Saber Bomb: Fun With FORP

Saber Bombs are MLB FanHouse's introduction to sabermetrics, those new and sometimes unwieldy metrics that are changing the way we think about baseball. Each post highlights a specific stat, player, team or media member either embodying that understanding, or missing the boat completely.

Since I know there are at least a few of you out there that don't think too highly of these new-fangled statistics, I decided to highlight an Alex Belth piece over at Sports Illustrated that dropped earlier today. As some of you may or may not know, one popular metric is VORP (value over replacement player). It measures how many runs a player at a given position scores above what a replacement player would contribute at the same position.

Today, Belth turns a new twist on the stat with FORP or "fun over replacement player." (He writes his friend Emma Span coined the term earlier this year.) Predictably, it measures which players are the most fun to watch and "exude the most joy" on the field.

It's totally based on opinion -- so haters of mathematical algorithms take solace! Belth names Jose Reyes as his posterboy for VORP -- eh, can't really argue there. My boy Eric Byrnes in on there too, so three cheers to Belth for that.

Personally, I would have liked to see this list extend beyond current players. ~~Kenny Lofton~~ (Belth lists him as a player with the least amount of FORP, thanks to commenter Davey for that. Also, Lofton is still in the league. I'm an idiot.) comes to mind as does Lance Johnson and -- due to recent events -- Bo Jackson.