Applying the "Unearned Run" Principal to Other Sports Stats

In baseball, there is a such thing as an unearned run. It's a run that not the pitcher's fault because some player on his team made an error. Errors themselves are not exactly cut and dry: "could the player have caught the ball?", "did they touch the ball?" and "is this a catch you expect the player to make?" are all questions asked before an official scorer gives an "E" or a hit. I think this is a great way of figuring out the true performance of a pitcher. While the pitcher should be expected to hunker down and not let runners score even when an error is made, the fact that a run resulted from that error can't always be seen as a pitcher's fault. Here's a few other statistics in sports that need to be changed among the same principal idea:

Eli Manning's numbers would look a lot better if tINTs were taken out (WSJ)

NFL -- The Tipped Interception: Eli Manning has had a really good season overall. He has the 5th-most passing yards in the league and is tied for Phillip Rivers for the most passing touchdowns...but he has 13 interceptions to 19 touchdowns, a pretty bad ratio for someone considered an "elite" quarterback. Those 13 INTs put him second-worst in the league to Brett Favre. But anyone who has watched the Giants this season know that Eli Manning didn't truly throw 13 INTs--over half (the Wall Street Journal says at least seven) of those were balls that were either tipped or went through the hands of a receiver right into the arms of a waiting defensive back. Tom Coughlin calls it a "damn plague". In my opinion, those types of picks need to be separated from the chuck-em-up-into-a-crowd INTs (which Manning will throw some of as well). My proposal? A tINT stat that measures the amount of balls that were tipped for INTs. Now balls that the QB threw horribly, a receiver gets his fingertips on and is intercepted by the defense doesn't count here (some of it will take a scorekeeper's ruling like an error), but this will help separate real INTs from the Tipped Interceptions.

MLB -- Team Errors. I know we already have the unearned run in baseball, but we need the team error as well. A pop up to shallow right has the right fielder, second baseman and first baseman all racing for it. All 3 get there but then they look at each other as the ball falls to the ground. No one touched it so no one can be charged with an error, but is this truly the pitcher's fault? No. This should go as an error as well. E-Team. It is totally ridiculous that a player usually has to touch the ball to get an error (mostly in the outfield) since many of the time the issue is that the player doesn't touch the ball. If a player should have caught it but there really is no one to give the error to, just give it to the whole goddamn team. It's totally ridiculous that the announcers blame the ball for falling into the "Bermuda Triangle" when it really just falls in between a bunch of fielders who should have caught it. E-Team.

NHL -- Defenseless Goals. Goalies have a hard job. They face 30-40 shots a night and are expected by fans to turn them all away. But once in a while you get a situation where a goalie can't do anything to stop a goal from occurring. A breakaway, a bad turnover in the defensive zone, or a missed defensive assignment leaving a wide open man in front of the net seem to be goals waiting to happen no matter if you have Patrick Roy or Roy Rodgers in goal. So that's why the defensive goals will be separated from the other goals so you can get a true average of how well the goalie does. Basketball has fast break points and uncontested shots and this would be a combination of the two in one stat that will help separate the goalies with great defenses in front of them (my argument over the years for why Martin Brodeur was so successful) from the goalies with great skills.

NBA -- Secondary Assists and Plus/Minus. Hockey and basketball share many of the same aspects in their sports but one thing that the NBA should steal from the NHL is secondary assists and plus/minus rating. Sometimes a great play is the result of only two players and they get the points and assist credited to them. But what happens when a third player gets involved and helps out? Let's measure secondary assists as well! And while we're poaching from the NHL, let's take plus/minus. David Lee had a great season last year for the Knicks, scoring over 20 points a game. But if you added up all the points scored against him, I'm pretty sure you'd have a net loss. Actually, you definitely would with his porous defense. So his +/- rating would be something like -24 a game or -24560 for the season or some way to truly measure whether this guy is a positive out on the court. It's like how Wins Above Replacement in baseball takes into account the guys positives (or negatives) on offense and combines it with his positives (or negatives) on defense to see how many runs he's actually worth. The NBA needs this to put a guy like Lee in better context.

What do you think? Are there any new stats you'd like to see introduced in the four major sports? Let us know below.