Who Owns Baseball? – 2014

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For the second year in a row, I will be doing my own personal metric for the player and pitcher of the year.

It is called “WOB”.

I explained it last year HERE, but let me do my best to explain again, because I made some adjustments for the new season.

So what is WOB?

“Who Owns Baseball?” is my own personal “SullyMetric” for determining which player had the best performance of the day.

At the end of each day, I figure out which American League and which National League pitcher had the most memorable and admirable day. I declare each one of them as the ones who “Owned Baseball” for that day.

And because I am an absolute lunatic, I keep a tally for the whole season and see which player has the highest “WOB”.

It is not a random selection. Statistical analysis plays a big part in determining who adds to their WOB total. But there are other factors.

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Context of the stats are considered. A walk off 2 run homer might carry more weight than a grand slam in a blow out game.

If a reliever enters an extra inning game on the road and keeps prevents the home squad from scoring when every pitch could end the game, that might get more consideration than another pitching performance.

A complete game shutout is always impressive. But if someone blanks a lousy team like Houston, it might not earn a WOB over a pitcher holding a good team like St. Louis or Detroit to a couple of runs over seven innings.

A four hit game against a team’s rotten middle relief might not carry the same weight as a pair of key hits off of Clayton Kershaw.

It isn’t all stats. It isn’t all emotions. It is MY take.

Also as the season moves on, the importance of the game will become a factor. An August or September game between two contenders jockeying for position will have more weight than a pair of also rans trying out September call ups.

Don’t like it? You are more than welcome to do your OWN 162 game stat where you have to read every single box score to keep up.

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Last year the American League hitter with the highest “WOB” was Miguel Cabrera.
The National League hitter was Paul Goldschmidt.
The National League pitcher was Clayton Kershaw.
Pretty solid results.

Oddly the American League pitcher was a three way tie between eventual Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer and Matt Moore and R. A. Dickey. Go figure.

In the post season when I had “WOO” (Who Owned October) and “WOWS” (Who Owns the World Series) I added am element to the metric that I am going to experiment with “WOB” this season.

A player on a losing team can get ½ a “WOB” at my discretion if they played well enough for that recognition. Last year, several players on losing teams and even a few pitchers who got the loss would get a “WOB” despite their team’s failure. But no doubt I was biased towards winning players and pitchers.

This will probably help adjust the totals and get an even more accurate tally.

I will update the tally daily on MLBReports.com and on my podcast, The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.

So let’s get this season started, and let’s see which player and pitcher will most consistently own baseball!