THE NEW NUMBERS GAME
Baseball's stats revolution means broadcasters have to adjust as well
When fans watch an Astros game on Root Sports Southwest, they’ll learn about Jose Altuve’s batting average, Dallas Keuchel’s won-loss record, Marwin Gonzalez’s home run total and Ken Giles’ earned-run average.
But they’ll also hear, increasingly, about Carlos Correa’s launch angle and escape velocity, Lance McCullers’ FIP and BABIP, Mike Fiers’ WHIP, Carlos Beltran’s WRC+ and Jake Marisnick’s defensive runs saved.
FIP, BABIP, WHIP, DRS and WRC+, not to mention their more widely accepted cousins OPS and WAR, aren’t exactly the things that kids grew up memorizing on the back of baseball cards.
But in the era of Big Data, when young fans learn about the game via computers
rather than cardboard, they tell a lot about the game, players, teams and about how announcers are trying to describe the game to their audience.
All of the aforementioned data points are pitching, fielding and batting statistics, concocted in most cases by members of the Society for American Baseball Research and adopted by Major League Baseball teams and data-obsessed fans to gauge player performance in a different light.
“There is an extraordinary amount of interest in new information about the game,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said during a recent stop in Houston. “We think it’s important for our broadcast partners both locally and nationally to take advantage of those new information sources as an opportunity to deepen fan engagement.”
For a lot of fans, FIP (fielding independent pitching), BABIP (batting average on balls in play) and WRC+ (weighted runs created, which takes ballpark configurations into account) provide a deeper dive into how players are performing and, for teams like the Astros that focus on big data, how ballclubs are constructed.
“Broadcasters tend to go with the culture of the club, and for the Houston Astros, you’d be remiss if you weren’t talking the language that they speak,” MLB Network studio host Brian Kenny said. “They (the Astros) are a data-driven operation.”
Taking it too far
For others, including even data-hungry fans such as former Astros announcer Greg Lucas, who has written several stat-heavy books about the game, the new numbers are distractions.
“I’m fine with stats that show how you should play defense and how you should pitch guys, because that’s what helps you win games,” Lucas said. “What I don’t like are stats that are just new ways of ranking players, like WAR (wins above replacement) and WRC+. They don’t help win games.”
The new emphasis on advanced metrics on Astros broadcasts is driven in part by Carl Paterson, Root Sports Southwest’s coordinating producer for baseball, and by announcers Todd Kalas and Geoff Blum.
Kalas, who is in his first year in the Astros’ TV booth, worked for many years in Tampa Bay, where the Rays were among the first teams to encourage announcers to use new data points in telecasts. Blum, who has called Astros games for five years, became a disciple of baseball’s new math in the wake of his 14year major league career.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” Kalas said. “The advanced analytics are more of an appetizer. The main course is still the stats you know. We’re not going to replace ERA with FIP or batting average with WRC+. We’re just offering a different way to look at things.”
On-screen graphics on Root Southwest prior to each Astros game include BABIP and FIP along with ERA and win-loss records plus pitch percentages — the number of times a pitcher throws a fastball or curve — walks and hits per inning (WHIP) and the percentage of time a batter makes solid contact with the baseball.
The need for speed
Given the nature of life in Houston, where speed is frequently thwarted by clogged freeways, it’s no big surprise the most popular statistics brought to the forefront by Patterson, Kalas and Blum are exit velocity — the speed at which a ball is traveling as it leaves the player’s bat — and the batted ball’s launch angle.
In the former category, Yankees rookie sensation Aaron Judge is the league leader, with 12 hits this year in excess of 114 mph. George Springer is the Astros’ season leader with a top velocity of 114.6 on a ball that, ironically, ended up being a well-struck out.
“I like all the stats. The Astros are using them to determine the style of team they want to put together, and it’s working.” RANDY BEARDEN, ASTROS FAN
“I like it when Blummer and Kalas talk about exit velocity,” Astros fan Randy Bearden of Katy said during a visit to Minute Maid Park. “I saw Springer rip a bullet at 113, and he got a single. You see guys hit 98, 99, and it goes out of the park. To me, Springer hit the better ball.”
