Batting Average Leaders

[The Ultimate Champion]

I was thinking earlier today while I was taking a s*** about how a good way to quantify a teams pitching performance might be to compare total batters faced to total outs recorded in the full season, and then just comparing that figure to the league averages. You need to face a minimum of batters anyway, but how many extra PA are we allowing beyond what is necessary and how does this compare to the league average? Then just go down the list, each pitcher gets a ratio of batters faced to outs recorded, each number is compared to league averages, and we base our decisions (i.e. the Danks decision) on this. Rather than money.

 

Anyway stats are great in theory. But you want as many useful ones as possible and you want them to be as unique as possible so you can find different opportunities in them and so on.

[greg775]

I was thinking earlier today while I was taking a s*** about how a good way to quantify a teams pitching performance might be to compare total batters faced to total outs recorded in the full season, and then just comparing that figure to the league averages. You need to face a minimum of batters anyway, but how many extra PA are we allowing beyond what is necessary and how does this compare to the league average? Then just go down the list, each pitcher gets a ratio of batters faced to outs recorded, each number is compared to league averages, and we base our decisions (i.e. the Danks decision) on this. Rather than money.

 

Anyway stats are great in theory. But you want as many useful ones as possible and you want them to be as unique as possible so you can find different opportunities in them and so on.

The first 11 words of your post usurp the meat of your post and are kind of gross IMO.

[hi8is]

The first 11 words of your post usurp the meat of your post and are kind of gross IMO.

Poop.

[Eminor3rd]

The first 11 words of your post usurp the meat of your post and are kind of gross IMO.

 

Poop.

 

lol

[witesoxfan]

I was thinking earlier today while I was taking a s*** about how a good way to quantify a teams pitching performance might be to compare total batters faced to total outs recorded in the full season, and then just comparing that figure to the league averages. You need to face a minimum of batters anyway, but how many extra PA are we allowing beyond what is necessary and how does this compare to the league average? Then just go down the list, each pitcher gets a ratio of batters faced to outs recorded, each number is compared to league averages, and we base our decisions (i.e. the Danks decision) on this. Rather than money.

 

Anyway stats are great in theory. But you want as many useful ones as possible and you want them to be as unique as possible so you can find different opportunities in them and so on.

 

I think if we ever get access to batted ball MPH's - how hard guys hit balls off of pitchers on average and on what pitches - it's going to totally revolutionize how we evaluate pitchers. You look at a guy like Belisario's peripheral statistics and see his ERA of 5.43 and you kind of wonder how that's possible - solid K numbers, fantastic ground ball rate, good control, not prone to giving up a homer, an inability to strand runners (which is and isn't skill...some luck, some lack of pitching), and a higher BABIP than normal - and you think to yourself "well why has he been so bad?" I think some of it has to do with dumb luck (seeing-eye singles and duck farts) and some of it has to do with the fact that opponents hit the ball really hard against him.

 

If and when we ever get access to that (in future situations), we could hopefully help figure out which is luck and which is not. A ground ball rate that high is good, but if you hit a ground ball 100 MPH into the holes on either side of the infield, there are not many guys who can get to those. Strong contact, as opposed to weak contact, will allow more hits and runs.

 

I thin it will also allow us to see why some guys who consistently outperform FIP and xFIP - Mark Buehrle and Tim Hudson - will be properly credited with the numbers they do as I think that will be worked into the equation. That to me, more than anything, will help us determine the true quality of a pitcher.

[Eminor3rd]

I agree, I even said that WAR has a lot of very practical uses. But it and others are also overused a lot, and used inappropriately a lot, and some of these other stats really aren't any better than the ones currently being shat upon (which themselves are actually useful, like BA).

 

Ideally you want access to a lot of different and unique stats which are valuable because they tell a very small but specific part of the overall story. The more things you can try to quantify and define, the more possible puzzle pieces you have to work with. At the end of the day you want to piece together the big picture. That is how you make the best decisions. But focusing on one puzzle piece and trying to replicate it in as many places as possible doesn't add detail, and it doesn't make the larger picture even possible.

 

This isn't even about WAR. It's not even related. My entire argument is about trying to use the right stat for the job depending upon the question that's being asked. This is what I'm talking about: sometimes everything that comes out of my mouth (fingers?) gets turned into "CHOOSE THE WS CHAMPION BY WAR WE HAVE EVERYTHING FIGURED OUT."

 

The crux of my argument is you must choose the information that best answers the question you are asking. If you have the right tool for the job, that tool is NOT being "overused."

 

Look. Here's the question: Is player X good at hitting? So, what does batting average tell you that OBP doesn't? It implies a factor of "extra damage" -- if a guy has more hits, he has more chances for extra base hits and to move runners around. But it's lacking there because it doesn't tell you anything about how many of those hits actually DO end up being extra base hits. It also doesn't tell how often those runners ARE going to move up.

 

But we have something that does! SLG is measurement of total bases. When shown next to OBP, it paints a vivid picture! Here's how often this guy gets on base and then here's also how powerful those "times on base" are! OBP is better than BA at showing how often a guy does something positive, and SLG is better than BA at showing how much of an impact those positive things have. What is left for batting average? If you're trying to evaluate how much a guy is gonna help your team, what does it tell us that the others don't?

 

Now, if the question is "is this dude a contact hitter," or "is he going to put a lot of balls in play" or "is his success going to be partially dependent on his speed," batting average would be a useful number to cite!

Because it's a different question we're asking, and batting average would be the right tool.

 

The problem, in general, with stats (not just in baseball) is their rampant MISUSE. People cite part of the story when they want to support a narrative they've already decided upon supporting at all costs. