BP Unfiltered: How to Read a Canadian Leaderboard

Was checking up on an old friend who is playing in the Can-Am League this season and ran into a little bit of trouble: French names for baseball statistics are apparently different enough that the abbreviations are unrecognizable! These are the team starts for the Quebec Capitales; let's see if we can sort this out.

MENEURS AU BÂTON

MENEURS AU MONTICULE

So the basic things we can figure with no problem: Meneurs Au Baton appears above hitting, so I'll guess that those are Batsmen. (Men of Bats?) Meneurs Au Monticule are pitchers, so… Men of Mounds? Moundsmen?

The hitting stats seem to follow the regular order that you'd see on the back of a Topps (or, I guess, O-Pee-Chee) card: MOY is batting average. PJ is games, and AB is, blessedly, at-bats. P is runs, I'm guessing—though the ratio of runs to games played is a little higher than I'd expect. The P = R hypothesis is strengthened by PP being where RBIs would go, and in between we have CS for hits and CC for home runs. 2B and 3B suggest that B is for bases in French, as well. BV stumps me; it's where I might expect walks to go, but it sort of defies belief that Jordan Lennerton and Lachlan Fontaine would both be this far into the season and still qualified for the DiSars. And there's no BV for the pitchers. The rate seems too high to be sacrifice bunts–and too many of those BVs are going to power hitters. Oh, duh, it's stolen bases. I'm an idiot. It's stolen bases. There's B for base again.

The pitcher stats: V for victories, D for defeats, MPM is ERA, M would presumably be runs, except that if ML is innings (must be) the ERAs (or MPMs) don't correlate to the Ms per nine MLs. Or, for that matter to the MCs per nine MLs. MCs are uniformly lower than Ms, which suggests that MCs are by definition a portion of Ms, which would lead you to conclude that MCs are either earned runs or unearned runs. But, again, no combination of these possibilities (in coordination with MLs being innings) would support MPM being ERA (or RA), and MPM has to be ERA, right? Just take Karl Gelinas: He has a MPM of 8.40 in 15 innings. That works out to exactly 14 runs. You don't land on that by coincidence. So we know MPM is ERA, and we now know ML is innings, but… there's no 14 on his line. So…

Okay, just figured it out. I'm an idiot again. M is obviously games. MC is games started. SA is saves (they're overwhelmingly distributed to the relief pitchers). RAB is strikeouts, BB is walks and CS is hits, as it was for the hitters. Which leaves only BL, which is 0 for everybody. Wedged between games started and saves, I'd guess complete games.

Now then: Let's actually translate this dude. Baseball-Reference is, unsurprisingly, our best friend here: It has a glossary of (many) French baseball terms.

Baton is bat and Monticule is mound, Meneurs is actually leaders, according to Google Translate, which means these are literally batting and mound leaderboards. MOY is for moyenne au bâton, or average of batting. AB is for "au baton," as in la présence au bâton. P is for point, as in le point marqué, or point mark. CS, hits, is for le coup sûr, which Google tells me is literally "sure stroke." Or "sure hit." CC is for le coup de circuit, or the stroke (or hit) of circuit. PP is le point produit, or point product. And BV is, yes, stolen bases, or le but volé.

V and D are victoire and défaite. MPM is la moyenne de points mérités, or the average of points earned. BL seems to be for shutout, or le blanchissage, which Google translates to "laundry." Dunno. I still assume SA is for saves, though the French word for the stat is la victoire protégée, or victory protected. I still assume ML is for innings, which are la manche lancee. (Lancee is pitched.) RAB is strikeouts, which are called le retrait sur des prises or, it appears, sometimes le retrait sur trois prises. BB is for le but sur balles, literally base on balls.

That leaves PJ (for hitters) and M and MC (for pitchers). Google translates "games played" to parties jouées (jouer is play, partie is one word for game). And the C in MC is presumably for commencé. I have no idea what the M could be for. Any help?

Update: M is for Matches, which is French for Matches. And the French word for saves is Sauvees. Thanks to Garth, among others, for filling in those blanks.