“A Fan With Facts”

Economics Professor Cyril Morong wears his Chicago White Sox baseball cap while he works in his office. He's not the typical painted-face, die-hard fan, but has been featured in The Wall Street Journal for his statistical analysis of baseball.

Carl Bialik, a sports blogger for the Journal, posted an article Oct. 26 titled, "The Count: An Unusual Bullpen Proposal," in which he quoted Morong's analysis on whether the Philadelphia Phillies or the New York Yankees had a better chance of winning the World Series.

Bialik wrote, "Cyril Morong points out that the Yankees have an edge in hitters' on-base-percentage-plus-slugging-percentage (OPS) and in preventing opponents' OPS."

Baseball Almanac states OPS means the ability of a player both to get on base and to hit for power, two important hitting skills. These attributes are an efficient way to measure a player's offensive worth. The closer to a score of 1 or above, the better.

"I looked both at the offense, defense and tallies," Morong said. "Basically, I showed the Yankees were better then the Phillies."

The Yankees won the series in Game 6 on Nov. 4. It was the club's 27th World Series victory.

On Morong's blog "Cybermetrics," he compares the OPS of the Phillies and Yankees as well as the OPS of their pitchers. In each circumstance, the Yankees trumped the Phillies.

Morong compiled data from past seasons and plugged it into an Excel spreadsheet and did statistical calculations to determine which team had a better chance to win the World Series.

"Growing up, I was always a baseball fan, and I was always really good with math," Morong said.

In the 1980s, people who shared the love of math and baseball started to scientifically analyze the study of baseball and determine why teams win or lose based on statistics. The idea was later defined as sabermetrics, the analysis of baseball through objective thinking.

Bill James, considered the godfather of sabermetrics, came up with the term, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research with metrics.

James' passion for baseball pushed him to write books about baseball history and game plays in manner both mathematical and enjoyable, Morong said.

"Bill is a great thinker," Morong said. "People may know more statistical issues than he does, but he gets to the meat of an issue and makes perfect sense."

Many of James' first baseball writings came about while he was working the night shift as a security guard at the Stokely Van Camp pork and beans factory, Time magazine reported on April 30, 2006.

"People were skeptical; some said he was crazy," Morong said. "Now, there are college kids who do this and are hired for it."

When Morong was in graduate school, he read James' studies and developed an interest in sabermetrics. His blog, "Cybermetrics," derives from his nickname, Cy.

Boisterous sports commentators who shout out numbers through a microphone are not statisticians, Morong said, and often emphasize numbers that have no real importance.

Morong has caught many people who have made mistakes in their baseball coverage, including one made by Stephen Jay Gould, a renowned scientist and baseball fan, Morong said.

In 2001, Morong wrote a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal, disagreeing with Gould's theory that Babe Ruth hit many home runs off relievers. He also corrected Gould's mistake on the kind of bat Barry Bonds used, saying it was maple, not ash.

Morong said he usually does not get a lot of e-mails, but in one instance, a college student working on a sabermetrics paper that dealt with determining voting percentages for the Hall of Fame asked him for help.

"I said I would do my best and then asked him, ‘Where do you go to school?' " Morong said. "He e-mailed me back and wrote West Point." A professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point had used Morong's analysis during a lecture.

When asked if he would ever make sabermetrics into a career, Morong laughed.

"It's a hobby," he said. "Teaching is my career."

Morong's baseball page can be found here.