Okay, so I wanted to check out the stats for the Phillies versus Kansas City Royals game the other day. It wasn’t anything super serious, just curious about how the players were matching up, you know?
First thing I did was just grab my tablet while kicking back on the couch. I figured it’d be easy enough to find some numbers. Typed in something like “Phillies Royals player stats” into the search bar. Simple stuff.
Got a bunch of results, mostly sports sites. I clicked on one of the usual suspects, I think it was ESPN or maybe MLB’s own site, can’t remember exactly which one popped up first. They usually lay things out pretty clearly.
Digging into the Numbers
So, the page loaded up. Had the box score right there, which is handy. But I wanted a bit more detail on individual players. Had to scroll down a bit, past the game summary and all that fluff.
Found the player stats section. They had hitting stats and pitching stats broken down. For hitters, I looked at:
- At-bats (AB)
- Runs (R)
- Hits (H)
- Runs Batted In (RBI)
- Home Runs (HR)
- Batting Average (AVG) – always a quick check
And for the pitchers, I glanced over:
- Innings Pitched (IP)
- Hits allowed (H)
- Runs allowed (R)
- Earned Runs (ER)
- Walks (BB)
- Strikeouts (SO)
- Earned Run Average (ERA) – the big one for pitchers
What I Noticed
It wasn’t like I was doing deep analysis, just looking for standout performances. You know, who got a bunch of hits, who struck out a lot of guys. I saw one of the Phillies guys, can’t recall his name right now, had a pretty good day at the plate, couple of hits, drove in a run. Looked solid.
On the Royals side, their starting pitcher seemed to struggle a bit early on, gave up a few runs in the first few innings according to the IP and ER columns. Their bullpen guys seemed to do okay later, kept it closer.
Honestly, sometimes wading through all the numbers can make your eyes glaze over. So many acronyms! AB, OBP, SLG… I mostly stick to the basics I mentioned. Hits, RBIs, ERA – that gives me a decent picture without needing a calculator.
It took maybe 10-15 minutes just clicking around, comparing guys. It’s kind of interesting to see the raw data behind the game highlights you might see later. Just a little routine I do sometimes when I follow a game.
