New stats flood world of baseball

October 27, 2025

key points from this story:

• Baseball stats becoming overly complex
• Traditional stats replaced by analytics
• Terms like WAR, OPS, BABIP now common
• Guerrero Jr. shines with powerful hits
• Blue Jays break postseason hitting record
• Criticism of Raptors preseason lineup

Baseball statistics are getting ridiculous. Every day, it seems, some analytical expert delivers a new statistical category that, ultimately, will probably result in fans learning that a batter produces more hits when his heart is in mid-beat. Way back when, all a baseball fan knew of his favourite players were batting average, runs-batted-in, base hits, runs scored, and walks. If a statistician wanted to get cute, he or she might even break down the regular walks from those issued intentionally.

Today? It’s out of control. A few new baseball-stat categories started showing up 10 or 15 years ago, such as WAR (wins above replacement, a category that determines a player’s value to a team were he playing instead of a replacement player). Offensively, the stat used most often to determine a player’s value is OPS, which is adding up the player’s on-base percentage plus his slugging average. Anyone over 1.000 is an all-star.

Here’s a quiz: What is BABIP? It calculates a hitter’s batting average only on balls in play. In other words, a strikeout or a home run aren’t counted. Only those balls that stay in the field of play. There’s a fairly new stat showing up as ISO, which is described as ‘isolated power’ — measuring a hitter’s rate of extra-base hits per at-bat. Also measured these days are categories for exit velocity, launch angle, hard hit, and barrels.

Barrels? This is where stats start to get really haywire. If a batter hits a ball with an exit velocity of a minimum 98 miles per hour and a launch angle between 26 and 30 degrees, it is deemed that the ball must have hit the ‘barrel’ of the bat. Google says an elite hitter manages to ‘barrel’ a thrown pitch at least 15 per cent of the time. Advanced computer software and radar equipment figures all of this out. When the Blue Jays beat Seattle 13-4 in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, post-game reports said the Jays socked 11 hits at 100 mph or more. Significant? Must have been, because it reportedly broke the record of 10 by the 2018 Red Sox and 2020 Dodgers. Every possible detail of a baseball game is stored in some computer and easily retrievable. Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., reported Sports Illustrated, was responsible for four of those 11 smashes. Only one other player has ever crushed four hits so hard in a post-season game and that happened this year (Detroit Tigers’ Kerry Carpenter in Game 5 of the ALDS).

Wrote SI’s Tom Verducci: “The tally of Guerrero’s night of whistling baseballs throughout T-Mobile Park read like someone fiddling with the FM radio dial looking for a decent tune: 102.8 (single), 104.9 (double), 106.4 (home run), 108.0 (double).” How did it happen? Guerrero apparently has the flattest swing in baseball (1 degree). He adjusted his elevation by a couple of degrees and … boom!, a four-hit night and a 13-4 win.

Are all these stats important? Not really. Just the one that says 13-4.

Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun: “How dumb are the Raptors and new president Bobby Webster? They charge good money for a pre-season home game against the Boston Celtics and don’t dress any of their starters. You do that kind of thing on the road in exhibition games. You don’t treat or cheat your paying customers like that.”

Sports comments

• Vancouver comedy guy Torben Rolfsen: “J.T, Miller was named captain of the New York Rangers and congratulations poured in from around the league. Elias Pettersson sent him some dead flowers.”
• Headline at fark.com: “Danica Patrick thinks Bad Bunny shouldn’t perform at the Super Bowl if he’s not gonna sing in English, a rule which would ban every note of country music ever performed at NASCAR events since its creation.”
• RJ Currie of sportsdeke.com: “Great camera shot of Bengals' QB Joe Flacco staring with mouth agape disbelief after Ja'Marr Chase dropped a perfect pass. I haven't seen that look since my wife caught me vacuuming our living room.”
• Cathal Kelly of the Globe and Mail, on the difference between the Blue Jays recent opponents, the Yankees and Mariners: “Playing the Yankees gets you ready to go to war. The Mariners make you feel like lying down and just getting a few quick winks.”
• Headline at theonion.com: “Aaron Rodgers Suffers Torn Cerebellum After Attempting Telepathic Audible”
• Another one from Kelly, on Mariners’ fans booing Blue Jays’ George Springer: “They hate him because he was a mezzo-soprano in the Houston Astros’ garbage-can choir.”
• Janice Hough of leftcoastssportsbabe.com: “I know Phillies fans boo Santa Claus, but Mariners fans cheering when Blue Jays' George Springer is injured by Bryan Woo hitting him on the knee with a pitch is a new level of trashy.”
• Another one from Torben Rolfsen: “There’s talk of a third ‘Goon’ movie. The producers said they’d need a budget of about $20 million. Connor McDavid said he could do it for $12.5 million.”
• A groaner from RJ Currie: “I hear police in Canada doubled radar patrols from Thanksgiving Monday to Thursday. No surprise — many folks exceeded the feed limit.”

Care to comment? Email brucepenton2003@yahoo.ca