PHOENIX—The entire field of sabermetrics was thrown into a frenzied panic Thursday after a previously undocumented at bat from former St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Lou Brock on August 3, 1975 forced sabermetricians to completely rethink their understanding of the sport of baseball. “So if you plug Brock’s 3-2 count and ground out into the OPS formula, the standard deviation and expected value for every single player and team is completely off—goddammit, none of this makes sense now,” said visibly anxious Society for American Baseball Research sabermetrician Tony Branham, sweating profusely as he pored over thousands of pages of statistics from the last 30 MLB seasons. “The Total Pitcher Index, Wins Above Replacement, Batter-Fielder Wins, batting averages, ERAs, RBIs—that one third-inning at bat against the Cubs makes all of this stuff meaningless. How the hell does baseball work?” At press time, based on the new understanding of sabermetrics, Braham confirmed that former New York Yankees centerfielder Mickey Mantle did not actually exist.

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