STATISTICAL EXCITEMENT!

I was just looking at this statistical breakdown, and it got me thinking about how uninteresting I find Alex Rodriguez, either because, in spite, or irrespective of his chancha.

A while back FreeDarko hypothesized a system of determining how exciting a player is to watch (rather than how effective). I thought I’d try this for baseball. I mean, how often have I had to argue that Curtis Granderson is more exciting than Manny Ramirez? What about A-Rod? Why have to guess at these things when we have so many statistics at our fingertips? In addition, owners and GMs may want to use this stat, which I’ll call Excitement Factor (ExFactor), when deciding how much money to offer free agents.

I’ll start with just hitting and baserunning, and we can work on fielding, pitching, personality, blogging, and funny body type later.

Worth Offensive Excitement Points: Inside-the-park home runs, triples, homers, doubles, stolen bases, caught stealing, thrown out on the basepaths, bunts, HBPs, lining into double plays, and ejections.

Worth Offensive Boredom Points: Walks (especially intentional), groundouts, flyouts, and high pitches-per-plate-appearance ratio.

So let’s start with this equation to determine Excitement Factor:
{(IPHR*5)+(3B*4)+[(HR+2B+SB+CS+TO)*3]+[(B+HBP+LIDP+EJ)*2]}-{[(IBB*3)+(BB*2)+(GO+FO)]*(10P/PA)}

The exciting plays are worth even more when they take place at the ends of close games, with runners in scoring position, and/or with a full count. Let’s say each stat is further multiplied as follows:
Late & Close: *2
RISP: *1.5
FC: *1.1

After those adjustments, we divide by Games Played to determine a player’s Offensive Excitement Rate. This is how fun a player is to watch. The three players I bothered to calculate this for came out as follows (2007 stats, admittedly a down year for Manny):
Grandy ...... 1.49
A-Rod ........ 1.08
Manny ....... 0.33

Musa’s Challenge: Name a player whose OER is higher than Grandy’s.

Tie-Breaker: Name a player whose OER is lower than Sean Casey’s.