The world of advanced baseball statistics can be an intimidating place for those of us who slept our way through advanced algebra or haven't been a follower of the Bill James revolution from the beginning. 

Still, that doesn't mean that we should feel left out when it comes to another way of understanding and appreciating the game we all love. With that in mind, BLS stat doctor Alex Remington will explore a new advanced statistic each week during the offseason, providing a simple primer for the uninitiated.

Today's statistic: OPS+

What it stands for: Adjusted On-base percentage Plus Slugging, as calculated by Sean Forman of baseball-reference.com

How they calculate OPS+: The basic principle is to take a player's OPS (which is the sum of on-base percentage and slugging percentage), adjust it for different ballpark factors and then put it on a percentage scale. When it comes to OPS+, 100 is the league average, 110 is 10 percent above league average, and 90 is 10 percent below league-average. The actual number of ballpark variables involved makes the calculation complicated to write out here, but the actual arithmetic is simple.

OPS+ = 100 x (OBP/lgOBP*+SLG/lgSLG*- 1)

I know what your'e asking: What are lgOBP* and lgSLG*? They're park-adjusted measures for the league-average OBP. Park factors can be very complex and are generally beyond the scope of this article, but ESPN's park factor formula for runs is relatively simple and gets at the basic concept:

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The world of advanced baseball statistics can be an intimidating place for those of us who slept our way through advanced algebra or haven't been a follower of the Bill James revolution from the beginning. 

But that still doesn't mean that we should feel left out when it comes to another way of understanding and appreciating the game we all love. With that in mind, BLS stat doctor Alex Remington will explore a new advanced statistic each week during the offseason, providing a simple primer for the uninitiated.

Today's statistic: BABIP

What it stands for: Batting Average on Balls In Play

How you calculate BABIP:

What BABIP is good for: You often hear BABIP being brought up by stats-minded folks, but what does it actually mean? Simply put, BABIP tells us how many hits a player is getting — or a pitcher is giving up — when the ball is put in play. (In this case, "put in play" means the ball stays fair and in the ballpark, rather than the play resulting in a strikeout, walk, home run, hit  by pitch or error.)

If the batter's line drive rate remains constant, BABIP can be a good indictator of "luck" or random chance, which tends to even out over the course of a long season. If a lot of hits are falling when put into play, a hitter is usually due for a dry spell or a pitcher is usuall due for a break. If very few hits are falling, a hitter may be nearing a hot streak, while a hot pitcher may be due for an upcoming reality check.

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The New York Yankees have had 19 100-win seasons and 27 championships in the 109-year history of their franchise. The 2009 championship team marks the 11th time in franchise history that the team has won at least 103 games. It's the sixth of those eleven 103 victory-plus teams to go all the way.

The five winningest Yankee teams — 1927, 1932, 1939, 1961, and 1998 — all won between 106 and 114 games in the regular season and went a combined 27-3 in the postseason en route to five of the most famous championships in history. Their shadows loom large over all other Yankee teams, just as the Yankees themselves loom large over the rest of the league. Each had a run differential over 200 runs. The 1939 Yankees, behind Joe DiMaggio's first MVP campaign, had a mind-boggling run differential of 411 runs over 154 games, which translates to 2.7 runs per game and the top spot on ESPN's ranking of all the Yankee title teams. (The '09 squad is ranked 10th on that list.)

By contrast, the 2009 Yanks lost four playoff games in this postseason (which included two more rounds than the first four teams mentioned had to play). The '09 Yankee squad also finished second in baseball with a run differential of 162, exactly one run a game.

Good, of course, but not historic — it's only the 40th-best differential in Yankee history.

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How do we know that Pedro Martinez is pretty famous? Just ask him, of course.

"Because of you guys in some ways I might be at times the most influential player that ever stepped in Yankee Stadium,"  Philadelphia's Game 2 starter told members of the media on Wednesday.

It's a well-known fact that Pedro's  1999-00 peak might be the best two-year peak of any righthander in the history of baseball. But when people think of him in the playoffs, they usually think of two games, neither of which saw him at full strength:

• Game Five of the 1999 ALDS, where he was injured and still no-hit the Indians for six innings in relief (back when Charlie Manuel was the Indians' hitting coach)

• Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS, where he gave up three runs to the Yankees in the eighth inning before Grady Little finally came around to the idea of yanking him.

