Quotes & Sayings About Baseball Statistics

Baseball statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot, but not everything. — Toby Harrah

Trying to analyze a situation without enough data was like looking at a photograph of a ball in flight and trying to gauge its direction. Is it going up, down, sideways? Is it about to collide with a baseball bat? Is it moving at all, or is something on the blind side holding it in place? A single frame didn't mean a thing. Patterns were based on data. With enough datapoints, you could predict just about anything. — Marcus Sakey

Baseball is slovenly and excessive in midsummer, with its onrolling daily cascade of line scores and box scores, shifting statistics, highlights and lowlights, dingers and shutouts, streaks and slumps. — Roger Angell

Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom's apple pie. — Harry Reasoner

No one loves the numbers more than I do, but numbers don't measure everything, especially when it comes to evaluating defense. And in the end, I am going to trust Buck Showalter's eyes more than a set of statistics devised by someone who never played the game. — Tim Kurkjian

Individual statistics, plate time and everything tend to come, but the most enjoyment I get out of baseball is actually winning. — Chili Davis

If gross miscalculations of a person's value could occur on a baseball field, before a live audience of thirty thousand, and a television audience of millions more, what did that say about the measurement of performance in other lines of work? If professional baseball players could be over-or undervalued, who couldn't? Bad as they may have been, the statistics used to evaluate baseball players were probably far more accurate than anything used to measure the value of people who didn't play baseball for a living. — Michael Lewis

Baseball is a soap opera that lends itself to probabilistic thinking. [Dick Cramer] — Michael Lewis

Baseball's rich in wonderful statistics, but it's hard to find one more beautiful than Stan Musial's hitting record. He didn't care where he was, he just hit. — George Will

The statistics were not merely inadequate; they lied. And the lies they told led the people who ran major league baseball teams to misjudge their players, and mismanage their games. — Michael Lewis

Awards mean a lot, but they don't say it all. The people in baseball mean more to me than statistics. — Ernie Banks

Baseball has always been filled with negative statistics. — Joe Torre

I can buy baseball cards to view an entire career on the back of a little square of cardboard. But nobody sells major league father cards with key statistics on the back ("Had a great season in 2005: set career highs in unforced expressions of affection and averaged 87 minutes of quality time per day.") — John Ortberg Jr.

Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball, wrote in the New York Times in February 2009, The virus that infected professional baseball in the 1990s, the use of statistics to find new and better ways to value players and strategies, has found its way into every major sport. Not just basketball and football, but also soccer and cricket and rugby and, for all I know, snooker and darts - — Anonymous

Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics. — Bill James

The great Baseball Hall-of-Famer Tom Seaver put it perfectly: In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted; if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end. — Jeff Olson

Statistics are the lifeblood of baseball. In no other sport are so many available and studied so assiduously by participants and fans. Much of the game's appeal, as a conversation piece, lies in the opportunity the fan gets to back up opinions and arguments with convincing figures, and it is entirely possible that more American boys have mastered long division by dealing with batting averages than in any other way. — Leonard Koppett

I spent twenty-two seasons playing professional baseball. Naturally, success in that field is measured by batting averages, number of home runs and RBIs, fielding averages, ERAs and other statistics. Fame, notoriety and the bright lights fade quickly. To me, true success in life would be to develop both physically and spiritually to our fullest and to endure to the end! — Harmon Killebrew

I really don't care much about baseball, or looking at ball games, major or minor. All my interest in baseball is in its statistics. — Ernest Lanigan

To not look at the data is foolish, but to look at the data as having all the answers is even more foolish. It is a collision of new-school statistics and statisticians against old-school managers, coaches, and instructors. Neither side is right, neither is wrong; there is so much to be gained from listening to both sides. — Tim Kurkjian

Statistics are about as interesting as first base coaches. — Jim Bouton

I'm no different than others with cancer. I just happen to play professional baseball. I'm part of those statistics that cancer has touched as well. — Eric Davis

I don't understand. All of a sudden, it's not just BA and Runs Scored, it's OBA. And what is with O-P-S? — Harold Reynolds

I have to absorb the new season like sunlight, letting it turn my winter skin pink and then brown. I must stuff myself with lore and statistics until my fingers ooze balm. — W.P. Kinsella

Let's zoom in on a particular form of synesthesia as an example. For most of us, February and Wednesday do not have any particular place in space. But some synesthetes experience precise locations in relation to their bodies for numbers, time units, and other concepts involving sequence or ordinality. They can point to the spot where the number 32 is, where December floats, or where the year 1966 lies.8 These objectified three-dimensional sequences are commonly called number forms, although more precisely the phenomenon is called spatial sequence synesthesia.9 The most common types of spatial sequence synesthesia involve days of the week, months of the year, the counting integers, or years grouped by decade. In addition to these common types, researchers have encountered spatial configurations for shoe and clothing sizes, baseball statistics, historical eras, salaries, TV channels, temperature, and more. — David Eagleman

As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that threaded their sound through all the fibers of the house, his occupation of the room down the hall was no more uncomfortable than the persistence of Rabbit's own childhood in an annex of his brain; but when the stuff with hormones and girls and cars and beers began, Harry wanted out of fatherhood. — John Updike

If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. — George Carlin

Baseball is not a lot of statistics to me. It's blood and tears. — Laraine Day

Jimmy Carter was - he still - he remains to this day America's most ex of ex-presidents. You just can't believe that we elected this doofus. He was a bright enough guy and sort of well-meaning. But he was about as prepared to be president of the United States as your goofy old uncle, you know, the one that memorises baseball statistics. — P. J. O'Rourke