January 18th, 1997. During a recent trip back east, I was able to find a noteworthy article written by the great Branch Rickey back in the 1950's that, incredibly enough, reads like a stathead analysis of today.
The article appeared in the August 2, 1954 edition of LIFE magazine on page 78, and is entitled "Goodby To Some Old Baseball Ideas". Selected excerpts of the article most appear below.
I have chosen certain bits based on their relevance to recent statistical debates, while avoiding specific numbers or formulas, or in depth discussion of then-current ballplayers. I do not believe I have materially affected the intent of Rickey's article with what I have chosen to omit.
Oh yeah, and all typos are my fault, not his... :-)
[Begin excerpts]
"Baseball people generally are allergic to new ideas. We are slow to change. For 51 years I have judged baseball by personal observation, by considered opinion, and by accepted statistical methods. But recently I have come upon a device for measuring baseball which has compelled me to put different values on some of my oldest and most cherished theories. It reveals some new and startling truths about the nature of the game. It is a means of gauging with a high degree of accuracy important factors which contribute to winning and losing baseball games. It is the most disconcerting and at the same time the most constructive thing to come into baseball in my memory.
[...]
If the baseball world is to accept this new system of analyzing the game -- and eventually it will -- it must first give up preconceived ideas. I had to. The formula outrages certain standards that experienced baseball people have sworn by all their lives. Runs batted in? A misleading figure. Strikeouts? I always rated them highly as a determining force in pitching. I do now. But new facts convince me that I have overrated their importance in so far as game importance is concerned. Even batting average must be reexamined.
[...]
There are people who pride themselves on their ability to quote what Johnny Whosit hit the year of the big flood. Among fans it is the accepted standard of excellence at bat. Why? Principally because it is easy to figure. Even the professionals lean upon it. But batting average is only a partial means of determining a man's effectiveness on offense. It neglects a major factor, the base on balls, which is reflected only negatively in the batting average (by not counting it as a time at bat). Actually, walks are extremely important.
[...]
Statistics, of course, cannot tell the whole story. They fall short of bridging the gap between human expectancy and fulfillment. They cannot measure such intangibles as intelligence, courage, disposition, effort.
But somehow baseball's intangibles balance out. They reflect themselves in other ways. Over an entire season, or many seasons, individuals and teams build an accumulation of mathematical constants. A man can work with them. He can measure results and establish values. He can then construct a formula which expresses something tangible [...]
[...]
We took the figures to mathematicians at a famous research institute. Did they know baseball? No, but that was not essential.
Their job was to take our figures and our guidance and, by the process of correlation analysis, see what relation one set of figures had to another.
[...]
After six weeks the finding came back. Among them was one which constitutes a framework around which to build a formula. The mathematicans discovered that by subtracting opponents runs from the runs scored per game by a team over a season they got a column of figures which correlated strongly with the final standings.
[...]
This, of course, was just the beginning. By using [the above mentioned relationship] as a guide it was possible to jump off into unexplored territory, testing the footing to learn where we were on solid ground and where we sank in. If we could separate the measurable component parts of offense and relate them to one to another, we would have half of the formula. If we could do the same with defense we would have all of it.
[...]
These were the three basic, measurable ingredients for offense; on base average, extra base power, and clutch"
[Ed. note -- the "clutch" that Rickey refers to here is the percentage of all baserunners who score, not what we nowadays typically call clutch hitting -- i.e. average with RISP or LIPS]
[...]
Unfortunately, there was no way of applying all three of these basic factors to individual as well as teams. Clutch was strictly a team figure. You may say that runs batted in is a partial substitute for the clutch figure, but after giving it a thorough trial we found there was still no place for RBIs in the formula. As a statistic RBIs were not only misleading but dishonest. They depended on managerial control, a hitter's position in the batting order, park dimensions, and the success of his teammates in getting on base ahead of him. That left two measurable factors -- on base average and power -- by which to gauge the overall offensive worth of an individual."
[...]
Fielding averages? Utterly worthless as a yardstick. They are not only misleading but deceiving. Take Zeke Bonura, the old White Sox first baseman, generally regarded as a poor fielder. The fielding averages showed that he led the American League in fielding for three years. Why? Zeke has "good hands"! Anything he reached, he held. Result: an absence of errors. But he was also slow moving and did not cover much territory. Balls that a quicker man may have fielded went for base hits, but the fielding averages do not reflect this.
