Today's Thanksgiving, but on the off-chance you're fulfilling your baseball nerdom instead of being a good American and watching football, I wanted to share a couple things with you. Last week in the comments of my article, I proposed a challenge: pick a saber stat and describe the theory behind it in one sentence, no math involved. There were an incredible amount of great answers, so I wanted to share them with everyone. Hopefully they'll get you thinking and inspire you to think of some of your own. Got any more ideas? Share them in the comments!
I find I can get people off the BA train and on the OBP train by simply saying "think of it as the rate at which you don’t make an out". - Mish
wOBA: the average number of runs per PA that a player would create if each of his PA were randomized and surrounded by a league average lineup. - vivaelpujols
I'd try to explain that wOBA is a measure of how well a player reaches and advances on the bases. - Brian.
The best RBI response ever is "would that player have less RBI on the Royals?" (or) "would that player have more RBI on the Yankees?" - Justin Bopp
Less explanation can be more. The most compelling writer is often the one who appears to be utterly confident in everything they say. Excess statistical analysis and explanation in a piece can turn off a sabermetric outsider, but I think it's about more than just confusion surrounding all the acronyms; if a reader is going to change their way of thinking about something, they want to know it's not just another wrong turn. - ramedy
I could go on and on. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, thank you all for contributing so far to our discussions. They've been great and I think there's been some really good ideas and thoughts thrown around in them, and they wouldn't happen without all of you. Enjoy your Thanksgiving!