We sports fans love our statistics, don’t we? Get a group of us together and the numbers just start flying. That’s because nothing conveys an understanding of, an abiding reverence for, and an unassailable expertise in, our favorite athletic pastimes than quoting lots of stats.
Living in the Digital Age, however, has given us the capability to proclaim with a straight face that our favorite pitcher is undefeated in day games following a national holiday when facing teams with a shortstop named Hernandez, under a dome. But that’s just an extreme example of useless statistics. More insidious are those “official” stats by which an athlete’s value is actually measured, yet really don’t tell us much. Here is my list of the 10 most useless statistics in professional sports:
- Wins (by a Pitcher) – The idea that a pitcher has that much determination in whether his team wins or loses defies reason. Example: you can pitch a near-perfect complete game, give up a solo home run in the 9th inning, and lose because you get no offensive support from your teammates. Or you can stink up the joint, giving up a dozen runs, then get credit for the win simply because your team outscores the other guys. Completely nonsensical.
- Time of Possession – This statistic was intended to be indicative of a football team’s ability to control the ball and, by extension, the outcome of the game. How often, though, do you see teams run ten minutes off the clock marching downfield , then stall inside the 20?
- Holds (by a Middle Reliever) – This stat is supposed to reflect the effectiveness of middle relief or set-up pitchers in a save situation, but its requirements aren’t even uniformly agreed upon. You can pitch pretty ineffectively and – at least according to SportsTicker – not even record an out, but still get credit for a hold if the next pitcher out of the bullpen cleans up your mess without giving up the lead.
- Saves (by a Closer) – For much the same reasons as with the above stat, really. This one is simply awarded to the guy who pitches last for the winning team. The parameters are arbitrary and the stat places more emphasis on the last out than any of the other (potentially more important and harder-earned) previous outs recorded by relievers.
- Shots On Goal – OK, we all get the premise here: you can’t score unless you shoot. That doesn’t mean that the hockey team that takes the most shots, scores the most goals, though.
- Pitch Count – I’m sorry, but on this one I’ve got to go old school on you. I recall as a youth seeing far more complete games by major league pitchers than you’re ever likely to see today. And this, with far superior sports medicine and training available than ever before.
- QB Rating – Impressive at least insofar as its herculean effort to quantify a quarterback’s value. But honestly, does anyone actually understand how this rating is quantified? For crying out loud, a “perfect rating” is 158.3. What does that tell you?
- OTL Points – It used to be that hockey teams were awarded two points for wins, one for ties and (naturally) zero for losses. Then some genius reasoned that, Hey, shouldn’t there be a winner and a losers in an overtime game? Nevertheless, shouldn’t everyone still get a prize? So now we’re giving a point to the losing team in overtime games. I mean, why play a game until someone wins rather than record it as a tie if you’re going to award points to both teams anyway?
- Championships (as an individual stat) – We’ve all heard the knocks on Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, et al; but this one fails, just like individual wins, and should have no bearing on a player’s value.
- MVP – Apart from being chosen via purely subjective criteria, Most Valuable Players tend to come from teams that have the most success. While this may seem logical at first blush, it doesn’t take into consideration the fact that the more successful teams generally aren’t that reliant on just one player. Conversely, a great player can have tremendous value to a team that doesn’t make it to the post-season.
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