I’ve returned to the newspaper industry recently, doing some agate shifts for a wire service that assists the San Francisco Chronicle. To the uninitiated, agate is the small print located in sports sections where scores, stats, and other items of record can be found. It’s not generally a place for sabermetrics.
I went to college for journalism and did agate briefly for the Sacramento Bee six years ago. Writing about baseball online since my time at The Bee has shaped my perspective. In the last two years, I’ve made increasing use of sabermetrics in my pieces, tossing around stats like WAR, ERA+ and SO/BB. I think advanced stats are part of the future of baseball writing and that they offer a more comprehensive, less hyperbolic look at the game. Sabermetrics tells us things, like how one sign Barry Bonds dominated baseball from 2001 to 2004 was that he had an OPS+ of 256, meaning his adjusted offensive production was 156 points better than the league average.
Not everyone thinks in these terms, granted. While some of my favorite baseball writers have embraced sabermetrics, many more writers and readers have not. I assume they have little use for sabermetrics, and it’s of no consequence to them if stats even as simple as on-base or slugging percentage show up in a newspaper. As a writer, I strive to make sabermetrics accessible to the average reader, to show why the numbers matter. That said, I sometimes have to accept reader preferences for what they are and determine where to draw the line and how to engage the widest audience. It’s a balancing act, like a lot of things in life.
Part of me has wanted to slip OPS or WHIP into the Chronicle, though I haven’t wanted to rock the boat. It’s not my place, and I’m not sure if I could feasibly get the stats in even if it was. Agate is driven by what comes off the Associated Press wires, mostly an issue of grabbing items as they become available, inserting them into the next day’s paper, and formatting them for style. If the AP sends out sabermetric stat leaders, I haven’t seen them, which means I’d have to compile them by hand. Coming up against deadline, this can be a tall if not unreasonable order of china business, especially when the priority with agate is getting it done on time, not making mistakes, and helping ensure that every box score that needs to be in the paper gets in.
It’s challenging times for the newspaper industry, with advertising revenue dwindling and editorial staffs all over dealing with cutbacks and shortages. Expecting newspapers to tackle sabermetrics with scant help seems illogical. Resources are stretched thin, and it doesn’t make much sense for a newspaper to allocate manpower or dollars to provide a statistical service a niche of readers care about. Do I think it’s worthwhile for newspapers to start doing more with sabermetrics? Absolutely, though there are lots of things papers could be doing these days that there isn’t budget for. And while I doubt this would ever happen, I’d hate for sabermetrics to be implemented at the expense of another journalistic service.
I know of three papers that use sabermetrics in print. Two of them, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal seemingly boast sufficient writing talent and resources to explore ways to cover advanced stats; they also have broad and educated enough readerships for there to be demand for such material. The other paper I know of that makes regular use of sabermetrics, the Boston Herald does a trade-off with this website wherein the paper mentions us in print in exchange for statistical help. It’s a nifty arrangement, and I’d love to see more newspapers follow suit.
Boy, do I remember setting agate type back in the day. As the results from all the racetracks around the country came in, we had to format them. Talk about tedium. Glad to hear you’re substituting OPS+ and WHIP for the fifth at Aqueduct and the daily double at Arlington.
I wish you well in this pursuit, and if you’re in the Chronicle offices give greetings to John King, the paper’s architecture and development critic, from his good friend in Switzerland.
I think WHIP and OPS are pretty close to mainstream at this point. I know some TV Color guys who use them, and most of them are so afraid of new technology that they still use an abacus to calculate ERA.
WHIP and OPS may be fairly mainstream and easily digestible, but try finding them in the stat leader boards for a newspaper.
I don’t even consider WHIP, OPS and SO/BB to be sabermetrics. They have always been easily derived — for anyone inclined to do so — from readily available traditional stats. WHIP doesn’t even include HB for some reason, and so doesn’t even adequately measure baserunners allowed, which many broadcasters have talked about for decades, without giving it an acronym. OPS is even more simplistic and scarcely reveals anything that isn’t plainly apparent from a glance at traditional stats. SO/BB has also been discussed openly for generations.
Meanwhile, ERA+, WAR and OPS+, which are clearly non-traditional, are still surrounded by enough skepticism as to make them very questionable space-takers in any general publication.
That said, if your efforts might result in the return of any stats to most newspapers, I applaud it loudly.
