CLEARWATER, Florida –Baseball, which has probably cherished statistics since the first strikeout and hit were recorded, has latched on with a passion to “exit velocity” and “launch angle” this season.
In the case of the San Diego Padres, does it matter if the ball leaves Ian Kinsler’s bat at 116.5 mph and a 12.9-degree launch angle, or Manny Machado’s at 115.3 and 16.4?
As long as it winds up down the line or between the outfielders for an extra-base hit or over the wall for a home run, who cares?
Stats nerds, that’s who.
They can tell you not only that Padres catcher Austin Hedges throws out more guys trying to steal second when there’s a guy batting left-handed, and that he hits better in night games in the Central Time Zone, but also why he can.
Don’t bother checking out those stats. I just made them up.
OK, if you’re someone like Nathan Landau, the Padres’ Baseball Research and Development Analyst, you have to be well versed in BABIP, xFIP, DRC+, sNOT, UZR, wRC+, uPYrs2, and Rdiff, not all of which are real – and unless you are Nathan Landau you may not have known that.
My favorite is Rdiff, which I’m told has something to so with a run differential, and all I know about differentials is that when the one in my car started to go bad I heard whining, which I attributed to my nephew in the back seat when we were going to a Sunday afternoon game, followed by a burning smell, which I also blamed on him and swore I’d never again let him eat three pepperoni pizza Hot Pockets for breakfast.
But I’ll take him to another Sunday game because he has promised not to try and teach me how to calculate an OERA (offensive earned run average, whatever the heck that is) if let him have two pepperoni pizza Hot Pockets for breakfast – and some of my fifth-inning beer.
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Lowitt is a retired sports writer for the Associated Press and later for the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times.