Focus: The Instigator Rule. The NHL adopted the instigator penalty in 1992 which gave any player caught starting a fight an extra two minutes in the penalty box. This directly affected the ability of the players to police themselves. Not only are fights an exciting part about hockey but since the instigator penalty was adopted injuries have occurred much more frequently. The game is more safe if the players can police themselves. If threatened with an ass kicking or a teammate getting beat players are less likely to use cheap shots against the opposing team. The NHL also needs to get rid of the five minute penalty and ejection for a player starting a fight during overtime or the last five minutes during the third period. My biggest gripe of all is the main man himself, Gary Bettman. He has ruined hockey. He has fucked it up beyond belief. He has failed to discipline referees who have determined the outcome of games, was unable to negotiate with ESPN and opted instead to move the NHL to Versus, expanded into markets in which hockey teams have no place existing and has failed to move teams from poor markets to good markets when the opportunity existed.
X is a huge variable that throws the stats off not only from a mathematical standpoint, but also from a practical "I believe my own eyes" standpoint. While baseball is able to somewhat sort through the various types of hits through a 4 base system, football has 100 yards (that if you believe Al Pacino you fight for every inch of) that are in play. Also, a QB can throw a pass 20ish yards from him (I'm assuming that's about how far a 'hike, throw the ball directly to whichever side' throw is) and the WR takes it 90 yards and the QB gets the passing stats. Baseball is essentially an individual sport because it is totally about players doing their jobs. A great right fielder does nothing to help 3B other than the batter favoring hitting towards LF to avoid the RF'er. Shortstop and second base need a connection as do pitcher and catcher, other than that its get the best guys and you're likely to win.
How very convenient of you to completely ignore basketball for the purpose of this discussion, which has fewer discrete outcomes than baseball does, not more. By your logic, sabremetrics should have handled basketball even easier than it has baseball. And yet, it hasn't. In fact, it's the complete opposite. Oh! I have an even clearer example; boxing. That has the simplest, dullest discrete outcomes in the world; a win, loss, or draw. And yet, sabremetrics are completely useless there.
There may be fewer possible outcomes from a possession during a basketball game (two, three, foul, turnover, etc.) than baseball, but the probability of any of those occurring is dependent on many more factors. Whether a possession is successful in basketball is influenced by who handles the ball, the opposing team, the defending player, the play if there is one, the range and type of shot, the transition time....) Basically a team sport like basketball or football is much more dynamic than baseball. The conditional probability of scoring is based on too many variables to say anything meaningful. Baseball is much easier to model statistically because the outcome of an at bat is more static. The environment in which players are measured changes very little throughout the game. The majority of the time each player hits with incentives based on his position in the lineup. Factors that impact a players success are the pitcher, the weather, and the ump. Based on those parameters and the large number of at bats, it is possible to come up with statics on the outcome of the at bat that are reasonably good indicator of future performance. The personal success of a baseball player is independent from his team. The same can't be said in other team sports. The fact that baseball is an individual sport is one reason that it can be quantified, but it still all goes back to the limited number of outcomes of an at bat, based on controlled parameters. \
Exactly! But why are there are more factors in basketball than baseball? It's mostly because of the team interaction, which isn't present in the latter. That's a very different variable than simply the number of discrete outcomes, right? Precisely. Couldn't have written it better myself.