Baseball Analytics

Well, sabermetricians have ruled that certain statistics (such as RBIs and batting average) aren't exactly useful. A player that has played for a long time can ultimately end up with the same amount of RBIs and the same batting average as a player who bats for half of a year, tears his ACL, and is out for his entire career.

However, the statistic created by sabermetrics, Runs Created, is much more useful to the game. Not all outs are equal, and the way that the batter makes an out affects the outcome of an inning. Say there's a runner on second with one out. If the batter at home plate strikes out, nothing happens. But if the batter hits a slow roller to first base and the runner manages to get to third while the batter is being tagged out, then the batter made a more useful out. This statistic is much more fair in the way that it awards the runs verus RBIs and batting average.

Other statistics created by sabermetrics are EqA, or equivalent average, which measures a player's hitting ability, accounting for factors like league averages, park effects and pitcher quality (EqA = [Hits + Total Bases + 1.5*(Walks + Hit by Pitch) + Stolen Bases][At-bats + Walks + Hit by Pitch + Caught Stealing + (Stolen Bases)/3]), and VORP, which uses an "average" baseball player as a reference point to determine value of a replacement-level player who is below average (this statistic has a very complex equation that actually has several different version!).