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Welcome to Box Score, the website devoted to exploring the manifold ways in which the game of baseball can help explain the economy and how it works. The problem of the meaning of statistics is familiar in baseball, and is the source of the name of this site. Like most baseball fans, we peruse the daily box scores in the sports section to learn about what happened in any particular game the previous night. (We also watch the highlights on Baseball Tonight, a subject we return to below.)
From the box score, we gather the basics of the game: inning-by-inning scoring, an individual players' performance, their totals for the season, attendance, etc. Obviously, however, these numbers, no matter how comprehensive, cannot convey the true events of the game and how that particular game relates to other games during the season, whether already played or those yet to be played. What was the pitch sequence to Alex Rodriguez in his first at-bat with runners on base? What was the pitch sequence in his third at-bat, with bases empty? What was the defensive alignment? How did that affect the decisions of the battery (pitcher and catcher) in their approach to A-Rod or his approach to the at-bat? How did his appearance against Roy Halladay relate to a previous confrontation? Watching television highlights certainly adds to a more comprehensive understanding, but inevitably runs up against an inherent limitation of television itself: it is a medium focused on the present, and its ability to convey a narrative over time, especially one as intricate as baseball, is constrained.
Such questions have risen to the fore of baseball in recent years, thanks in large part to the so-called Moneyball approach and the untold contributions of Bill James. General managers and scouts and statisticians have searched for different ways to measure the impact of things like defensive alignment.
Our premise is that the limitations of the baseball game box score have a parallel in economics. So GDP grew by 1.9% last quarter: is that good in relative or historical terms? What exactly happened during the second quarter of the year that produced that number? How have events in the last 6 months or the the last 6 quarters or the last 6 years affected what is occurring in the economy today?
Let's look at this in a larger frame: from 1908 to 2008, the American economy grew at about 3% per year. In economics, that is accepted as a pretty good performance, especially when compared to other countries over the same century. We could flesh that out by saying that per capita personal income grew by X%, or that business investment grew by X%. These numbers would certainly tell us that our economy has performed well at an aggregate level.
But what do those numbers even mean? Saying we enjoyed 3% per annum growth really doesn't tell you anything about how daily life in the United States changed. Without even thinking about it, any of us could rattle off a dozen things that are available today that didn't exist in 1908 (cell phones, personal computers, microwaves), or that are immeasurably better today (drinking water, automobiles, vaccinations). Economic growth (3% per year) obviously is tied up in these advances, and there has been fantastic research done in recent years on alternative ways to measure economic growth and change.
For "ordinary people" (those without Ph.Ds in economics), discussions of the economy can quickly enter the realm of abstraction and argot and lose meaning in mazes of numbers, policies, and arguments. We propose here to use baseball as a vehicle to explore and (hopefully) explain how the economy works, the process of economic change, and, well, the magic of economic growth. The basic "formula" at the core of this website (with many permutations, to be sure) is:
Rules x Action in the Face of Uncertainty x Interactions of Individuals = Complex and Perpetually Novel Outcomes
This applies to both baseball and the economy and is not intended to be all-encompassing--indeed, many of the entries on this site will be devoted to tinkering with, adding to, and changing this formula.
This idea grew out of an essay Dane drafted last summer. After responses both tepid and enthusiastic, I shelved it for a year. With the economic turmoil of the last few months, I decided to revisit and rewrite it. Dave, Derek, and Charles all expressed interest in the analogy, and we decided to establish this site as a way to communicate it and, just as importantly, continue learning ourselves. We do not presume to be experts (at either economics or baseball analysis), but we are keenly interested in the economic future of this country and how we can all better understand it so that we can hopefully generate faster growth for everyone.
Enjoy.
Our premise is that the limitations of the baseball game box score have a parallel in economics. So GDP grew by 1.9% last quarter: is that good in relative or historical terms? What exactly happened during the second quarter of the year that produced that number? How have events in the last 6 months or the the last 6 quarters or the last 6 years affected what is occurring in the economy today?
Let's look at this in a larger frame: from 1908 to 2008, the American economy grew at about 3% per year. In economics, that is accepted as a pretty good performance, especially when compared to other countries over the same century. We could flesh that out by saying that per capita personal income grew by X%, or that business investment grew by X%. These numbers would certainly tell us that our economy has performed well at an aggregate level.
But what do those numbers even mean? Saying we enjoyed 3% per annum growth really doesn't tell you anything about how daily life in the United States changed. Without even thinking about it, any of us could rattle off a dozen things that are available today that didn't exist in 1908 (cell phones, personal computers, microwaves), or that are immeasurably better today (drinking water, automobiles, vaccinations). Economic growth (3% per year) obviously is tied up in these advances, and there has been fantastic research done in recent years on alternative ways to measure economic growth and change.
For "ordinary people" (those without Ph.Ds in economics), discussions of the economy can quickly enter the realm of abstraction and argot and lose meaning in mazes of numbers, policies, and arguments. We propose here to use baseball as a vehicle to explore and (hopefully) explain how the economy works, the process of economic change, and, well, the magic of economic growth. The basic "formula" at the core of this website (with many permutations, to be sure) is:
Rules x Action in the Face of Uncertainty x Interactions of Individuals = Complex and Perpetually Novel Outcomes
This applies to both baseball and the economy and is not intended to be all-encompassing--indeed, many of the entries on this site will be devoted to tinkering with, adding to, and changing this formula.
This idea grew out of an essay Dane drafted last summer. After responses both tepid and enthusiastic, I shelved it for a year. With the economic turmoil of the last few months, I decided to revisit and rewrite it. Dave, Derek, and Charles all expressed interest in the analogy, and we decided to establish this site as a way to communicate it and, just as importantly, continue learning ourselves. We do not presume to be experts (at either economics or baseball analysis), but we are keenly interested in the economic future of this country and how we can all better understand it so that we can hopefully generate faster growth for everyone.
Enjoy.
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