Jim Braun: A code you should know
| Saturday, Dec 05 2009 11:51 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Dec 05 2009 11:53 PM
By JIM BRAUN
The summer of 1979 was one of record-shattering proportions. Long-playing albums went by the wayside in explosive fashion. Just glancing at the proceedings was enough to knock your socks off and possibly tatter that polyester leisure suit.
This isn't going to be a retelling of the disaster of Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park, where a promotional antic-gone-awry also knocked your Sox off with a forfeiture. But it is the 30th anniversary of an important, more meaningful baseball event. It may have been less clangorous than the chaos at Comiskey, but it did have the power to raise eyebrows and lower the boom for the box score-reading, tradition-beating baseball fan.
It was the appearance in print of the Base-Out Percentage Guide authored by Barry Codell, who, without plucking any strings or tickling any ivory, had become baseball's Big BOPper.
That year, while I was sports editor of Lerner Newspapers, a Chicago suburban newspaper group, I received in a small package a copy of what soon became an "underground classic." That brightly blue-covered tome, however thin in appearance, was thick with baseball expertise. It challenged all conventional wisdom, fueled by a simple, inspired vision -- that baseball had committed its first error more than a century earlier by inventing the almighty, all-flighty batting average. All of those years, a hitter's value was largely judged by the BA, which divided hits by at-bats. To which Codell's numbers retorted, "BA, humbug!" He then unleashed his uncommon denominator -- subtracting hits from at-bats -- which showed, for the first time, outs.
"Imagine that," Codell says somewhat bemusedly. "Nobody had ever kept track of outs."
The statistical consequences were diamond-shattering. His discovery was so elementary that you scratched your head and wondered what took so long to figure this one out, or, in this case, to figure the out out. And it led to a number of fallacies, one of them a reason why Codell would never hustle over to a ballot to vote in a certain Charlie Hustle to the Hall of Fame.
Codell's famous phrase -- "Pete Rose, baseball's greatest out-maker" -- became the rallying cry that laid the groundwork for the builders of Sabermetrics, "Moneyball," fantasy baseball and the accompanying ideas that move the game forward to this day.
I had been asked to write an article for the new Chicago Sports magazine that very week. While thumbing through the pages of his guide, I just knew that my first article had to be about Barry and his revolutionary work. May I take a bow here? In my full-length profile of him, I christened Codell the "Father of the BOP." That quickly became his well-deserved appellation among Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) members and other serious baseball observers, including major league front-office personnel.
* * *
Now 30 years later, Disco is dead, but Codell is still ticking -- and thinking. He has fine-tuned his statistics and branched out to also include other offensive stats as well as pitching and defense. You can look it up -- and more -- on the Barry Code (www.barrycode.com). Every single major leaguer who ever made a plate appearance is listed on this amazing website.
By Don Sevcik's count, that totals 19,200 players. Sevcik put the code online earlier this year after coming across a magazine article in 2001 about Codell, who had gone out of the public eye. Reading about Codell's BOP seemed to awaken a sleeping giant in the curious Sevcik, a former college catcher who admittedly was never mesmerized by traditional statistics.
"The BOP really floored me when I first came across it," admits Sevcik, who by day is a programmer for a major financial management firm. "I think that was the first time I thought, 'here is something that can really measure a player's contribution.'"
"I believe the Barry Code is the best baseball website on the Internet by far," says noted "super-researcher" Gary Velich. "Don has created an incredible search engine that is unbeatable."
"What Mr. Sevcik has done with the Barry Code is not to be believed," he added. "And seeing the total Codell treasure confirms the amazing accuracy of his seemingly simple formulas."
Velich calls Barry's Diamond Base-Out Percentage (DBOP) "the ultimate stat."
And within the DBOP formula stands another invention -- Runs Recounted -- which Velich emphasizes "puts Bill James' Runs Created to shame."
* * *
I left Chicago several years after the article on Barry's BOP to start a new newspaper career here at The Californian. I spent most of my time in the sports department -- copy editing, page designing and covering pro and college football. And for a few years, the sports editor gave me an opportunity to spend several spring days at the Angels' Cactus League annex in Palm Springs. I interviewed players like Reggie Jackson, Will Clark, Ryne Sandberg and Bobby Grich. Codell was always there in spirit: In the back of my mind, I often wondered, "What would Barry think about this-and-that player's stats? Were they legit? BOP-worthy or just plain BOPs (bogus offensive players)"?
