Volume Five of my Baseball Basics for Brits series has just been published.  This volume concentrates on the numbers and statistics that baseball fans will encounter while watching games and reading about the sport.

When I initially sat down and thought about this series of ‘beginner guides’, the topic of statistics immediately came to mind as one that would be very useful to cover.  I can remember watching my first few games on Five back in 1998 and being completely confused by all of the statistics that were both popping up in the on-screen graphics and being reeled off by the commentators. 

Statistics are an incredibly important part of baseball and, with a bit of guidance, the basics should hold no fears even to people who are not normally drawn to averages and percentages.  The volume begins by looking at the broader areas of team statistics (such as win-loss records) and game statistics (Line scores and Box scores).  It then moves on to cover the four aspects of the game (batting, base running, pitching, and fielding) in turn, highlighting the main statistics relating to each and introducing some of the more obscure. 

Where relevant, it also looks at the rules of the game and explains them in simple terms.  You can’t fully understand Earned Run Average without knowing the rules of when a run is earned or unearned, for example.

The volume also provides a brief introduction to advanced statistical analysis, fantasy baseball stats, historical stats, and the role of the official scorer.

This is certainly not intended to be a comprehensive guide; indeed, it may be impossible to write such a thing.  The difficulty in writing about statistics is deciding what not to include because the variations are endless.  My intention was to focus on the main ones you will encounter as a general baseball fan, while offering a stepping stone from which you can jump into the more complex statistics if you choose to do so.

The volume can be accessed as a pdf directly here or found on the Baseball Basics for Brits page alongside the first four parts of the series.

If you have any comments, please submit them below.  Thanks to Joe for taking the time to read through my final draft and picking out the odd typo that had crept in after many hours of writing and re-writing.

The latest installment in my Baseball Basics for Brits series is now available.   Voume 4 is titled: ‘The Front Office’: Owners, General Managers and Field Managers. 

Coming from a football background, there were several parts of a typical MLB organization’s structure that mystified me when I first started following the sport.  The most obvious difference to your normal football structure is that the process of acquiring and trading players is taken out of the manager’s hands and is instead the responsibility of the General Manager.  Of course, some football teams have started following this pattern by appointing a Director of Football: a position that often ends up causing friction in the corridors of power with the football club.

Volume 4 provides an overview of the Front Office before going into detail about the responsiblities of the Owners, the General Managers, the ‘Field’ Manager and his coaching staff.  You can find it as a printable pdf, alongside the other three volumes, via the separate BBfB page. 

The third volume of my Baseball Basics for Brits series is now available.  Its snappy title is “Volume 3. Players: Development, Contracts and Transactions”!

The idea behind this volume was to provide an overview of an MLB player’s career, not least because many of the aspects covered are quite different to the experiences of professionals in British sports. 

If you are a budding football star, you will be spotted by a club at a young age and will learn your trade in the youth ranks of that team.  In baseball, of course, a team’s active involvement with a player generally only starts when they sign them via the annual Amateur draft.

Once you become part of an MLB organization, your development path takes you through the minor leagues before the lucky (and extremely talented) few make it on to the Big League roster.  While Premiership teams may send their youngsters out on loan to the lower leagues, there is no formal structure that matches the MLB set-up over here.

Finally, in Britain, players are normally bought and sold in contrast to the baseball trade market.  It’s difficult for British newcomers to adjust to the standard practice of teams trading players to the other side of America without their consent, but there is an underlying logic to the system and this is explained in the volume.

You can find this latest volume, alongside the first two, by clicking the Baseball Basics for Brits heading in the navigation bar and scrolling to the bottom of the page.