FanGraphs Discovers End of Statistics, Circles Back To "Games"

ARLINGTON, VA (Bottom of the Fourth) - In recent years, the baseball website FanGraphs has become a destination for cutting-edge baseball statistics and analysis. So cutting-edge, it seems based on news released this morning, that it has found the end of baseball statistics.

Founder David Appelman says he came upon the end of baseball stats accidentally while looking for his slide rule. "I checked under the bed, in the fridge, behind all my Bill James posters, but it was nowhere. So I started looking in spreadsheets, and got into some really complex non-linear weight stuff based on ZiPS projections."

Appelman says he didn't find his slide rule there, but soon completely forgot he was even looking for it. "Something caught my eye when I ran an anti-regression model on the fractal matrix of Luke Gregerson's slider", he explained. "I didn't believe it at first, but I've checked it to 99.99999% confidence. It was the end of baseball statistics, there's no doubt about it." Appelman went on to add that there was a restaurant there, and that the food was "above-average".

With the discovery, FanGraphs has decided against attempting to improve on existing statistics, as it believes such an endeavour would be fruitless. Instead, the website believes the only way to move forward is to go back to the beginning. "It's like an old-school video game," commented editor Dave Cameron, "when your dude reaches the edge of the screen, he appears on the opposite edge. We're taking that philosophy and really running with it."

The first implementation of FanGraphs' new methodology has players ranked by games played. Consequently, the title of best player in 2011 is currently a 13-way tie between Torii Hunter, Adrian Beltre, Alex Gonzalez, Michael Young, Miguel Cabrera, Dan Uggla, James Loney, Martin Prado, Howard Kendrick, Matt Kemp, Peter Bourjos, Austin Jackson and Jason Heyward.

But the team of analysts is already furiously working to push the boundaries. Despite attempts to control information flow, an anonymous source has leaked that the next statistic to appear on the site will be called either "ats" or "bats".