I knew Barry still had his own diamond visions. I had read about his stats being complimented and credited by the likes of Sport magazine, Sporting News and baseball record books.
But on television and newspapers, I had also seen replications of his stats and style. Being curious, I made a long-distance telephone call to him.
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," he told me matter-of-factly. "Some guys just get a little too sincere!"
Ten years after the BOP baptism, Codell introduced Runs Tallied -- the team contribution concept -- in a stunning and simple style.
Other stats were to follow, and I knew that Barry was still following baseball religiously when he introduced Game Offensive Differential (GOD), which neatly and accurately synthesized BOP, Runs Tallied into Batting Mean (BAM). So naturally I had to wonder what would be next on his agenda.
I lost track of Codell until he resurfaced in a Chicago magazine article by Robert Kurson, the same piece read by Sevcik. It mentioned the Diamond BOP, Codell's latest baseball statistic. I also learned in that 2001 article that he had been working for years as the activities director at a nursing home on Chicago's North Side. I called Codell after reading the article, and over the next few years he'd send me seasonal and career statistics. Included in last year's package of statistics was a mention of Sevcik's website project that would be known as the Barry Code.
Codell, who had formulated his immense research by pen, had found the right person in Sevcik to take the Barry Code to a new level. What once took days and weeks to tabulate and calculate now took mere seconds.
"I couldn't find a better person or a more creative computer expert than Don to entrust a website of my statistics," Barry said. "The numbers couldn't be in better hands."
* * *
Barry's wonder with numbers started early. As a youngster, he remembers his father Seymour bringing home the oversized Sunday newspaper. That was the day that all the baseball statistics from both leagues were listed, showing hitting and pitching statistics for all major leaguers with minimum at-bats. To this day, the "Sunday stats" are, from left to right, at-bats, runs, hits, home runs, runs batted in and batting average.
"I thought even then," Codell reflects, "there had to be a relationship between all those numbers."
The seeds of the Base-Out concept had been planted and would come to fruition with the BOP, which Codell called the first base of the statistical diamond. In ensuing years, Codell circled the bases with RT, the BAM and the GOD.
"When I followed baseball before discovering Barry's work," says the 33-year-old Sevcik, "I always looked at a player's RBI production first. I looked at total bases next. But I always wondered if there was a more complete stat that showed a player's true 'value.'"
Another fallacy which greatly gnawed at Codell was the slugging percentage. He pointed that out and obliterated its logic and relevancy in a Sporting News article in 1978. His basic example was that a player who had homered in four at-bats (and made three outs) has the same slugging average (1.000) as a batter with two doubles in four at-bats (only two outs). To that, Codell said "HA!" then unleashed his Hitting Average (HA), in which total bases must be measured against outs.
With each statistic introduced, Codell gained more admirers.
"He was one of the early visionaries in finding a stat which better summarized a player's offensive value than the old traditional batting average and slugging average," says Cappy Gagnon, a noted baseball historian.
"Barry's stuff is as good as anyone's," Gagnon adds. "In my humble opinion, Barry is the most overlooked of all the Sabermetricians of the 70's."
After leaving SABR, Codell jokes that he joined IBAR (Individuals for Baseball's Absolute Recounting), looking askance at a number of formulas introduced by some of SABR's members. He called them too complex and fan-unfriendly, focusing on farfetched projections and revisionist history.
When asked about the popular SABR book, "The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Homers," Codell brings up Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, the first one he followed and the same year he first borrowed his dad's Sunday paper to study. In the eighth inning, Willie Mays made that a-Mays-ing over-the-shoulder grab in center field off the 460-foot drive by Vic Wertz. Two innings later, the Giants earned the first of four straight victories when Dusty Rhodes hit a 260-foot homer -- hardly a tape-measure job.
"Does that make it any less of a homer?" Codell asks. "The level playing field of baseball statistical history consists of all the action on those wonderfully unlevel playing fields. The fans there that day rightfully saw Rhodes' game-winning short fly to right for the historic four-bagger it was."
Adds Sevcik: "Barry's stats show exactly what actually happened, not what might have happened with an adjustment based on geography, league or era."
Codell's diamond metrics ("diametrics") say that players have always been playing the Base-Out game -- trying to obtain as many bases as possible to turn into runs, while avoiding outs. His stats, which have been called "outstandingly simple and simply outstanding," seemed to perfectly capture this dynamic. Diametrics indeed proved to be diametrically opposed to both erroneous traditional stats and confounding Sabermetrics.
Sevcik called the entire system the BOMB (the Base-Out Model of Baseball).
