ALTERNATOR BOOKS BASEBALL SUPER STATS JEFF SAVAGE Lerner Publications Minneapolis
INTRODUCTION NUMBERS GAME 33333 aseball is a game of numbers The sport's stories have always been told through statistics stats Fans use stats to compare modern players with one another and with players from past generations It is how the greatest and not so great achievements of Major League Baseball MLB are measured Teams use statistics to study the game and their own performances What are baseball's most important and fascinating statistics First you should know that the sport has had three distinct eras Conditions A during each era affected baseball stats and the way fans view them DEAD BALL ERA During MLB's Dead Ball Era 1900 1919 home runs were rare For instance the Detroit Tigers Ty Cobb won the batting Triple Crown in 1909 He led the American League that year with nine home runs All nine were inside the park home runs Compare that to another Tigers Triple Crown winner In 2012 Miguel Cabrera hit 44 home runs none of the big slugger's blasts were inside the park homers TY COBв
LIVE BALL ERA The Live Ball Era started in 1920 when baseballs began to be wound with a new yarn that helped them fly farther after being struck Banning spitballs and other changes to the rules also led to more scoring Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees did his part too In 1920 he hit more home runs 54 than any team in the American League AL STEROID ERA The Steroid Era was a period when many MLB players used performance enhancing drugs PEDS increasing power stats such as home runs It's hard to say when the Steroid Era began but its peak may have been 1998 That season St Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire's 70 homers were two more than the entire Cardinals team hit in 1991 The league had banned PEDs in 1991 but didn't test all players for them until 2003 անգ MARK MCGWIRE
