Tonight at Borders I read the Introduction and first chapter of a book called "Stat One" by Craig Messmer. The book consists of a ranking of historical players, by position, with some commentary.
Basically the facts and figures associated with the players have been seen in countless other places. The alleged innovation is a new stat that the author claims best represents hitting ability, or value, or both...I'm not sure. Best I can tell, he does not actually use the new stat to rank the players, so the rankings end up being just another guy's opinion.
The new stat is this: (Net Runs + Net Runs + Complete Bases)/Plate Appearances.
Net Runs are: RBI + R - HR
Complete Bases are: Total Bases + BB + HBP + SB - CS
That's it. That's the Holy Grail stat the book considers "A New System For Rating Baseball's All-Time Greatest Players." He calls it the P/E. The "P" is for production and the "E" is for efficiency.
He does almost nothing to justify the stat. He first criticizes production stats because they are dependent on other players. He then criticizes efficiency stats because they do not translate to runs. Fair criticisms, but nothing new.
How does he solve the problem? He creates a new stat that is two-thirds dependent on other players and divides it by plate appearances to produce an efficiency stat that does not translate to actual runs produced. In other words, his stat is comprised of exactly the parts that he says don't work in existing statistical methods. Then he makes it worse by combining them all.
Sabermetricians might ask (among many other things) "Why count net runs twice?" His response? To even things out so that Complete Bases does not dominate the outcome.
P/E seems to have no mathematical or theoretical justification. It's just a guy taking a bunch of traditional stats and combining them in a way that hasn't been published before. There's a good reason a stat this simple hasn't already been published.
Add, subtract, divide. Mix and match. See how many combinations you can come up with. It doesn't have to mean anything. It will sell.
I'm thinking of (Height (inches) + Weight (pounds) + Total Bases)/(Plate Appearances - Strikeouts). Perhaps I'll publish a list of the greatest players of all time.
