MSNBC: Doyle: THE SCIENCE OF BASEBALL STATS

“Quantum fluctuations in space, science, exploration and other cosmic fields”...like the study of physioc on baseball?

Was there ever a team sport better-suited for statistical modeling than baseball? The heart of the game involves one pitcher vs. one batter at a time, allowing for a dizzying array of individual statistics. The regular season, as well as the typical player’s career, will generally last long enough to build up an encyclopedia’s worth of those statistics.

No wonder so many statisticians and physicists love to theorize about the game’s winning factors - and no wonder new statistics are being created on a regular basis.

Batting averages and earned-run averages were just the start: Nowadays, you can track win shares and win probability, defense-independent ERA and range factor. But there’s always a farther frontier for baseball analysis, and a couple of new twists came to light at last month’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As Major League Baseball kicks off the new season this week, here are a few Web links you just might get a kick out of - even if you’re not a fan of the game: