by Achyut Patil

Created on: May 23, 2008

VORP. WARP. ERA+. OPS. Pitch FX. WHAT.

The last one was not a stat. There are so many new statistics coming into the public spotlight these days. But what are they? What do they mean? And where did they come from? It all starts with the early days.

The year is 1951. Bobby Thomson is batting against Ralph Branca. Thomson relies on stolen signs and crushes Branca's second offering into the left-field seats.

Alternative statistics have made their grand debut.

Ever since the old days, baseball players have looked for a way to understand the game and know what to expect - and clearly, checking the pitcher's Earned Run Average was not going to suffice. Thomson used the most crude "new wave" statistic - stealing signs. While the signal robbery may have shot his karma down a few points, it's undeniable that this more intricate knowledge of the game improved his chances of winning the Giants the pennant.

The year is now 1977. The Bill James Baseball Abstract has been published. Statistic upon statistic is interpreted.

The era of sabermetrics has begun.

After viewing the types of stats that we see on television or box-scores today, it is clear that no one of them does a good job of evaluating a player's talent and overall worth to a team - a fact even apparent to baseball purists. Batting Average neglects the effects of walks. On-base percentage doesn't take into account the power of a player's hits. Slugging Percentage ignores how often a player can produce. Home Runs, Runs Batted In, Hits, and Runs, all neglect some aspect of a player's production. And how about fielding? Since when has there been a fielding stat that wasn't flawed?

Keeping this in mind, baseball statisticians decided to gamble and experiment with alternative statistics. They may not be pretty, but they're effective. So what exactly are they?

One of the easiest statistics to stomach is OPS: On-base Plus Slugging. The effectiveness of this statistic is apparent: there are many slugging players who never get on base, and there are many who get on base regularly but do so only by walks and singles. OPS gives us a tool to compare these two types of players and determine which player is more valuable.

OPS+ is a more interesting and relevant statistic. OPS+ is a player's OPS divided by the league average OPS, multiplied by 100. This statistic is one of the better statistics for evaluating a player's offensive worth, because it controls for different league environments in different time-frames. Who was a more dominant

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