We go through a rough outline of the history of sabermetrics. And we also want to ask for your help. We’re sure we missed things. If you know of so key point in the history of sabermetrics, please help us add to our list.
See Updates below the timeline
- 1910 Hugh Fullerton The Inside Game – The Science of Baseball shows defense/range as a function of time/distance – https://keithlyons.me/blog/2011/12/23/hugh-fullertons-inside-game/178/
- 1928 FC Lane publishes “Batting” – http://sabr.org/latest/sabr-digital-library-batting-fc-lane – Editor: Baseball Magazine 1912 – 1937, Little Red Book of Major League Baseball 1937 – 1948
- 1946 Lou Boudreau shifts his infield on Ted Williams
- 1947 Branch Rickey hires Alan Roth – http://www.captainsblog.info/2011/03/28/was-branch-rickey-the-father-of-sabermetrics/6097/
- 1963 George Lindsey “An Investigation of Strategies in Baseball,” Operations Research, 11, 447-50 – http://www-math.bgsu.edu/~albert/papers/saber.html
- 1977 Bill James Abstract published for the first time (CORRECTED originally listed as 1985)
- 1984 Hidden Game of Baseball (Pete Palmer and John Thorn)
- 1988 MLB started pitch-by-pitch logging
- 1999 Voros McCracken & DIPS
- 2000 Tango creates FIP
- 2001 Keith Woolner and replacement level, VORP
- 2002 MGL creates UZR
- 2003 PECOTA
- 2004 Jay Jaffe calls his thing JAWS
- 2006 DRS (The Fielding Bible by John Dewan)
- 2006 The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball (Tango/Lichtman/Dolphin) wOBA,
- 2006 PITCHf/x
- BOOM 2007-2009
- strike zone research (John Walsh)
- framing (Dan Turkenkopf)
- pitch blocking (Turkenkopf)
- 2008 Tango introduces positional adjustments and WAR
- 2009 HITf/x
- 2009 Josh Kalk starts using pfx data for injury detection
- 2009 Victor Wang on draft pick valuation
- 2009 Marchi on full slate catcher defense (including game calling)
- 2010 WAR at Baseball Reference
- 2012 Shifting revival – https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ahead-of-their-time-why-baseball-revived-a-60-year-old-strategy-designed-to-stop-ted-williams/
- 2013 Max Marchi gives pre-pitchfx framing (and minors)
- 2014 BP goes deep into catching data publishing
- 2015 DRA
- 2015 Statcast – beginning to see breakthroughs in outfield range, baserunning, catcher throwing
- 2015 non-traditional shifting
- 2015-7 Hit the ball up
- Next frontiers:
- game calling
- command
- deception (tunnels, csaa)
Updates! These are items have been submitted but not yet added
- Creation of Project Scoresheet
- Launch of Retrosheet.org
- The box score is invented.
- Quantifying pitcher pace
- SABR’s Statistical Analysis committee is formed by Bill James, Pete Palmer, and Dick Cramer. They begin publishing early sabermetrics articles in the Baseball Research Journal.
- Baseball-Reference
- Dick Cramer publishes a landmark study on “clutch hitting” in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal.
- Founding of SABR
- Project Scoresheet (which later branched off to what we now know as Retrosheet) is founded as an ongoing effort to compile and digitize historical box scores and play-by-play.
- Win Shares, the proto-WAR, gets developed
- “Total Baseball” is published for the first time; Pete Palmer’s statistical database made available on CD
- MLB.com makes pitch-by-pitch data available via web-based xml
- “Pay and Performance in Major League Baseball”” American Economic Review 64, no. 6: 915-930.
- MLB.com makes minor league pitch-by-pitch data available via web-based xml
- Publication of Moneyball
- Hit Tracker – HR Distances
- The Physics of Baseball is published
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