What is the most useless statistic in baseball? And most useless revered record?

Question

Baseball does tend to go overboard with stats.

Answer 1

most useless statistic: strikeouts (for batters, not pitchers)...who cares how they got the out

most useless revered record: most consecutive games played  

Answer 2

RBI's,

rbi's are useless cause its basically just a hit and a runner on base (what if you get 200 hits in a season but every time no one was on base - 0 rbis)

Answer 3

I have no use for Ripken's cosecutive game streak.  There were times that he was in the line uop when he would have sat,except for the streak.  At that point it's about Cal, not winning.

Useless stat?  Watching games now they sometimes come up with a stat that has so many qualifiers it reduces the sample to almost nothing.   Something like Batting average on the road during the daytime against left handed pitchers named Jose.

Answer 4

Slugging Percentage- It makes no sense!

Answer 5

Most useless stat is Saves.

I once saw a game where a team was winning by one in the 8th inning.  The other team had bases loaded with nobody out.  A new pitcher came in and retired the next three batters without giving up a run.  The next inning the closer comes in and gets credited for "saving" the game when it was obvious the pitcher who pitched the 8th inning is the one the saved the game.

Most useless revered record is most saves in a season.  When Bobby Thigpen set the record the best he could do in the Cy Young voting that year was 4th.  Even the baseball writers don't put much stock in saves.

Answer 6

Most Useless Stat: Hit By Pitch (for hitters)

Most Useless Revered Record: Most consecutive games played (it's impressive, and it probably won't be broken, but it takes a lot of luck to play in 2,000+ straight games).

Answer 7

Most useless stats: OPS- on base percentage plus slugging percentage. Who is really gonna take the time and think that one through? I will be honest, I'm a stat guy, but this is just pushing it well over the top.

Runs (for pitchers)- Obviously the thing that matters for a pitcher is earned runs, so why even tell how many runs he has given up. If baseball has determined that earned runs matter, but runs given up from errors don't, then stick with it.

Most useless revered record: Now it is the all-time home run record. Did he or did he not take steroids????? If we were all honest about it, we have to know he did. Just cause he won't admit it, doesn't mean that he is ok to hold the record. Plus, now we have home run leaders coming out of everywhere. Griffey, A Rod, Pujols. Back in the day, it was no where near that. Stats are becoming too lopsided from old days to modern times.  

Answer 8

I think the most useless official stat is (for batters) HBP.  

But baseball announcers give the most useless contextual stats EVER.  "You know, Bob, this guy's hitting .422 during night games in August with runners on 1st and 3rd, his team trailing by 3 or more runs, and the moon in its waxing gibbous phase. So this could be a big at-bat for him."  Give me a break.  

Most useless revered record...I'll have to think about that. The one that I just found on google is just from last month:

http://www.salon.com/sports/daily/featur...

Most scoreless innings (relief pitcher) at the beginning of a career - Oakland's Brad Zieger.  That seems like a pretty silly record to me.

Answer 9

Most useless stat: Wins/Losses.  It says nothing about how a pitcher really performs, but rather how his teammates performed behind him.

Most useless revered record: Agree with the first poster, Consecutive games played.  Ohhh, good job.  You actually made it to work everyday...

Answer 10

Every stat tells us something, but some tell us very little.

The ones in which I have the least interest, among the commonly available selections, are RBI and saves.

Any record vested with reverence is inherently useless, as that's going far too overboard, and people need to rescale their perspectives. Most overrated, though, would be pitcher's strikeouts, mainly because so very few people truly grasp what the number represents in terms of gameplay effectiveness.

Answer 11

I think the most useless stat is the three inning save. saves can be argued that they are pointess for the most part and same goes for wins. quality starts is a better stat.

as for the most useless revered record just about any one in which the same player holds the anti-record such as most of Nolan Ryan's records.

Career K's - 5,714    

Career BB's - 2,795

Career Wild PItches - 277