In
baseball statistics
Baseball statistics play an important role in evaluating the progress of a player or team.
Since the flow of a baseball game has natural breaks to it, and normally players act individually rather than performing in clusters, the sport lends itsel ...
, NERD is a quantitative measure of expected aesthetic value. NERD was originally created by
Carson Cistulli and is part of his project of exploring the "art" of
sabermetric research. The original NERD formula only took into account the
pitcher
In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...
's expected performance
while a later model factors in the entire team's performance.
History
The premise for NERD was developed in Cistulli's piece "Why We Watch" in which he establishes the five reasons that baseball continues to captivate the American imagination from game to game: "Pitching Matchups," "Statistically Notable (or Otherwise Compelling) Players," "Rookies (and Debuts)," "Seasonal Context," and "Quality of Broadcast". Fellow sabermatrician
Rob Neyer
Rob Neyer (born June 22, 1966) is an American baseball writer known for his use of statistical analysis or sabermetrics. He started his career working for Bill James and STATS and then joined ESPN.com as a columnist and blogger from 1996 to 2011. ...
, who had collaborated with Cistulli on this piece,
wrote "the only thing missing
..is a points system that would let us put a number on each game"
and on June 2, 2010, Cistulli unveiled the Pitcher NERD formula.
Pitcher NERD
Pitcher NERD tries to determine which pitchers will be the most aesthetically appealing to watch for a baseball fan and is both a historical and a predictive statistic. The formula uses a player's standard deviations from the mean (a weighted z-score) of the
DIPS statistic xFIP (expected Fielding Independent Pitching), swinging strike percentage, overall strike percentage, and the differential between the pitcher's
ERA
An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth.
Comp ...
and xFIP to determine a quantitative value for each pitcher.
The factor of 4.69 is added to make the number fit on a 0 to 10 scale. While there has been some disagreement on the calculation of Cistulli's luck component, the general consensus among sports writers seems to be that a player with a below-average ERA and an above-average xFIP has been "unlucky".
Team NERD
Following the model of his Pitching NERD, Team NERD tries to give a quantitative value to the aesthetic value of each of the 30 baseball teams. For factors it accounts for "Age," "Park-Adjusted weighted Runs Above Average (wRAA)," "Park-Adjusted Home Run per Fly Ball (HR/FB)," "Team Speed," "Bullpen Strength," "Team Defense," "Luck" (Base Runs – Actual Runs Scored), and "Payroll".
In an interview, Cistulli admitted that there is a disconnect between the
Tampa Bay Rays
The Tampa Bay Rays are an American professional baseball team based in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Rays compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Since its inception, the team's home v ...
high tNERD rating and low attendance saying that he is considered adding a "park-adjustment" to his formula which would reflect either the stadium itself or "attendance relative to the stadium's capacity" but overall reception of this statistic has been positive and
Fangraphs started reporting Team NERD in Cistulli's "One Night Only" columns beginning August 23, 2010.
Notes
References
{{Baseball statistics
Baseball statistics