re: Nola

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You brought it up specificallly to point out that Nola's OBP was incorrect on LSUSports.net and that his OBP should actually be lower. You brought this up. As you continue to argue with how OBP should be calculated, I think it's pertanent to point out that you didn't know how it was calculated in the first place

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And already apologized for the error last night. I know you take sac flies out, but I took sac hits out as well - and admitted that was wrong. We've been talking about "should OBP inlcude sacrifices" ever since. We aren't talking about his OBP anymore, we're talking about how OBP should be calculated, hence the jumping off point.. "this is esoteric, but...".

And "the post you cited" is a pretty clear reference to the post you were quoting, in which the only math was Nola's sac rate.

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So, you want to include errors and fielders' choice in the numerator too? Hell, by that logic, you probabl want to include sac bunts as an AB for the purpose of calculating batting average as well? Anything else you want to change?

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Actually, the caluclation for batting average is pretty absurd when you stop to think about it. It's one of the reason BA is not that valuable a statistic and fluctuates so wildly from season to season for each player. If it was a new stat invented this year, it would gain almost no traction. Tradition will keep it alive.

I wouldn't include fielder's choices in the numerator because the net baserunners remain unchanged. A batter reaches base, but at the expense of the baserunner. It's an out with no additional baserunner. It doesn't matter which one of them is on base.

An error... why not? He got on. Recent baseball research shows that a hitter has very little control over whether a batted ball that isn't a home run becomes a hit on or out. In the end, it's up to the defense. What's really the difference between a fielder making an error or being out of position (which results in a hit)? I have no real problem with adding reached by error to the numerator, but I'm not sure it would be feasible in the sense that I don't know if that was always tracked. And I like being able to recalculate old numbers. Sacs were always tracked, so its no problem to recalculate a guy from 1870's new numbers.

Baseball stats weren't invented by God. We can change them if we want.

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The fact is that a sac bunt is not an attempt to reach base. Everyone but you seems to know that. And if you included it in the OBP, then the OBP would be less reflective of a player's ability to get on base.

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Everyone? Yeesh. there's only like four people in this thread now. And I'm still yet to see a guy run straight to the dugout after bunting because he's not tyring to reach base.

And there's still two basic problems:
1) Getting out is bad. And with a sac, you get out.
2) It's a SACRIFICE. If someone is sacrificing, it should negatively impact their numbers or else it isn't much of a sacrifice.