The possibilities of wRC+

On a recent episode of his excellent Up and In: The Baseball Prospectus Podcast, Kevin Goldstein interviewed Steve Berthiaume, host of ESPN's Baseball Tonight. During the interview the two talked about the practical application of advanced statistics when it comes to mainstream television broadcasts. Essentially both were in agreement that these advanced baseball statistics made bad television; the amount of explanation needed to convey the meaning and importance of the stats created a boring waste of space on an otherwise crammed program. I'm not going to disagree with their assessment because in my opinion it's true, most advanced statistics are not really suited for a mainstream public. Many casual fans don't care about the statistics enough to invest time into looking up their meaning and applicability. Although these advanced statistics are important for the survivability of major league front offices, they are not necessary when it comes to baseball programing.

Which doesn't mean that I don't like the inclusion of advanced statistics in my baseball watching experience. I've cherished the Cubs broadcasting teams' "Stats Sunday" segments even though the Cubs announcers seem to have a very elementary grasp of the statistics they're describing and approach the segments with an antiquated old-school mentality. Similarly, I liked that the Astros added the Run Expectancy statistic to the scoreboard at Minute Maid park for last nights game. I can only hope that my favorite team, the Tampa Bay Rays, add this feature in the near future.

The problem with advanced statistic, at least for casual fans, has always seemed to be one related to their immediate understandability. Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which measures the value added to the team by an individual player, would seem to be a simple concept but attracts criticism by skeptics who dislike the assumptions and mathematics behind the theoretical "replacement player." Other statistics like Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), it's close relative Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP), and the all inclusive offensive stat Weighted On Base Average (wOBA), require complicated formulas to calculate and have an average baseline that is unfamiliar to casual fans. They also become even more convoluted by year to year fluctuations in what constitutes an average performance. For instance, in 2007 the average wOBA was .331, whereas last year the average wOBA stood at .316. This, I think is where wRC+ comes in to play.

Although the formula to calculate wRC+ is even more complex than those needed to calculate the above statistics, it's far more understandable due to the scale that it uses. wRC+ is essentially a league and park adjusted statistic that uses wOBA as its base stat and then adjusts it to reflect average performance. According to wRC+, an average performance is always going to be 100 and each point up or down is a percentage measure of how much better or worse that particular player was than average given his particular set of circumstances. For instance, Evan Longoria's 169 wRC+ in 2012 means that he is 69% better than a league average hitter so far, while Jose Reyes 69 wRC+ means that he has been 31% below average as a hitter.

By putting probably the best offensive statistic available to us on a relatable scale, wRC+ is able to break the barriers that hold back other advanced stats. You don't need to know how it was calculated to understand that the hitter at the plate who owns a 109 wRC+ has been pretty good so far this year, while the one behind him who holds a 84 wRC+ has not been. It's easy to describe to people and I think it can be genuinely useful to casual baseball fans. It's not unlikely that in the near future wRC+ is added next to a players batting average, on base percentage and other established statistics used during television broadcasts.