The rise of analytics in baseball created a different era of the sport. Some have embraced them, while others like to stick to the old-school ways of the game.
Whichever side of the coin you’re on, they’re a part of the game whether we like it or not. With the advancement comes some unique names and formulas created to measure such things in the game.
We bet you didn’t know some of these even existed:
Favorite Toy
Are you a true baseball geek? Then you might have heard about the Favorite Toy. This was developed by Bill James and is a method that predicts how likely a baseball player is to reach a career milestone.
It takes the age of the player, the number needed to achieve the goal (600 home run club, 3,000 hits, etc.), and the projected number of seasons remaining for the player. The final total is projected and divided.
Yes, it sounds complicated — because it is. It took me a long time to figure it out. Luckily, ESPN has a plug-in formula for you.
BvP
This one isn’t technically a statistic that you’ll find on FanGraphs or Baseball Reference. It’s more of a fantasy baseball stat, and seasoned players absolutely hate it.
It’s batter vs. pitcher. Essentially, how they historically measure up to one another.
Here’s the thing. When it comes to covering these guys — it’s a legitimate thing that some pitchers just have hitters figured out and vice versa.
Clutch
It’s not just a slang term. There’s a formula.
According to FanGraphs:
Clutch measures how well a player performed in high leverage situations. It’s calculated as such:
Complete Game
This isn’t weird or anything. It’s just rare these days that a pitcher pitches a complete game.
Secondary Average
Bill James created yet another sabermetric that is outside of the regular batting average. This measures the number of bases a player gains.
The formula to calculate secondary average is:
