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Advanced metrics


Advanced Metrics is the term for the empirical analysis of sports, particularly statistics that measure in-game productivity and efficiency. Advanced metrics were first employed in baseball by Bill James, a pioneer in the field who is considered the father and public face of the practice.

The basic principles of advanced metrics were outlined in The Sabermetric Manifesto by David Grabiner (1994). In the piece, Grabiner explains that Bill James defined sabermetrics, the first advanced metric, as the search for objective knowledge about sports.

To glean objective knowledge, advanced metrics practitioners gather and synthesize thousands of situational game data points from a wide variety of sources beyond high level box score information. A large volume of situational data is then distilled into sophisticated statistics that helps sports enthusiasts better understand, compare, and appreciate the on-field performances by athletes. Advanced metrics provide more objective answers to questions such as "which player on the Red Sox contributed the most to the team's offense?" or "who is the best wing player in the NBA?" or "how many touchdowns is Dez Bryant likely to score for the Cowboys?". By removing the subjective observations of sports media members and the emotional opinions of fans, advanced metrics offer a more clinical, rational prism from which to enjoy sporting events and consume sports media coverage.

Advanced metrics were first posited in the mid-1900s, and Earnshaw Cook was one its earliest practitioners. Cook's research for his 1964 work, Percentage Baseball was the first publication siting advanced metrics to garner national media attention. Despite the competitive advantage offered by advanced metrics, the practice was unanimously dismissed by major sports organizations for most of the twentieth century.

In the late 1970s, Bill James helped bring SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research, and the empirical analysis of athletic performance, to national prominence. The analytical perspective on sports championed by James and SABR developed a wider following after Sports Illustrated featured James in the article He Does It By The Numbers by Daniel Okrent (1981).


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