* * *
If 1979 was a revolution, the emergence of the Barry Code website in 2009 can be called an evolution. There are more enjoyable choices than a concessionaire stand. You can search each of the thousands of players, and compare their traditional statistics to Codell's calculations. There's BOP, D-BOP, RT, BAM ... So which ones are more important than others?
"I think all of the stats are pieces to a larger puzzle," says Sevcik. "Folks who visit the Barry Code generally select the stats they feel best show a player's production. It certainly leads to some interesting discussions."
As an example, Codell brings up the 2007 season, when Jimmy Rollins was named the National League's MVP. Voters were apparently mesmerized by the Phillies shortstop's 212 hits and near-.300 batting average, yet Rollins' BAM was only fifth-best on his own team. Codell's BAM took into account all of his gaudy stats, but unfortunately for Rollins, even more.
Velich, that noted "super researcher," Googled Codell's name and discovered the website in April. He thought he'd get only the BOP stats.
"I couldn't believe all the other baseball stats he has invented," Velich said.
Sevcik, who's also webmaster of the popular Math Celebrity website, has created a Barry Code decoder. Fans can use one of four dropdown menus to devour countless lists of leaders in batting, pitching and fielding four different ways -- by time period, team/league, hybrid combinations and batting position (i.e. left-handed, right-handed, switch-hitter).
There's also a new calculator option which allows a user to enter any formula -- whether existing or new -- and the search engine will return the leaders of the stat that you enter.
It's a virtual field of dreams. There's a key to all the formulas by which Codell has awarded seasonal honors and introduced his batting Hall of Famers. Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds lead many lifetime categories, without comment on either hot dog or steroid regimens.
In looking over the many articles on the Barry Code, even traditional statistics are seen in a new light. For example, in Codell's 4 Ps category of Proficiency (batting average), Power (home runs), Production (runs-batted-in) and Patience (walks), viewers will learn that Frank Thomas became only the fourth major leaguer (and first right-handed hitter) with career totals of a .300-plus batting average, 500 homers, 1,500 RBIs and 1,500 bases on balls. The Big Hurt joined a select company with Ruth, Mel Ott and Ted Williams.
All in all, in looking through the Barry Code "Batting Encyclopedia," fans can still bow down to the Bambino, the all-time batting GOD.
There's even a Money BOP category ("Buck for the Bang"), which rates players with low salaries but high efficiency. The best bargains in 2008, for example, were Carlos Quentin of the White Sox and Josh Hamilton of the Rangers.
Thomas' career shows what a telling number the Money BOP is. In Thomas' first full year at $120,000 in 1991, he was baseball's best bargain. And in his last year in 2008, at $12 million, its worst.
The website isn't only for the statistically inclined. Every player's birthday is also listed, accompanied by height, weight and Codell career stats.
"I know a lot of kids want to know which players they share a birthday with," Sevcik says.
"He has given me a lifetime of baseball enjoyment with his incredible baseball stats," Velich says. "Barry and Don are great people to know and teach fans about the game of baseball."
Networks which regularly televise major league games may soon utilize Codell's statistics. Sevcik, for one, is all for that.
"In the future," Sevcik said, "I would like to see (stations carry) EBOP, which is Barry's more accurate and logical answer to the OPS."
The offseason looks hot (stove), too! Sevcik has asked Barry to write a regular blog to review and preview baseball in the Codell way. For example, the infamous trade of Bakersfield's own Johnny Callison is shown in a new light -- exactly 50 years later.
Already, Sevcik has included a 2009 BAM leader list. This year's MVHs are Albert Pujols in the National League and Joe Mauer in the American. And despite their much-heralded seasons, Ichiro Suzuki and Derek Jeter trailed far behind in Codell's statistics.
All of the Barry Code 2009 conclusions will be unveiled later this month, along with their effect on statistical history.
Now, in my looking back upon this past season, I recall my own favorite instance of the drama deep within the numbers on this most unique website ...
A few days after Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game for the White Sox in July, Codell reminded me that it was the third time that the southpaw had faced the minimum of 27 batters in a game. "In 2001, he faced 28 batters against Tampa Bay," he said. "So he was just getting warmed up for his specialty." With his perfecto, Buehrle had broken a tie with the two other pitchers in history who had thrown two games facing only 27 batters: Sandy Koufax and Cy Young.
That riveting morsel of information had gone unreported by the entire media except for the modest but noteworthy article found on the Barry Code, that online diamond hidden no longer from true diamond-watching fans.
