Think you know baseball? No, you don’t
In all 30 major league stadiums, a set of unobtrusive cameras captures every bit of minutiae in all 2,430 regular-season games. They measure the exact speed, spin, and break of every pitch thrown. If a pitcher happened to load a ball with a fresh chestnut of phlegm, somebody surely would crunch the data and unveil the ultimate statistic: Loogies Above Replacement.
Baseball has fast become a world of objectivity and facts, and they’re mother’s milk for the inner nerd in each of us. (Don’t deny it. You can loathe the statistical revolution until your head hurts, and the protractor people are still going to win.)
Because, damn, the information can be cool. This is the second year I’m writing the 25 Things You Didn’t Know About Baseball column, and it could easily be 50 things, or 100, or 1,000. Even if the stuff the übergeeks at FanGraphs unveil on a daily basis doesn’t blow your mind, it makes you think. And for those open-minded enough to embrace this new way of viewing a sport so rooted in tradition, it can be a liberating accompaniment to the joy already derived from dissecting the game.
So come on in. Guarantee you’ll learn a thing or two. Or 25.
The rest of the article HERE.