FANALYTICS: 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, 7x7 ... 3x3?

When Dan Okrent and his group of French food aficionados played their first season of Rotisserie League baseball in the early 1980s, it was a 4x4, 8-category game. It was home runs, RBIs, stolen bases, batting average, wins, saves, ERA and the ratio of hits and walks to innings pitched (which they called "Ratio").

Most of us early adopters were awed by the near-perfect elegance of these categories. It would be a full decade before anyone questioned them, or dared try to tweak them.

When 5x5 games started taking hold in the late 1990s, it was not without some controversy. The marketplace had decided to add the categories of runs and pitcher strikeouts. But the official Rotisserie League Baseball book—by then run by John Benson—decreed...

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