The primary insight in Moneyball was to judge hitters on on-base percentage. In 2000, OBP was the metric to exploit because it had four qualities at once: a mechanism (plate discipline), it persisted season to season, it mapped to runs, and the market still had it mispriced.
The question for a slice is the same. Not was it good once, but what about this shop is likely to be true again? Across 57,498 One Bite reviews (2018–2026), shop ratings hold year to year at a corrected slope near 0.63 — a real signal, not a lottery ball. So the pizza OBP isn't the highest rating; it's the quality that reputation hasn't fully priced in.
The current rating is a strong first guess. A shop rated 10.0 off three reviews probably isn't a 10, so that guess gets pulled toward the average by sample size. Then a handful of review signals nudge it up or down.
Underrated isn't best, and famous isn't overrated. A shop can be overlooked but merely solid, or a household name that's genuinely elite. The map keeps reputation and evidence on separate axes instead of collapsing them into one ranking.
Grease is a low walk rate: structural, sticky, and forever excused as "real New York grease." The skip list is mostly the inflated and the greasy.