I Need Some Help RE: Advanced Statistics

[Skippyoz]

I've been doing Fantasy Baseball since the good old "paper and pencil" days. I can surely talk about the benchmark statistics.

For instance, take Home Runs. I know that 0 is bad, 10 is OK, 20 is good, 30 is great, 40 is spectacular. I know that, generally, a young player's doubles will lead to homers in a few years. I know that age 27 to 32 or so are the peak HR years for most hitters. I know that I should look for HR from my corner IF and some of my OF. When a MI or C provides HR, thats even better.

What I seem to have missed (seemingly in the past year or so) is the complete usage of some of these "saber stats" that are all the rage. I don't even know if that's the term. I understand that people like Bill James have been using/developing them for years. But, it seems like they have really been all over mainstream fantasy discussions and research. I'm talking about BABIP, HR/F%, FIP, Line Drive %, etc.

Does anyone have a handy guide? Something that would go over the important stats to look at, what they mean, what is league average, what is normal for certain types of players (like do speedy players have higher BABIP?), etc.

Currently, I can look at a veteran and take a look at some of these stats to tell the picture. For instance, Joe Mauer's huge numbers last year could be explained by abnormal (at least by his career) levels of BABIP, HR/F%, and AB/HR. But, I have no idea if these numbers are normal, if this is where he should be at this point in his career, are these even the best indicators to look at, etc.

Some sort of "quick summary sheet" would be extremely helpful.

SKIP

[Dugout Diamonds]

I'd like to know some experts thoughts on this also.

[steveb101]

I was interested in the same thing - I'm a huge fan of Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats, and have been trying to locate some good materials regarding these numbers, what averages to expect, when someone has a breakout season vs. an anomalous season, expectations of regression to the mean, etc.

The only problem is this seems fairly well-hidden, and ultimately may be lurking in the bowels of some pay site. I have yet to peruse all the free sites to find this, but have uncovered a reasonable synopsis at www.fantasypros911.com. They have a reasonably decent free draft guide (it's like 148 Megabytes and takes forever to download - lots of pictures, I guess). On pages 22-23, Mike Podhorzer has summarized some of these statistics, what the league averages are, and expectations for a select few players. It's not exactly what you were asking for, but it IS a start.

Hopefully this helps - by the way, I am in no way affiliated with FantasyPros911, and have no history of using them, so I can't speak to their expertise - so use at your own risk

Best,

Steve

[dladue]

Skip,

Fantistics has free charts that show what you are looking for with yearly reference points. They call BABIP -> BHIP

http://www.insiderbaseball.com/charts9/index.php?page=info2&id=7062

[garf112]

http://www.fangraphs.com shows you all of the most important stats and if you go to any player and click on "show averages" under the category, it will show you what is average for that stat by year.

[flloyd]

This site just started up but it seems to be a pretty good resource to learn the basics of advanced sabermetric stats.