The Stats Go Marching In

Who's Ahead of Whom?

by Max Marchi

1.The hitters are ahead of the pitchers. You use this one after your staff gets pounded for fourteen runs early in the spring. After all, maybe the hitters are ahead of the pitchers at this point. Who’s to say which group develops faster?

2.The pitchers are ahead of the hitters. The opposite of number 1, so it should be used when you get shut out by three rookie pitchers nobody’s ever heard of.

—Earl Weaver, The Clichés of Spring (from Weaver on Strategy)

The late Earl Weaver put a box in the first chapter of his classic book dedicated to answers he used to give every spring to “all those sportswriters with nothing much to write about” who every year “asked the same questions”. He alternated between the above depending on whether a loss occurred because his Orioles could not score any runs or allowed too many of them.

“Who’s to say which group develops faster?”

Well, let me try.

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