Baseball has always been about numbers.
For decades, fans relied primarily on the statistics that graced box scores and baseball cards to evaluate players. Pitchers were judged on wins, losses, earned run average and strikeouts, while hitters were graded on batting average, home runs and RBIs for hitters.
How times have changed.
There have never been more publicly-available statistics in the history of recorded baseball. Traditional numbers are still informative, but there are now a laundry list of advanced stats at every fan’s disposal to deeper — and more thoroughly — evaluate players. Debates over Willie, Mickey and The Duke would look a lot different with contemporary datasets.
With so many stats available, which one of them matter? Why do they matter? And how do they help us evaluate players?
Here are several stats to help serve as an introduction to the world of sabermetrics:
WAR
San Francisco Giants’ Matt Chapman (26) glances up into the stands after MLB game at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Definition: WAR, otherwise known as Wins Above Replacement, is an attempt to take all of a player’s contributions and summarize them into one number.
How to interpret: WAR is a cumulative stat. Generally speaking, for position players and starters, bench players are 0-1; fringe starters are 1-2; solid starters are 2-3; good players are 3-4; All-Stars are 4-5; superstars are 5-6; and MVPs are 6+. Relief pitchers are considered excellent if they crack 1 WAR and elite if they crack 2 WAR.
Worth noting: There are two popular forms of this stat: bWAR refers to Baseball Reference WAR, while fWAR refers to FanGraphs WAR. These two sites use different methodologies, which can result in different numbers. For example, last season, Matt Chapman was worth 5.5 fWAR but 7.1 bWAR.
Example: Chapman led all Giants in fWAR (5.5) while Logan Webb led all Giants pitchers (4.4).
Why it’s important: WAR is an attempt to answer a simple question: Just how valuable is an individual player? WAR is not an exact science and more of an estimate, but the players who accumulate the most WAR in a season generally align with being the best players.
OPS+
San Francisco Giants’ Tyler Fitzgerald (49) bats against the Oakland Athletics in the first inning at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, July 30, 2024. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Definition: OPS+ is an advanced version of OPS, or on-base plus slugging. OPS+ takes into account a player’s ballpark and the current run environment (i.e. how many or few runs the league is producing), among other factors.
How to interpret: The average OPS+ is 100. If a player has an OPS+ of 105, for example, that player is five percent better than league average. If a player has an OPS+ of 95, that player is five percent worse than league average.
Example: In 2024, Tyler Fitzgerald and the Brewers’ William Contreras both had an OPS of .831, but Fitzgerald (136 OPS+) had a higher OPS+ than Contreras (129 OPS+), due in part to Oracle Park being more pitcher friendly than American Family Field.
Why it’s important: Context is everything. Some hitters have the luxury of hitter-friendly confines, while others endure pitcher-friendly establishments. Additionally, a .900 OPS with 30 homers in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher, is different from a .900 OPS with 30 homers in 2019, the season where a league-record 6,776 home runs were hit. OPS+ provides context.
FIP
San Francisco Giants pitcher Camilo Doval (75) stands in the mound to celebrate with teammates their 5-3 win against the Houston Astros at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, June 12, 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Definition: Fielding Independent Pitching, or FIP, is an attempt to estimate a pitcher’s ability to prevent runs based solely on the three true outcomes: strikeouts, walks and home runs. The results on balls in play are not taken into consideration.
How to interpret: FIP, like ERA, is a rate stat. It can be interpreted like ERA: the lower, the better.
Example: In 2024, Camilo Doval had a 4.88 ERA but a 3.71 FIP. Even with a high walk rate (5.95 BB/9), Doval still managed to have a lower FIP than ERA because of his ability to total strikeouts (11.90 K/9) and reduce home runs (0.76 HR/9).
Why it’s important: ERA tells us what a pitcher did, but FIP tells us what a pitcher could do. FIP isn’t the end all be all when trying to project how someone will perform going forward. That said, FIP gives us a general idea of whether a pitcher overperformed or underperformed based on their strikeout, walk and home run rates.
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Defensive Runs Saved
San Francisco Giants’ Patrick Bailey (14) takes a ball from the umpire against the Toronto Blue Jays in the seventh inning at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, July 11, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
Definition: Defensive Runs Saved, or DRS, attempts to quantify the entirety of a defender’s performance and measure how many runs a defender saves — or costs.
How to interpret: DRS, like WAR, is a cumulative stat. An average defender is worth roughly 0 DRS; an above-average defender is worth 5 DRS; a great defender is worth 10 DRS; and a Gold Glove defender is worth 15+ DRS.
Example: In 2024, Patrick Bailey led all catchers in DRS (20) and Chapman led all third basemen in DRS (17) en route to both winning Gold Gloves.
Why it’s important: DRS is more useful than citing errors or fielding percentage because errors can be subjective. DRS, by contrast, takes into account a multitude of objective data.
Average Exit Velocity
San Francisco Giants Matt Chapman strokes a single against the Chicago White Sox in the second inning at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Karl Mondon/ Bay Area News Group)
Definition: The speed of a baseball immediately after that a batter generates when putting a ball in play.
How to interpret: In the Statcast Era (since 2015), the highest single season exit velocity in a full season is Aaron Judge in 2023 at 97.6 mph while the lowest is Billy Hamilton in 2017 and 2018 at 80.5. The median average exit velocity in any given season is generally around 90 mph.
Example: Chapman led all qualified Giants hitters with an average exit velocity of 93.2 mph, which ranked 12th in the league. Thairo Estrada, by contrast, had the lowest average exit velocity among qualified Giants at 86.2 mph, which ranked 230 out of 250.
Why it’s important: High velocity pitches are harder to hit, and high velocity batted balls are harder to field. There is a direct correlation between higher exit velocities and better results.
A high average velocity is not necessarily a prerequisite to being a good hitter. That said, some of the best hitters in baseball have the ability to hit the ball really hard. The leaders in exit velocity last season were: Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Oneil Cruz, Giancarlo Stanton, Juan Soto, Ketel Marte, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Kyle Schwarber, Fernando Tatis Jr and Austin Riley.