Generations of fans who preceded Bearden focused on a player’s batting average. Bearden and his peers prefer on-base percentage, which includes walks and reaching base on fielding errors, and OPS — on-base plus slugging, which gives extra weight to extra-base hits.
“I like all the stats,” he said. “The Astros are using them to determine the style of team they want to put together, and it’s working.”
A fine line
Kalas believes the Astros are near what he described as the “cutting edge” for use of advanced analytics on local telecasts.
Still there are limits. One crew member said using advanced metrics can resemble explaining calculus to viewers who can’t handle long division.
“There is a fine line that you walk,” Kalas said. “People understand mainstream statistics, and OPS has reached the point where most people know what it is. I will describe it as on-base plus slugging maybe once every 10 broadcasts. For FIP and BABIP, you have to explain more often.”
Kalas said he was pleased with the degree to which Blum, whose career lasted from 1999 through 2012, has accepted the new order of things.
“When I realized I might have a career (on TV), I started paying more attention to the numbers,” Blum said. “I like OPS because it gives more weight to a home run than a base hit. Batting average is overrated.
“I like FIP because of all the shifts that teams use. You’ll see a base hit against a shift that would otherwise be a routine ground ball. Swings and misses get FIP numbers up, and it’s good when you have guys who can strike people out.”
Sean Lahman, a database journalist who writes for USA Today and for his website SeanLahman.com, was not familiar with the work of Kalas and Blum but praises a few telecasters as being ahead of the curve by incorporating advanced stats into a broadcast.
Among them: Len Kasper and former Astros pitcher and broadcaster Jim Deshaies on Cubs telecasts, Tigers announcer Dan Dickerson, Chris Welsh of the Reds, former Yankees pitcher David Cone on YES Network and the Mets crew on SNY.
Kenny, who hosts the numbers-oriented “Inside Pitch” on MLB Network and has a new book, “Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution,” said it’s a mistake to bring up numbers for the sake of citing numbers.
“You bring then up if they are applicable to the situation at hand in the game,” he said. “It’s about answering questions. How well does this batter hit against this pitcher, how well against a lefty or righty, what has he done lately? You ask questions, and the tools give you an answer.”
Challenge for radio
Radio announcers, meanwhile, face a different challenge. With no graphics in place to help educate listeners, radio announcers generally rely on situational numbers to prove a point, said Astros announcer Robert Ford.
“When the Astros played the Yankees, their lefthander, Jordan Montgomery, had thrown one changeup to a lefthander all season,” Ford said. “The second one he threw, Brian McCann hit it for a three-run home run. I like those numbers.”
Ford likes win expectancy, too. Monday, for example, the Astros had a 0.8 percent chance to beat the Twins when they entered the top of the eighth inning down 8-2. They scored 11 runs in the frame en route to a 16-8 win.
Another number, by the way, from Monday, that likely falls into Kenny’s adage about numbers for the sake of numbers: George Springer’s home run off the batter’s eye in Minneapolis’ Target Field had an exit velocity of 110.5 mph with a launch angle of 21 degrees. Chances of such a ball being a home run: 93 percent.
There are times, though, when such numbers can come into play. Some metrics take into account ballpark configurations, such as the short leftfield distance to the Crawford Boxes at Minute Maid Park, to judge performance. MLB. com includes a page listing ballpark factors.
Kalas likes situational numbers, too, like swing-andmiss percentages for pitchers and percentage of swinging strikes. All numbers, though, have limitations, he said.
“(Astros pitcher) Brad Peacock, for example, has his highest swinging strike percentage and lowest line drive percentage,” he said. “That tells you part of the story. The rest of it is taking into account that he is pitching without injury. You have to incorporate research with talking to players and coaches.”
Even data hounds acknowledge that too many numbers can strangle a broadcast. Lahman notes that MLB captures seven terabytes of data per game, and all broadcasters complain about leaving out their best material because they can’t find a proper spot to use an anecdote or numbers.
The last thing any play by play announcer wants to do, after all, is to give any viewer a reason to change the channel.
“We try to balance it out,” Kalas said. “We know it’s not going to capture 100 percent of fans, so we try to stick to basics.”