Among the questions I’m asked and/or the suggestions offered to me, wanting more information on the advanced statistics upon which I frequently rely here at BN is right up there at the top. I try to make the analyses here as accessible as possible, and with great sites out there like FanGraphs available for the willing to delve deeper into the metrics, I’d resisted creating anything specific on the topic myself. Why reinvent the wheel when other sites already explain these things so well?
But then it occurred to me that not everyone connects with information in the same way, and reading about sabermetrics – together with the gory mathematical details – might not be for everyone. And just because you’re not into reading about all of that stuff, you shouldn’t be excluded from understanding/appreciating/utilizing advanced stats.
So, I’m trying my hand at creating short videos – Saber Shorts – to explain some of the most important advanced stats in a very simple way. The hope is that you can take a couple minutes, get the gist of what a stat is and why it’s useful, and then you might enjoy BN a little bit more when those stats pop up in a discussion or analysis.
Up first? FIP. Remember, this is intended to be simple in form and content. Forgive the middle school-level effects: