Baseball is a game of numbers that’s about more than numbers

The beauty lies beyond the figures.

After turning away from baseball for a while, earlier this week I returned to thinking about the game I love as there are a lot of things happening right now:

• Draft Lottery took place—Congratulations, Washington! St. Louis had a nice jump to No. 5.
• Free agency—With Juan Soto, Blake Snell, and Max Fried, among others, dominos should really start falling
• Trades—Well, maybe just in Cleveland
• Hall of Fame voting
• Royals Hall of Fame voting

That’s a lot!

As I’ve always done, even when not writing for Royals Review, I bounced some ideas off one of my best friends who is also very much into baseball. Honestly, not many of friends enjoy baseball year-round outside of this silly goose, so it’s nice that he’s just a text away when I’m thinking—or trying to think—through something

Recently, he and I disagreed on a number of things, which is fine. But these conversations, such as they are, made me wonder—are we fans getting too stuck in the numbers?

Of course we are. Baseball is a numbers game in ways beyond sports like hockey, football, and basketball. Sure, all of those sports are numbers-heavy, but none are as numbers-heavy as baseball. None of those sports are as analytically driven as baseball. And that creeps its way into fandom.

To a certain extent, that’s fine. The numbers drive the arguments, and arguments about baseball are fun because baseball is fun. A fun argument isn’t really an argument, when you think about it—it’s just a lively conversation regarding whether Player A is better than Player B because A hit more home runs even though B had a higher on-base percentage.

Looking beyond the numbers is as equally as important as the numbers, though. Sure, there are some instances (one of which I’ll write about below) where the numbers are the only thing we have to make a case about our stance, but most of the time, numbers should be supporting evidence, not the whole damn case-in-chief.

Four examples:

Royals Hall of Fame

This is what really got me thinking about getting lost in the numbers. If you don’t know by now, the Royals had an excellent group of nine players up for the franchise’s Hall of Fame. Fans can vote for five. They are:

• Carlos Beltran
• Billy Butler
• Johnny Damon
• Wade Davis
• Jarrod Dyson
• Alex Gordon
• Kelvin Herrera
• Joakim Soria
• Yordano Ventura

That’s tough, right? Arguments can be made for all nine of those dudes. And numbers back up more of them than others.

But so what? When I think of voting a player into a team’s Hall of Fame, I think about witnessing the player either in person or on television or through the radio. A dude whose overall numbers may be lower than I expected doesn’t change how I feel about that player.

Let’s talk about Billy Butler for a second. Butler only made one All-Star team during his time in Kansas City, only captured one award (2012 Silver Slugger), and in his eight years with the Royals, was worth a total of 12.5 Wins Above Replacement according to baseball-reference (bWAR).

Those numbers are not great. They’re fine. Same with his other numbers—career-high in home runs is 29, only drove in 100+ runs once, struck out a lot, had an OPS+ only 16% above league average. Again, fine, not great.

Here’s why I voted for him: he was a reason to watch the team during some dark days.

He broke in during the 2006 season when the Royals went 69-93. He was around for numerous years when the team struggled, when the team was building to something, and he was around for only two of those years—2013 when the Royals missed the playoffs despite a winning record, and 2014, when the team won its first pennant in 29 years.

He represents the re-birth of a winning Royals organization.

That means more than his overall numbers.

Cooperstown

Really, the same argument as above can be applied to baseball’s Hall of Fame writ-large. The one player I specifically think about is Andruw Jones.

Analytics haven’t treated Jones as kindly as some of his peers, but that shouldn’t take away from his Hall of Fame case. It does, though, and that’s a shame.

Were I to have a vote, I’d vote for Jones. I remember watching him on good ole Ted Turner’s SuperStation damn near every night growing up, and during his time with the Braves, he played a brilliant center field and weaponized a dynamic bat.

One of my few World Series memories that don’t involve the Royals or Cardinals is when Jones, a 19-year-old, blasted two home runs in Game 1 against the Yankees.

Yeah, the numbers may not be as good as they seemed, but he still belongs in Cooperstown.

Quiz

Here’s where numbers help.

I never saw Dan Quisenberry pitch. He last pitched in 1990 while I didn’t get into the game all that much until after The Strike. But two years ago, I wrote an article arguing that Quiz deserved to be in the Hall of Fame.

My argument then, which I stand by today, is based entirely on numbers.

That’s the good part of the sabermetric explosion—it allows people today to look at numbers from different eras, and compare those numbers to either players also from that era and/or players from different eras, whether earlier or later.

Contracts

To this point, I’ve been talking about statistical numbers, but, of course, there is another type of number that is hugely important in baseball: money.

When Kevin Brown inked the first $100-million contract, it shook the baseball world. Now, we’re at the point where Juan Soto is going to make at least $765 million over the next 16-ish years.

With baseball not having a salary cap, I must ask: so what?

Now, putting on my analytical-hat, I strongly believe the Soto deal is a) bad for baseball and b) will end up being the worst contract in the history of professional sports.

But hey, I’m not the one paying him. Go for it, Steve.

Why do fans care so much about contracts? For fans of smaller-market teams, like the Royals, sure, it’s understandable. But for fans of big fish teams, like the Northeast teams, like the teams out of L.A., why would they care?

Royals fans care because there’s thing called a “budget” under which the front office works. The owner only allocates a certain amount of money to be spent on big-league players a season at a time. One bad deal can torpedo the budget.

Still...as fans, why do we care so much about that? It’s not like the owner can’t afford it. Any owner can afford to field a team with a bad deal or two on the books. It may not be economical, but again—it’s the owner’s money.

When I go to the ballpark to watch the Royals, and, let’s say Cole Ragans is on the mound, I don’t turn to my wife or son and say, “Wow, he’s pitching great and he’s earning comparative peanuts to Max Fried. This is excellent!”

When Bobby Witt Jr. makes a stellar play at short, I don’t respond, “Well, with the sort of money he’s making, he should’ve zipped that ball to first even faster. Bum!”

The fact that there are some fans who actually think these things, let alone verbalize them, baffles me.

Baseball is about numbers, yes, but it’s about so much more than numbers.

It’s about memories and community and fireworks and hot dogs and bonding and peanuts and cracker jacks and I don’t care if I ever come back and rooting for the home team and high-fiving strangers and shouting until your voice is coarse and hugging your sons as the Royals walk it off and running the bases on Sunday afternoon and living and dying on each pitch during the playoffs and wondering if it’ll be another thirty years until this team reaches the World Series and Oh-My-God-They-Won-It-All! and it’s crazy that my son was born into a world where the Royals are the defending champions and having the game on in the background while you work and tailgating and hanging with buddies and remembering what it was like to be little and go to a game just you and your dad.

It’s a game of numbers that’s about so much more than numbers.

Remember that.