Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

It seems recently that our little blog has received some attention...which is a good thing. Because I just kinda figured that the only one that read my blogs was Kyle, and well my Mom too..I mean she can be very supportive. But we've received some comments, mostly calling us idiots, on the page from some people that we don't actually know. At least i'm pretty sure my Mom didn't post that, not that she doesn't think I'm an idiot, she's just not that internet savvy.

These guys brought up all kinds of useful statistics like the classic "pitches seen per at bat" stat we used to always look for on the back of baseball cards. So I thought I'd do some digging of my own and see what kind of useful stats I could find. Keep in mind while reading this, that I'm not really a stat guy so this is mostly tongue in cheek. I'll leave the "real" stat crunching to the nerdy virgins that live in their mother's basement reading Bill James' baseball prospectus and posting derogatory statements on blogs.

I'm a fantasy guy, so the first stat I personally like to look at is obviously number of fantasy points. So I pulled up the line for all shortstops in the majors to date. The "best" shortstop in baseball according to my fantasy league rules is Rafeal Furcal with 76 fantasy points. Our boy the riot, is the 9th best SS in baseball. The Ninth! Coming in with 55 fantasy points. Some notable guys at short that are "worse" than the riot: Derek Jeter, Michael Young, and Jimmy Rollins. No word as of yet as to who has seen more pitches per at bat though.

But fantasy numbers aren't so scientific, let's look at some other meaningful stat's. I like batting average myself. The Riot has the 4th best average of all starting shortstops, batting a robust .338. Thats about 30 points better than Jeter, and a whopping 200 points better than Ceasar Izturis, our disgruntled readers' choice at short for the Cubs. Troy Tulowitzki is also toiling in Izturis land with a .170 average. I've heard they've come up with a sequel to the Mendoza line called the Izturis line and have set it at .150 even if that is an aggressive target for our buddy Ceasar to hit by the end of the year. The only stat he could get to 150 on is number of errors by a shortstop.

But wait you say, we live in an idiotic Bill James world where OBP is more important than batting average? Riot is 4th in OBP amongst starters with a 407 average, roughly 60 points ahead of Jeter and 80 points better than Jose Reyes. Tulowitzki and Izturis can be found even further back on the stat card.

But what about the power numbers you say? Theriot has more dingers than Jeter, Tulowitzki, and JJ Hardy COMBINED. Granted that's only one dong on the year, but the stat card never lies. RBIs you ask? Ok you got me there, riot sucks at knocking guys in. But he's 5th amongst Shortstops in runs scored and 2nd in stolen bases.

Clearly, it can be seen that if a thorough examination of the stats is done. Ryan Theriot is the best shortstop in the majors.... Now i'm not sure if that's true, but I do know one thing. He's my favorite in the majors, and not because he fills up a stat card or carries my fantasy team. It's because of all the reasons outline in my "anatomy of love for Ryan Theriot" blog. And because, most importantly...he never would have booted that double play ball in game 6.