Math Celebrity June 2018

positivity June 2018

In 1979, Barry Codell introduced an unconventional idea to baseball. He suggested that a player’s stats should be based on their base out percentages (BOP) rather than the traditional tally of hits at base. Up until that point, people had always looked at batting average statistics to determine a player’s worth, and most often, their salary. Barry recognized that batting average missed a lot of the picture. It didn’t account for steals, walks, or sacrifices, and it measured a home run and a single to be of equal value. Recognizing these flaws, BOP revolved around one simple concept: who gets on base and who moves more bases combined with who gets fewer outs. If you move more bases, you’re a valuable player to your team based on BOP. If you’ve ever seen “Moneyball,” this is the concept that Brad Pitt’s character implements to bring about the unprecedented success of the Oakland A’s. Instead of drafting players who have the highest batting averages, they choose relatively unknown players who are consistently showing high BOPs. The strategy worked, and the A’s saw success like they’d never seen before. Like most great minds, Barry has a counterintuitive way of thinking that brings out ideas no one else has been able to make work. Since he was a kid — even then a baseball-stats fanatic — he’s asked questions that others don’t think to ask and has come up with answers that others say won’t work. When Barry gets a hold of these ideas, though, they change the system. That’s what BOP did for baseball. In 2008, as a baseball player, fan, and stats-obsessed math nerd, I met Barry through a friend. Our shared passion and interest in statistics were apparent right off the bat. We and a Revolut i onary I dea

got to the topic of Barry’s innovation and discussed how incredible it would be to bring BOP to life so people could see the concepts at work. “What’s possible?” Barry asked. He entrusted me with transferring all of his “codes” — the thousands of stats he’d collected over the years — into an online >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4

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