EqA: Offensive Statistic or Sugar Substitute?

Some housekeeping first: sorry about the break. I actually had one friend call me on it, noting my goal of weekly posts during the offseason (only thing is that it took him a few months before he read the last post).

It's about time to get back into the swing of things. The 2009 season is just around the corner. Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training next week, with the position players soon to follow. Despite the lack of recent posts, I am really excited for the upcoming season (not to mention this Spring's World Baseball Classic, which I love and I hope will be simulcast on ESPN360.com; I must be the only sports blogger without cable or satellite TV, but that's another story).

I received the daily quasi-spam email from the folks at Baseball Prospectus today, and it reminded me about my not-so-regular series of new and obscure baseball stats. They always have a Stat of the Day section that is interesting. But most days, like today, they involve a statistic that I am totally unfamiliar with. Today's Stat of the Day was a list of the Best Available Free-Agent Hitters.

The statistic they used to rank their top five was EqA.

I looked it up in the Baseball Prospectus statistic glossary, and learned that is stands for Equivalent Average. Here's the rest of the explanation:

"A measure of total offensive value per out, with corrections for league offensive level, home park, and team pitching. EQA considers batting as well as baserunning, but not the value of a position player's defense. The EqA adjusted for all-time also has a correction for league difficulty. The scale is deliberately set to approximate that of batting average. League average EqA is always equal to .260. EqA is derived from Raw EqA, which is (H + TB + 1.5*(BB + HBP + SB) + SH + SF) divided by (AB + BB + HBP + SH + SF + CS + SB). REqA is then normalized to account for league difficulty and scale to create EqA." -Baseball Prospectus | Glossary

So breaking down the math, and decompressing the abbreviations, this is the formula just explained: Add walks (BB), beanballs (HBP), and stolen bases (SB). Multiply the sum by 1.5, then add hits (H) and total bases (TB). Then you divide that number by the sum of at bats (AB), walks (BB), beanballs (HBP), sacrifice hits (SH), sacrifice flys (SF), times caught stealing (CS), and stolen bases (SB). That will give you a players "Raw EqA," or REqA. Then it's normalized (what ever that means), and the result is EqA.

So, here's their list:
1. Manny Ramirez, .344
2. Adam Dunn, .300
3. Bobby Abreu, .290
4. Ray Durham, .285
5. Orlando Hudson, .276

Seems like a lot of work to show that Manny Ramirez is the best hitter still on the free-agent market. I could have told you that – without all of the algebra.