9781422285237 - Analytics: Sports Stats & More

Kaplan wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ general manager, Fred Claire, who was impressed with Kaplan’s concept. “Ari came in and said, ‘I don’t think the ERA for relief pitchers makes any sense,’” recalls Claire. “He said he wanted to develop a formula, a statistical formula, to give a better understanding of this situation. He asked to speak with the pitchers and coaching staff. That is how he came up with the research. Our pitchers, especially the starters, were very interested in what would happen when those three hitters were on base.” Kaplan called his new rating Reliever Effectiveness (RE). The stat evaluated for the first time howwell relievers come into a game and got batters out. It was one of the first big breakthroughs in a movement to go beyond the traditional stats that you see on a baseball card. Reliever Effectiveness looked at a question: When a reliever comes in with runners on base, how effective is he at getting the runners out? “If you are a starting pitcher,” Kaplan says, “and you leave the game with the bases loaded, those three base runners will be charged to you if they score. It’s completely dependent upon the relief pitcher. So a starting pitcher’s ERA can vary ten, twenty, or even thirty percent based off what the relief staff does.

10 C areers O ff the F ield • Analytics: Sports Stats and More