I have skeptism about WAR, here’s a reason why. The most important constituent of WAR is the Rbat item, a measure of producing runs. I have no idea of how it is calculated. I made a comparison between two members of the 1999 Colorado Rockies, Dante Bichette and Ben Petrick. Bichette accumulated 104 R and 133 RBI compared to Petrick’s 13 R and 12 RBI. Bichette’s Rbat value was 3 runs compared to Petrick’s 2 runs. They both have the same park factors. Given the huge differences in their stats I find it hard to believe that Bichette produced only 1 more run than Petrick. Or am I misinterpreting something?
I’m not sure if WAR could work in newspapers since it relies on a theoretical, phantom player. If it was used, there might need to be some sort of disclaimer for readers.
Richard, I share the same skepticism, although I’ve come to accept it as “the best we’ve got” as far as one unifying stat to measure a player’s production. I think the underlying problem with WAR is it doesn’t give enough credit to players for runs scored and RBI; it considers them a “team stat” since you need help from others to score a run or get an RBI (save for a home run). This is where I think the error is occurring; players should at least get some (or more) partial credit for runs and RBI.
BTW that was a typo, I know it’s skepticism, not skeptism.
Bstar – I’m also skeptical of WAR though for different reasons. My issues are:
1) Multiple formulas and changing formulas. We’ve discussed the multiple formulas before (b-ref vs fangraphs) but I certainly wasn’t expecting Bref to completely overhaul their formula. More accuracy is generally better but when does it end? How do I have any confidence in these particular Bref WAR #’s. Maybe they’re going to overhaul the numbers again next year? Or the year after that?
2) The numbers don’t really mean anything. You can’t add them up to total the team wins. I realize that there were problems/issues with Bill James’ Win Shares but I really think that basic idea is much more fundamentally sound. I want to know how many of a teams wins a particular player is responsible for. WAR can’t do that.
Richard, I think you may be missing something.
Are you also skeptical of OPS+? Because in the season you mention, 1999, Bichette had an OPS+ of 102. Petrick, meanwhile, had an OPS+ of 124. Given the disparity in plate appearances, the Rbat seems about right to me—3 for Bichette and 2 for Petrick.
So, it appears your issue may go back to OPS+.
Bichette: .298/.354/.541=.895 OPS
Petrick: .323/.417/.565=.981 OPS
The crazy thing is that an .895 OPS for Colorado in those days was just about average.
Now why did Bichette get so many runs and RBI? Well, when “average” involves getting on base so damn much, that means there are a lot of players getting on base so damn much. That leads to not only scoring more runs than usual, but driving in more. For everybody. Bichette was one of four to drive in 100 and one of four to score 100 ON THAT TEAM.
Make sense? Hope this helps.
Good luck with your newspaper efforts. I was an editor at my college paper a few years back and even though we weren’t working for pay, we were all acutely aware of the challenges facing the print news industry.
To me, I think sports fans would appreciate the advanced metrics. A big problem with the papers that are left (IMHO) is that the only information they provide is easily accessible elsewhere. News media needs to fill the niche of informative and in-depth data because they simply cannot compete with Internet or TV news in terms of immediacy or breadth of coverage. This applies just as much to sports as local or world news.
I agree with your take (and thanks for wishing me luck, BTW). With online news able to fill the immediate gap, the newspaper content I’m drawn to is magazine-quality stuff that offers deeper analysis on issues I care about than what I can get for free on the web. It’s a tall order for papers, though one that I think is doable.
I agree completely… now if I could just get my local paper to listen!
Graham:
Any effrt that can possibly “advance” the masses away from jargon like “clutch”, “gamer”, “heads-up”, “good in the locker room”, is greatly appreciated. Personally, I thought we made great strides when USA Today went with leaders in categories like OBP and SLG about twenty years ago.
Who knows? Pretty soon, maybe, we can get the color men/analysts to stop jabbering on about “character” and our world will be a better place
I’m with you, though I suspect the process will continue to be gradual. Change can come at a glacial pace in traditional media, where even a tweak in font or paper size can be a big deal for readers.
I wouldn’t count on it soon, as color analysts are just following human nature by falling back on the most common cliches. There’s a lot of time to fill up.
Jon Miller’s pretty good about mentioning OPS and other non-traditional stats. I’ve heard David Cone is as well. To me, that offers at least a little encouragement.
