Snyder’s Soapbox: Baseball’s acronym overload has created a language no one actually speaks

Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it’s free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you’ll get smarter, though. That’s a money-back guarantee. Let’s get to it.

This is going to be a playful one, so anyone getting serious, check out right now, please. 

Are you ready for acronym overload? Surely you are. You’ve been living in our current world. 

Quick, who leads the majors in xwOBAcon this season? 

It’s Aaron Judge, but we didn’t need that stat to proclaim that he’s been the best hitter in baseball this season, did we? 

I’m not denigrating those who use stats I don’t. I’m a big to each his/her/their own guy. You do you. 

I’m just feeling overloaded with all the acronyms. It isn’t just baseball either. Any visit to a doctor’s office or with someone in commercial insurance or, well, anyone, generally involves just far too many acronyms these days. Sometimes they are even used in redundant fashion. It’s a monster pet peeve of my wife’s when people say “VIN number” or “PIN number” because the “n” in those acronyms literally stands for number. You aren’t entering your personal identification number number. 

Right?

Another one, why  do people say “POTUS” when you could just say President? Or SCOTUS instead of Supreme Court? It’s stupid. 

And, boy, does the baseball world love its acronyms with very little consistency. 

Sometimes you say them phonetically, like xwOBAcon. Sometimes you don’t. On-base percentage, shortened to OBP, is just pronounced “O-B-P.” Earned run average is “E-R-A,” not “era.” But also sometimes you just don’t even say the letters and instead always say the full or partial term. Batting average can be shortened to average but it’s not pronounced like “avvge” or something and we don’t say “B-A” or “A-V-G.” 

Or you could go both ways, like RBI. You probably just say the three letters there, but some people — though it seems archaic to me — say “ribbies.” While we’re here, a fun side rant: The plural of RBI is RBI, as the stat is “runs batted in” not “runs batted ins.” Don’t you dare ever let me catch you typing “RBIs.” and for the love of all that is holy, if you insist on doing that, don’t you dare throw in an unnecessary and out of place apostrophe and make anyone else see the abomination that would be “RBI’s.” 

But let’s (correct apostrophe!) stay on track here with acronym overload. 

A player is taking a PA right now and it could also be an AB — unless he takes a BB or gets HBP, just to name two exceptions — he’ll hope to get on base and an XBH would be great, especially if there is at least one runner on base and comes home to give the batter an RBI. Did you know the OPS of an HR is 5.000? Did you know ROE actually hurts OBP even though you got OB? Sometimes a runner on first might break for second during the pitch and it’ll be either an SB or CS. 

It’s a lot around which to wrap one’s head, right? Someone new to baseball would be flabbergasted by all this and we haven’t even gotten to the deep-dive terms aside from xwOBAcon (and I’m convinced people only like saying it because they love saying “bacon” in a state and, frankly, it’s hard to blame anyone there. Bacon is universally, rightly, adored). 

Obviously, xwOBA is connected to the bacon one. There’s OAA (I use this one frequently), xFIP, SIERA, BABIP, xBA, DCOV, POP, LA, EV, xERA, EXT, SS and so many more. 

Mileage varies on how useful fans find each stat. Another side rant I have here is the people who get angry at things like “exit velocity,” when we’ve always said things like, “just hit the ball hard somewhere” and EV simply measures how hard it was hit. Hitting the ball hard has always been important and you aren’t required to use every stat. 

SR, for example, is spin rate. I don’t use spin rate. I never really have looked at it on anything deeper than the surface level and I never will. That doesn’t mean I think the people who look at it are losers or anything. They like looking at it. More power to them. We do not, however, need to save room with “SR.” Just say “spin rate” and realize it’s two syllables. That’s the same as “S-R” and we certainly aren’t gonna pronounce it “sir.” 

How about BABIP? Batting average on balls in play. It drives me crazy when people say it as “bab ip” but it’s pretty tedious to go around every letter: “B-A-B-I-P” is far too much of a mouthful. I think I’d prefer to just say batting average on balls in play every time, to be honest. 

Again, mileage varies. 

Still, the purpose of using acronyms is to make things easier and simpler in conversations. Sometimes it was successful over the long haul. Maybe the best example there is scuba diving. Scuba is an acronym! Self-contained breathing apparatus. That’s pretty cool.

I just feel like nowadays there’s overkill in society with all the acronyms and baseball is part of it. That’s all. Those of you still around, I greatly appreciate you taking this tongue-in-cheek journey with me on a playful rant. We need to have these from time to time. Life is to be enjoyed, especially when we’re talking about following professional sports for entertainment.