VOTE: New Ideas for Useless Metrics

Happy New Year! Am I late on that? I don’t care! It’s still January and I still accidentally write 2013 on everything I have to date, ladies included. With time continuing to degrade our bodies year-by-year, I think it’s high time we think about the important stuff again. Stuff like: what can I measure for no reason? Specifically, what useless, trivial, unimportant but highly distracting thing can I measure? Answer: Shit tons. You can measure anything! Except for the impact God is having on the men in your Bible study.

Last summer I created a measure called COOL meant to parody NERD. I prefer COOL to NERD because it makes me laugh harder. I also love myself the most. I once again have the itch to do some measuring. I could maybe satisfy this itch by delving into something meaningful–something illuminating that adds to our sabermetric body of knowledge. But I know, duh, that nothing is meaningful, really, and I’d be wasting my time thinking so. Instead, the closest I can find to meaningful activity is one that will make me laugh, hopefully others, too, if only because I laugh harder when others are laughing. So I must measure something meaningless, or at the very least, something that resembles something meaningful but disintegrates at even the slightest scrutiny. A la COOL.

I generated some ideas for metrics by first thinking of a word in my brain (Brodmann area 47/46, perhaps), any word, and then coming up with what that word might measure were it a metric. You will find these proto-metrics, these seeds of weeds, below. And below them you will have the opportunity to exercise the privilege of voting. I will delicately craft a perfectly destitute metric out of the highest vote-getter.

MOIST
Measures which teams and players sweat the most.

2COOL
A metric for hipsters. Measures which teams are considered cool by the wallowing masses and sabermetricians alike, giving them negative points. Then it determines which teams are the least cool to anyone; these teams are the MOST cool for hipsters, who must assert uniqueness at the cost quality, aesthetic appeal, and personal gain.

KNIGHT
Metric that attempts to identify which players would make excellent medieval knights (Carolingian, perhaps), crediting players for their potential  in skills like swordplay, jousting, archery, and chivalry.

BLIGHT
Attempts to determine which teams are destroying our planet the most. Factors might include: the carbon footprint created by a team’s travel, the eco-friendliness of a team’s ballpark, charitable donations to environmentally friendly organizations, etc. Might include +/- bonus points for individual players who perform environmentally friendly deeds or, who, I don’t know, bet on cock fights.

W3thRMN
W3thRMN measures major leaguers’ potential for becoming a broadcast meteorologist on your local FOX affiliate by identifying crucial characteristics of the profession (blandness, ability to articulate like a friendly automaton, hair coiffability, vacantness, etc.) and seeing which ballplayers fit the description.

xBEPHYRGROTHHx
Answers the question, “Which Major Leaguers would make a pleasing sacrifice to the Demon Lord xBEPHYRGROTHHx?” Players are credited for their potential to scream, writhe, and beg while chained to the Sacrificial Dais of OOberDROOOG, as well as for the volume, viscosity and arterial spurtability of the ballplayer’s blood.