Lawrence, sorta agree with you that superficial “analysts” will sling around the stat “du jour” just to appear hip.
Be careful what you wish for, Paul. If all we had were wins/losses, the aesthetics of on-field play, and statistics, I think MLB would come to rival curling in media impact, and probably with an m:f demographic resembling this blog – something between 11:0 and 12:0. (I do wish that color guys on the tube would stop treating time as emptiness to be filled by any noise that comes out of their heads. The murmer of the crowd can be much more articulate.)
By the way, I’m with Richard on WAR. To me, OPS and WHIP are basic, OPS+/ERA+ are transparent and reliable, and all of these would be great incremental additions to the agate (thanks for the gloss, Graham). WAR is great fun and I consult it religiously, but always without faith.
I believe oWAR is credible enough since, I believe, it’s derived from all the factual data on the offensive side. dWAR? For me, personally, that’s an N F W. I don’t know what the alternative is, but someone will figure it.
Couldn’t agree with you more on the sense of urgency this generation of broadcasters rushes to fill dead air-time with drabble. Tommy McCarthy, Chris Wheeler, and “Sargeant” Gary Matthews are deplorable, and I, as a Philadelphian, have to either subscribe to a baseball channel alternative, watch the cooking channel, or just turn the sound down.
Graham, what the heck is an “agate shift”? So sorry for an ignorant question, My career is clearly not in print media.
Neil, if I’m not mistaken, it’s the really “cool” job of putting in statistical tables, like stock prices and box scores, in a newspaper. Late and lousy, I think it could be characterized as.
Mike L, is there no editorial privilege for the agate shift? You mean it’s a joe job with no value added? 🙂
It’s definitely not glamorous work, though I’m enjoying being back in the newspaper industry and I see this as a way to get my foot in the door with getting some freelance.
Graham is worthy of so much more than the agate shift.
He could drag the extended Bay area, kicking and screaming, into the the 21st century, sabermetrically speaking.
You’d have to ask Graham that. BTW, there used to be a bar across the street from the old NY Times building on
W. 43. If I remember, it was green on the outside. I think some “editorial privilege” may have gone on there.
@Neil — thank you. Just trying to pay my dues. We all gotta start somewhere.
@Mike — Roger Kahn wrote about a press-friendly NYC bar called Bleeks in “Boys of Summer.” Same place?
Graham, put your toe in the door, don’t rock the boat and end up being syndicated across North America in Canadian and U.S. newspapers.
Where I live is the fourth largest N. American media market, after NY, LA, and Chicago.
Go for it.
@27 Graham, about that bar. Don’t think so. Kahn worked for the old Herald Tribune, about ten blocks south. These folk were serious about their drinking.
Thanks, Graham, for a good overview of the day-to-day, practical challenges facing newspapers, stats, etc. (I’m a former newspaper guy too, so i have empathy).
In the implied but unsaid department: We also need to remember that newspapers and agate type are basically for “counting stats” and percentages derived from clear counting stats (wins, losses, games behind, hrs, batting avg, etc). WAR is not a counting stat, just like financial projections for mutual funds are not counting stats. People look to the proverbial agate type and charts for raw data, not speculation or figures derived from ever-changing estimates or value-based-judgments. Yes, there is a valuable and meaningful place for WAR in statistical discussions, but i don’t think it’s in agate type or box scores.
Yeah, i guess you could make the argument that speculation/elusive formulas are already there in the form of BCS college football standings, but how much faith do most people have in those?
Nonetheless, I applaud your efforts to expose “the masses” to more advanced stats on a limited basis. I think/hope your description of the challenges involved in finding a balance between practicality and detailed information will be enlightening to many.
Hmmm,I started as a reporter, but switched over to business side very early on in my career and at one point worked to help a number of newspapers transfer to online services and the Internet. I also worked to promote some of the early online baseball applications and games, so I have a great interest in the intersection of these trends.
Is there an audience for sabermetrics in print newspapers? Newspaper readers are an aging group and I wonder if this group has much interest at all in sabermetrics. I’d guess those that do get the information from the Internet, which can provide much easier and comprehensive access to information. It’s no coincidence than the explosion in advanced baseball analysis started shortly after the PC and exploded with the Web. The former provided the tools for analysis, the latter easy access and ubiquity.
I’m not discouraging here. I’m trying to figure out the balance and if the the newspaper audience will care.