And If the Queen Had Balls, She’d Be King

A pet peeve of mine has reared its ugly head frequently over the past week or so, and it’s time I had my say about it.

I listen to a lot of sports radio, watch a lot of sports on tv, and read magazines, websites, and blogs about the latest sports news all the time. Lately, it seems like every time I try to get my sports fix, I’m confronted with a radio personality, sports anchor, or blogger/writer who instists on throwing a statistic like this at me:

• Well, the Orioles have lost 7 one-run games, so if you factor that in then you are really talking about a team with resolve and the record looks a lot different.
• You look at the Phillies record, and if you subtract the amount of wins they have against the Nationals, their home record is the worst of any team this decade.
• If you take away the games where Zambrano gets past the fourth inning, he’s 5-0 with a 2.12 ERA. (Editor’s note: These are just examples and are not based on real statistics.)

I call these “if statistics.” Are they interesting? I guess, depending on how much useless knowledge you enjoy digesting. In my opinion, there’s plenty of worthwhile and more applicable statistics you could be reading about, as baseball isn’t hurting when it comes to the amount of statistics they keep.

The worst is when someone uses these theoretical statistics as the basis of an argument (See: Bayless, Skip). The fact of the matter is that no matter what the matchup is, a team has to go out and take care of their business. Pardon the cliche, but the games are not played on paper (just ask the Yankees). You don’t do the reverse when it comes to these “if statistics” and say, “Well, if you take away the losses the Phillies have against the first place Red Sox, then they aren’t nearly as bad at home as you think.” And you don’t ignore all the statistics of when Zambrano does get past the 4th inning and say “If you subtract all of his quality starts, he’s pretty much the worst pitcher in the history of baseball.”

If someone is trying to project what will happen in a game and uses past performance to do so, that’s perfectly fine. However, once a game is in the books, there’s no sense in trying to act like some part of it did not happen or that it is not a valid outcome.

So all you media personnel out there who waste your time trying to make a team or player look bad by way of the “if statistic,” do yourself a favor and either lobby that MLB baseball start maintaining these useless stats, or drop it altogether.