Pedro isn't the same guy he was in 1999, of course. He struck out 313 men in 213 1/3 innings that year and put up a 2.07 ERA in the height of the Steroid Era, more than two and a half runs lower than the major league average of 4.71. His fastball reached the mid-90s, he averaged over seven innings and 10 strikeouts a start and, and his hair still fit inside his baseball cap. By the statistic ERA+ (an adjusted version of ERA), it was the eighth-best season of all time — and Pedro's year in 2000 was the single best.

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There have been only 14 winning streaks in the 106-year history of the World Series and six of those repeat champions wore Yankee pinstripes. The only non-Yankee repeat champion of the past 30 years are the Toronto Blue Jays — the team that beat the Phillies in 1993.

These days, it seems like everyone is busy pondering how Philadelphia matches up to the Big Red Machine. Here on the Stew, we're taking a slightly different look: How do the Phillies match up to their old-time rivals, the 1992-93 Blue Jays?

They're actually fairly different teams. The Jays had much more turnover among their regulars, a more dominant regular season offense and worse pitching than the Phillies.

The Jays actually had a surprising amount of turnover for a team that was able to keep it together for two straight title runs. Among position players, only Devon White, Joe Carter, John Olerud, Pat Borders, Roberto Alomar logged significant playing time in both World Series. Among the pitchers, only starter Juan Guzman and relievers Duane Ward, Mike Timlin, and Todd Stottlemyre did the same.

Those who played one but not both were arguably even bigger names — hitters like Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, Rickey Henderson, and Tony Fernandez and pitchers like David Cone, David Wells, Jack Morris, Pat Hentgen, Al Leiter, and Jimmy Key. Woody Williams, Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado were still too young and unproven to make it onto Toronto's 1993 World Series roster.

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There have been just over 1,250 postseason starts since 1903, but few have been better than Cliff Lee's appearance in last Sunday's NLCS Game 3 against the Dodgers. He went eight scoreless innings allowing only three hits, striking out 10 and walking nobody. Additionally, only one runner got past first base.

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So a little bird told me that some guy named Alex Rodriguez is having a pretty good postseason. He used to be terrible in the playoffs, so I had to check it out for myself.

Not bad, I suppose: Through six games, A-Rod is hitting 8-for-23 with four homers and nine RBIs. He's holding a gaudy .348 average and a 1.277 OPS. Against the Twins in the ALDS, he went 5-for-11 with two homers in three games, a .455 average, and a 1.500 OPS.

There's nothing wrong with those kind of numbers, of course, but I don't get why everyone's making a big deal of it. They're certainly not historic and you can color both me and a certain former Pirate unimpressed. 

It should go without saying, but Alex Rodriguez is obviously no Lloyd McClendon.

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When the Yankees won three consecutive World Championships at the end of the last decade, their bullpen was a big key to their success.

Ramiro Mendoza, Mike Stanton, Mariano Rivera and Jeff Nelson (clockwise) played pestilence, famine, war and death on the Yankees' opponents from 1998-2000.* Over those three title runs, the Yankees played 44 playoff games and those four relievers made 74 appearances and went 7-1 with a collective 1.94 ERA. They collected 13 holds, 19 saves, and zero blown saves.  Rivera's brilliance has been justly heralded —he had a 0.65 ERA in 41 1/3 innings over those three years, and 18 of the 19 saves — but it has also overshadowed the work of his terrific setup men.

*Mendoza missed the 2000 playoffs due to injury.

As the Yankees prepare to get back into World Series form, it's worth wondering if the current group of Phil Hughes, Phil Coke, Joba Chamberlain and Rivera can match the performance of their fearsome predecessors.

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Cole Hamels gets the nod in tonight's NLCS Game 1, but the truth is that the reigning NLCS and World Series MVP is far from being the Phillies' current ace.

So who's currently starring for Philadelphia in the role of Cole Hamels? 

Why, fellow lefty Cliff Lee, of course.

Actually, if you compare the numbers of the Hamels from '08 postseason to the '09 playoff performance of Lee so far, the results are rather eerie. Over the course of the 35 playoff innings last year, Cole Hamels had a 1.80 ERA, a 0.91 WHIP and struck out 30 while walking nine. Through 16 1/3 playoff innings in '09, Lee has a 1.10 ERA, a 0.85 WHIP and has struck out 10 while walking just three. Their K/BB rates are almost identical, while Lee's ERA and WHIP are somehow even better.

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As the start of the postseason approaches, Big League Stew's Alex Remington will take a look at the statistics that might make a difference in each series. Bringing up the rear is Twins-Yankees, which is about to start in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

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