[...]
Whatever combination of these three qualities a pitcher has, the total is reflected by one standard -- Earned Run Average. [...] There have been attempts to substitute for ERA, but none of them has been convincing or successful.
[...]
[...] More surprisingly still, I found that the ability to strike batters out was not a determinent of good pitching in the real sense.
[...]
It turned out that hits allowed, walks allowed and clutches were of equal importance. But not strikeouts. After examining all the evidence, I was forced to admit, and I did so grudingly, that strikeouts contributed nothing more to the end result than pop fouls caught by the catcher. After all, they were just another means of getting men out.
[...]
We now have an instrument for determining the value of elements which go into the two basic departments of baseball. We can examine with sharper insight the performance of a team or individual over a given period. This knowledge can be used to detect flaws that would not otherwise be noted, to give a proper balance to baseball forces, to rearrange batting orders intelligently, to pinpoint problems in pitching. Although the formula gives a comprehensive diagnosis of teams and players, it has limitations. It cannot predict the performance of a team on any given day or in any brief series because players have good and bad days. Nor can it foresee with accuracy the outcome of a pennant race because players do not always live up to past performances. But the formula is a valuable tool for analysis and just think of what it will do in those hot-stove league arguments.
[...]
Now that I believe in this formula, I intend to use it as sensibly as I can in building my Pittsburhgh club into a pennant contender. What is wrong with the Pirates? The formula opened my eyes to the fact that the Pirates OBA is almost as high as that of the league-leading New York Giants. We get plenty of men on base. But they stay there! Our clutch figure is pathetically low [...] My purpose is to raise a crop of plauers [...] and my scouts must indeed use their eyes to find more power for clutch.
This study has been a series of surprises to me. I repeat: baseball people -- and that includes myself -- are slow to change and accept new ideas. [...] It is the hardest thing in the world to get big league baseball to change anything -- even spikes on a pair of shoes. But they will accept this new interpretation of baseball statistics eventually. They are bound to."
[End of excerpts]
Wow! Forty years ago (and 25 years before Bill James), one of the greatest baseball management minds of all time discovered the same basic conclusions that sabermetrics has been pushing for years. This should be a powerful counterargument to the oft-touted line that "no baseball executive or manager has ever agreed with or used stathead ideas."
RBI's are misleading? Strikeouts overrated? Batting averages not meaningful? Fielding percentage useless? A mathematical relationship between winning percentage and runs scored/runs allowed? Individual offense boiling down to on base average and power? The concept that relevant analysis can be performed by non-baseball insiders? Truly remarkable!
In fact, Rickey commits publically to using the conclusions of this article to rebuild a pathetic Pittsburgh franchise (Rickey took over the Pirates in 1951, and team proceded to lose 90, 112, 104, and 101 games through the 1954 season). How'd he do?
For starters, the very next season, 1955, the Pirates' SLG jumped 11 points, and then another 19 the year after that. In four years, the Pirates' SLG went from .350 to .410, consistent with the goals he outlined above.
The team's ERA improved by over a run in just two seasons (and stayed at that level for several years afterward), as the team allowed 1.5 fewer baserunners per 9 innings, again in keeping with the conclusions of the article.
Overall, the Pirates climbed over the .400 winning percentage mark the very next year (for the first time since 1951), and were over .500 by 1958. The culmination of Rickey's rebuilding occured in 1960 when the Pirates, led by a core of talent built by Branch Rickey, won the World Series on Bill Mazeroski's famous HR over the Yankees.
Rickey had left the Pirates by then, but the foundation he laid, using essentially stathead principles, *did* produce a winner.
P.S. I should mention that I was originally inspired to search for this article by a presentation at the national SABR convention in San Diego that credits Allan Roth, a statistician who actually performed the analysis in Rickey's article, as being the first modern baseball analyst. The presentation was entitled "Allen Roth's True Discovery of Sabermetrics Revealed, with Others' Bells and Whistles" 'by C. David Stephan of Los Angeles. The author preserved and catalogued Roth's files for the A.A.F.
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Copyright 1997-2001 by Keith Woolner. All included authors retain the copyrights to their original works.