Sabermetric

Early history

Before Bill James popularized sabermetrics, Davey Johnson, then a second baseman playing for the early 1970s Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball (MLB), used an IBM System/360 at team owner Jerold Hoffberger's brewery to write a FORTRAN-based baseball computer simulation. In spite of his results, he was unable to persuade his manager Earl Weaver that he should bat second in the lineup. He wrote IBM BASIC programs to help him manage the Tidewater Tides, and after becoming manager of the New York Mets in 1984, he arranged for a team employee to write a dBASE II application to compile and store advanced metrics on team statistics. Craig R. Wright was another employee in MLB, working with the Texas Rangers in the early 1980s. During his time with the Rangers, he became known as the first front office employee in MLB history to work under the title "sabermetrician".