The Hidden Game of Baseball: A Revolutionary Approach to Baseball and Its Statistics

453 Pages·2015·76.73 MB·English

by  John Thorn

THE HIDDEN GAME
OF BASEBALL

THE HIDDEN GAME
OF BASEBALL
A Revolutionary Approach to
Baseball and Its Statistics
==~~I'===
John Thorn and Pete Palmer
with David Reuther
Foreword by Keith Law
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
John Thorn, a sports historian and author, has been the offi cial baseball historian for Major
League Baseball since 2011. Pete Palmer is a statistician, a baseball analyst, and a former
consultant to Sports Information Center. Together Thorn and Palmer were the lead editors of Total
Baseball: The Offi cial Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1984, 1985 by John Thorn, Pete Palmer, and David Reuther
All rights reserved. Originally published by Doubleday & Company, Inc. in 1984.
Printed in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-24248-4 (paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-27683-0 (e-book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226276830.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thorn, John, 1947– author.
The hidden game of baseball : a revolutionary approach to baseball and its statistics / John
Thorn and Pete Palmer with David Reuther ; foreword by Keith Law. — Third edition, enlarged.
pages cm
“Originally published by Doubleday & Company, Inc. in 1984.”—Title page verso.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-226-24248-4 (paperback : alkaline paper) — ISBN 0-226-24248-X (paperback :
alkaline paper) 1. Baseball. 2. Baseball—Statistics. 3. Baseball—Miscellanea. I. Palmer, Pete,
author. II. Reuther, David, author. III. Law, Keith, 1973– writer of preface. IV. Title.
GV867.T49 2015
796.357(cid:2)021—dc23
2014037002
The lines from George “Specs” Toporcer’s letter to Red Smith were published in Smith’s column
of November 29, 1981, copyright © 1981 by the New York Times Company. Reprinted by
permission of the New York Times and George “Specs” Toporcer.
The lines from the following articles were published in the Baseball Research Journal, copyright
© 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981 by the Society for American Baseball Research: George T. Wiley,
“Computers in Baseball Research”; Dick Cramer, “Do Clutch Hitters Exist?” and “Average Batting
Skill Through Major League History”; Dallas Adams, “The Probability of the League Leader
Batting .400”; and William D. Rubinstein, “Average Batting Skill Through Major League History:
A Commentary.” Reprinted by permission.
Lines from the following articles were published in the National Pastime, copyright © 1982, 1983
by the Society for American Baseball Research: Pete Palmer, “Runs and Wins”; and Bill Deane,
“The Best Fielders of the Century.” Reprinted by permission.
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
For Sharon, Maureen, and Margie,
baseball widows no more.

Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xix
1. The Music of Sphere and Ash 1
2. What’s Wrong with Traditional Baseball Statistics 9
3. The New Statistics 37
4. The Linear Weights System 62
5. There’s No Place Like Home 82
6. The Theory of Relativity and Other Absolute Truths 102
7. The Good Old Days Are Now 122
8. The Book . . . and the Computer 150
9. Rising to the Occasion 169
10. 44 Percent of Baseball 177
11. Measuring the Unmeasurable 192
12. What Makes Teams Win 201
13. Great Single-Season Performances 221
14. The Ultimate Baseball Statistic 237
15. Rumblings in the Pantheon 249
Key to Symbols Used in the Tables 262
Tables: 1. Lifetime Leaders 265
2. Single-Season Leaders 286
3. Season-by-Season Records, 1876–1984 305
4. Complete Player Data, 1984 404
Appendix: Top 500 Players of All Time (through 2013) 417
Bibliography 429

When I fi rst joined the front offi ce of the Toronto Blue Jays in Jan-
uary 2002, tasked with becoming the team’s fi rst full-time analytics
employee, I decided to learn the fundamentals of the craft. I tracked
down all of the available Bill James Baseball Abstracts. I bought Craig
Wright and Tom House’s The Diamond Appraised. And, for just $2, I
found a used copy of the fi rst edition of the book you now hold in your
hands, The Hidden Game of Baseball, still the iconic book on thinking
critically about the sport.
When those titles were all initially published in the 1980s, the mar-
ket for prose about baseball analysis was thin. Baseball cards still
promulgated myths like, “Good pitchers accumulate lots of wins”
and “Good batters have lots of RBIs.” And while “OBP” and “SLG”
might have appeared as columns on the backs of the cards, good luck
fi nding explanations of their meaning, let alone their relative impor-
tance. In three short decades, the hierarchy of baseball insight has
been fl ipped on its head. Outsiders proved adept at developing new
metrics and concepts in analyzing players, and eventually many of
them moved into front offi ces to join the insiders. The voices in the
media who once held a monopoly on telling you which players were
good have found themselves drowned out by an egalitarian tsunami of
new writers and experts, armed with granular data that didn’t exist a
ix