A Primitive Call for a Sabermetric Foray Out of the US

Advanced metrics in baseball have by and large proven useful for the evaluation of players and teams in the American pyramid of professional baseball, generally comprised of Major League Baseball franchises and their minor-league affiliates. This means that at least in the mainstream sabermetrics community, the vast majority of work in advanced analytics has taken place within the borders of the United States. It’s no secret, however, that MLB franchises have vast scouting networks all across the globe – baseball has always been a sport with tons of growth potential, and especially over the last half-century, MLB has imported talent from an incredible geographic range. Teams have long-running infrastructure for scouting, acquiring, and developing young players from other nations – a trend which is almost certainly guaranteed to continue in the future.

Major League teams with their own analytics departments no doubt have a wealth of resources for the evaluation of foreign talent, but for the average sabermetrician who does not have access to baseball academies in Latin and Central America or who can’t regularly view other professional leagues in countries like Korea, Japan or Taiwan, the requisite data are hard to come by. Baseball-Reference has a wealth of information on other leagues such as Nippon Professional Baseball, but only relatively traditional statistics are available, limiting the extent to which those who aren’t involved with professional organizations can observe and interpret those figures.

It’s easy to look up anyone’s batting average with RISP in NPB, but we’ve not yet arrived at a point where we (we being a fan of modest statistical background with access to free data on the internet) have been able to easily produce, say, a run expectancy table, or calculate a replacement level, for a non-MLB league without much more effort than should be necessary. At the very least, we can derive the most basic of metrics – here I’ve compiled a list of last year’s  Nippon Professional Baseball leaders and calculated FIP (min. 48 IP), which thankfully wasn’t at all difficult to do because the statistics necessary to calculate FIP are simple and easily available. It’s not as if it’s impossible to achieve the level of analytical proficiency with NPB that we have with MLB, it just hasn’t happened yet.

There’s logical explanations for this, but given the data available to us, it should only be a matter of time before sabermetrics begin to thrive outside of the United States for amateur statisticians and professional sports organizations alike. I would venture that there’s definitely a growing interest in international baseball from the American fan community; personally, I’m all for a sweeping movement in statistical analysis for international baseball leagues – not just to find the next Masahiro Tanaka or José Abreu, but with a real vested interest in other incarnations of America’s national pastime. We’re a long way from it, but it’s not out of the question to imagine an international baseball dynamic where fans follow the NPB with the the same fervor of an American soccer fan who might support a club in the English Premier League or the German Bundesliga. In that hypothetical scenario, sabermetric analysis is thriving, and most importantly, it’s thriving just as much outside the MLB as in it.





Max is from Seattle, studies history and economics in the United Kingdom, and is a lifelong hostage of the Seattle Mariners Baseball Organization. He may only be liberated from his imprisonment when the Mariners win the World Series, or at least just reach the World Series, or at least just make the playoffs, or at least relinquish their crushing vice-grip on his heart a little bit. He may also be reached on Twitter at @maximilianhc or by email at maxe6@gmail.com.

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gnomez
8 years ago

Unfortunately, I think we’re further from this than you think. NPB stats only recently became available in English, and they’re only traditional stats. KBO stats until recently were only available in box score compilations made by fans, and there are no publicly available CPBL stats. Also, a big part of the reason international soccer is so popular in America is because international soccer is at a much higher level than American soccer (at least that’s my understanding – I’m not a soccer fan), while the opposite is true in baseball.

xcavant
8 years ago

I don’t think American baseball fans are going to be following Japan or South Korea with much fervor, not while MLB has by far the most talent to offer. If international sabermetrics are going to come into use, they’ll be for MLB teams to identify potential superstars to hopefully lure them over. In my opinion, the more exceptional players MLB has, the better. I’d love to see more Japanese talent in MLB, if they have enough quality players that can produce at an MLB level.