Why are there so many statistics hounds following the game of baseball? ...........................~

Q. Why are there so many statistics hounds following the game of baseball, compared with football, soccer, etc.?

A. Most sports are freeform, baseball is discrete, analyzable into 25 well-defined states after each play, say Jim Albert and Jay Bennett in "Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game." Consider the bases: There can be none on, runner on 1st, or 2nd, or 3rd, runners on 1st and 2nd, 1st and 3rd, 2nd and 3rd, or bases loaded. Each of these can be with 0, 1, or 2 outs, for 24 total situations (3 x 8), plus one more for 3 outs (inning ends). Batting averages and earned run averages of pitchers can be calculated for each of the 24 situations, plus probabilities of the batting team scoring any runs.

Compare this to, say, football, where one team's possession is equivalent to an inning at bat. How many possible states are there at the end of each play? Simplifying, there are 100 different positions, one for each yard mark, plus 4 different downs, 10 different yard amounts to go (for a 1st). This yields 100 x 4 x 10 = 4000 states!

And this is understated, since scrimmage lines on the field are continuous, as are yards-to-go which also can be more then 10, with fractional yards typical, making the number of possible states virtually infinite. And football is relatively discrete compared to basketball, soccer, hockey, which have a continuous flow in both time and space.

So while a calculating fan might answer curiosities about baseball--e.g., Who are the best "clutch" hitters?-- other sports can be so daunting that even the most avid numbers hound hardly knows where to sink a tooth in.

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