There are many to choose from
Baseball is a game of numbers. Without the numbers, the game has no meaning, nothing to hold on to, nothing to remember us by. This is of course a falsehood as the players make the games, but the numbers that go with them help tell the story of baseball. It’s one of the things that separates it from other major sports since the iconic ones in baseball are known instantly. Ask a person with relatively good sports knowledge what 61 or 55 or .406 stand for in baseball, you’ll likely get the right answer. Ask how many points are at the top of the leaderboard in basketball, you might not even get the right answer as to who scored them.
These numbers also lead to statistics that lend meaning to the action that is on the field. For years and years, batting average ruled the day when it came to discussing hitting, but as we have become more enlightened, we’ve discovered newer and better ways to determine how good a hitter one player might be.
Which leads us to our question of the day: what is your “go to” baseball statistic? For many, some version of WAR has crept its way to the top of the rankings of player evaluation, but even that supposed all encompassing number can be problematic. Maybe it’s something like OPS+, wOBA, wRC+, something that you lean on for players. Maybe it’s different depending on which position we’re talking about. Let us know down below.