TAA 9 - Creating Our Own Game Score
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The hosts of Pitcher List's Approach Angle Podcast dive deep into the evolution of game score—a long-standing but often overlooked metric in baseball analytics—revealing how a new, community-driven version has transformed from a statistical exercise into a cultural barometer of pitching performance. Kyle Bland, Director of Analytics, explains how his team’s new game score formula was built not on predictive accuracy or win probability, but on public intuition: what fans actually feel when they watch a start. After crowdsourcing thousands of grading decisions, they discovered that people value runs, sequencing, and length more than traditional sabermetrics suggest—leading to a harsher penalty for earned runs, a lower baseline (30 instead of 50), and a distribution skewed toward higher grades. The result? A metric that feels more like a 'watchability index' than a pure stat, rewarding pitchers who dominate in different ways—whether through strikeouts, control, or even avoiding runs despite hits. The episode also explores the philosophical tension between objective metrics and emotional perception, showing how baseball’s beauty lies in its nuance: a start can be 'good' not just because of numbers, but because of how it felt to watch.
Earned runs are the single most important factor in how fans perceive a start, outweighing strikeouts and hits in perceived quality.
The new game score starts at 30 instead of 50, making high grades feel more earned and rewarding pitchers who dominate in short outings.
People are more generous with average starts—grading them as C+ or B−—than statistical models suggest, revealing a widespread 'grade inflation' for typical performances.
Sequencing matters: a pitcher who allows hits but no earned runs is rated much higher than one who gives up the same hits but with runs, showing fans care about context.
The new game score was built using crowdsourced grading, not predictive modeling, making it a 'feel-based' metric that reflects public intuition over academic rigor.
…and 3 more takeaways available in PodZeus
Introducing the New Game Score
Nate and Kyle introduce the new game score system developed by Kyle Bland for PitcherList's player cards. They explain its purpose: to give fans a quick, intuitive sense of how good a start was—beyond just box score numbers. The new version is built on community feedback, not pure statistics.
From Bill James to Tom Tango: The Evolution of Game Score
The hosts trace the history of game score, from Bill James’s original 50-point baseline to Tom Tango’s 2016 update that introduced homers and a lower starting point. They discuss how both versions aimed to predict win probability, but with different philosophies.
The Inflection Point: When Data Met Intuition
“I was like oh and we'll do it around an academic grading system a b c d f and like the idea of being like oh c is average and then you know b and d are slightly uh you know above or below a and f are like way better or way worse how i view those things is not how the community views those things”
Building the New Formula: What the Community Values
The team analyzed 4,600 crowd-sourced start grades to build a new formula. Key findings: earned runs are penalized heavily, walks are more harmful than hits, and the baseline is lowered to 30. The result is a system that rewards pitchers who do the work, even in short outings.
Why Sequencing and Timing Matter
The hosts explore how the order of events affects perception. A pitcher who gives up runs early but settles in feels worse than one who dominates early and collapses late—even if the box scores are identical. This reveals baseball’s unique emphasis on narrative and momentum.
“It would basically just end up being a bunch of pitch models because it would either be that or it would be guys who like are consistently like just dotting the corners of the strike zone like it's as fun as it is to see nolan mcclain throw wiffle balls it's also really cool to see someone like george kirby just be clinical about just dotting all of his balls just along the edges of the strike zone”
“I was like oh and we'll do it around an academic grading system a b c d f and like the idea of being like oh c is average and then you know b and d are slightly uh you know above or below a and f are like way better or way worse how i view those things is not how the community views those things”
“the biggest things that stood out were that people really, like I said, the average kind of your typical start that people thought a lot better of it. That people, I guess, kind of like that skew towards a better grade for what felt like an average duration start.”
Host
Guest
Kyle Bland
person
Nate Schwartz
person
PitcherList
organization
Tom Tango
person
Discord
organization
Bill James
person
Logan Webb
person
Justin Robleski
person
George Kirby
person
organization
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