This website started as a hobby to combine two things I love – sports and numbers. While combing through spreadsheets and trying to come up with some interesting new stat, it quickly became apparent that basically anything I would come up with had already been calculated, weighted, and refined to a level I never would have reached on my own. That’s when I decided to just create something that, though maybe not useful to anyone else, would provide the information that I really wanted to see. Thus, Game Score and Impact were born.
Game Score and Impact are not highly technical or advanced statistics, but only provide an interesting summary of player performance. I wanted to be able to boil down a player’s performance in a game to a single number that could easily be compared to other players. It is based solely on raw box score stats and not adjusted to opponent or venue. If you are interested in such advanced statistics on any measurable you could possibly imagine and broken down to the most granular level, I highly recommend checking out MLB’s Baseball Savant.
Game Score
Batting
Game Score is a statistic I developed to provide each batter with a score from one to ten based on their performance in a given game. It is designed such that a perfect 10 is achieved only if a batter hits a grand slam in every at-bat during a game and a 0 is achieved by a batter striking out in every plate appearance. It favors hits, power, RBIs, getting on base, and not striking out.
Game Score is a measure of a player’s performance in the playing time that they are given, not adjusted for number of plate appearances or at-bats. Thus, for example, a batter (Batter 1) with one at-bat that hits a grand slam will have a Game Score of 10, whereas a player in the same game (Batter 2) with two grand slams and a triple would have a high Game Score, but something lower than 10.
High scores are only really achievable through many hits and many RBI. Therefore, most Game Scores fall between roughly 2 and 4. Anything above 5 is exceptional.
Pitching
Pitching Game Score is similar to the batting Game Score in that it rates a player’s performance in a given game on a scale from one to ten. A perfect ten is given when a pitcher strikes out every batter faced while throwing 100% strikes. Other factors that go into Games Score for pitchers are amount of hits and walks given up, earned runs allowed, and homeruns allowed.
Also like above, it is a measure of performance in the playing time the player is given. A pitcher that faces one batter and strikes them out on three pitches will get a perfect ten, but a pitcher that allows no hits, no earned runs, and no walks while striking out ten batters through six innings will have a high score, but it will be somewhat less than ten because he did not strike out every batter while throwing 100% strikes.
Pitching Game Scores tend to be higher than batting Game Scores as it is much more likely for a pitcher to strikeout a couple batters on all strikes than it is for a batter to hit multiple grand slams. Therefore, average Game Scores on pitchers tend to fall between 6.5 and 8.
Impact
Impact is a statistic developed by Ohio Sports Brief to adjust Game Score by a factor that is similar to total bases. This provides a number that scales Game Score and tracks more with how many plate appearances or at-bats a batter has in a game.
Take the example from above where Batter 1 has one plate appearance and hits a grand slam, whereas Batter 2 has three plate appearances and hits two grand slams and one triple. Batter 1 has a perfect Game Score of 10, but his Impact will be significantly lower than that of Batter 2. Impact can also be totaled for each team in a game to get a general idea of the team’s overall performance.
Pitching Impact is similar in that in scales Game Score by a factor related to innings pitched and earned runs allowed.
Impact is also a good indicator of a player’s overall performance measuring over a longer period of time.