Volume Five of my Baseball Basics for Brits series has just been published.  This volume concentrates on the numbers and statistics that baseball fans will encounter while watching games and reading about the sport.

When I initially sat down and thought about this series of ‘beginner guides’, the topic of statistics immediately came to mind as one that would be very useful to cover.  I can remember watching my first few games on Five back in 1998 and being completely confused by all of the statistics that were both popping up in the on-screen graphics and being reeled off by the commentators. 

Statistics are an incredibly important part of baseball and, with a bit of guidance, the basics should hold no fears even to people who are not normally drawn to averages and percentages.  The volume begins by looking at the broader areas of team statistics (such as win-loss records) and game statistics (Line scores and Box scores).  It then moves on to cover the four aspects of the game (batting, base running, pitching, and fielding) in turn, highlighting the main statistics relating to each and introducing some of the more obscure. 

Where relevant, it also looks at the rules of the game and explains them in simple terms.  You can’t fully understand Earned Run Average without knowing the rules of when a run is earned or unearned, for example.

The volume also provides a brief introduction to advanced statistical analysis, fantasy baseball stats, historical stats, and the role of the official scorer.

This is certainly not intended to be a comprehensive guide; indeed, it may be impossible to write such a thing.  The difficulty in writing about statistics is deciding what not to include because the variations are endless.  My intention was to focus on the main ones you will encounter as a general baseball fan, while offering a stepping stone from which you can jump into the more complex statistics if you choose to do so.

The volume can be accessed as a pdf directly here or found on the Baseball Basics for Brits page alongside the first four parts of the series.

If you have any comments, please submit them below.  Thanks to Joe for taking the time to read through my final draft and picking out the odd typo that had crept in after many hours of writing and re-writing.

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