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In 1980, Major League Baseball started keeping track of a statistic called the game winning RBI. But due to controversy, they stopped keeping track of it after 1988.

Are there any other statistics in any sport that were used at one point but are no longer used for whatever reason?

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hopefully in a few years, pitcher wins and losses will be on this scrap heap. –  wax eagle Jul 14 '14 at 19:31
I disagree with wins and losses. While not important as runs allowed it still serves a purpose. Would rather have a pitcher that is 18-9 with a 4.2 ERA than 11-15 with the same ERA. The person with the worse ERA might have greater deviations (horrible games) that jump their runs allowed. Also there are some stats to support pitchers pitching up or down to competition. –  Coach-D Oct 11 '14 at 21:14
I think it's more that W-L don't have much predictive ability, but they do tell the story of what actually happened, which is easy to forget for statisticians. It may not predict a pitcher's future record that he was 11-15 or 18-9, but it does say what happened that year, just like the guy who has a .389/.415/.700 line because of a .500 BABIP. Not likely to repeat, sure, but still a relevant statistic to describe what occurred that year. –  Joe Nov 10 '14 at 22:31

1 Answer 1

I don't think there is an answer for this. GWRBI (which used to be on the back of Topps baseball cards) may not be tracked officially by MLB but it is still something you can look up.

The fact is once data is out there it can always support a stat. You can't take away a stat unless you take away underlying data. Which is virtually impossible with all the new advanced metrics sites.

Now I could give you an example. Let's say they look at a players caloric input for a day to determine if what he eats affects performance, and then they stop asking players for this info. It would have to be something like that. Player movement, hard stats, all the stuff we have become accustomed to isn't going away. Just because something isn't official doesn't mean no one looks at it.

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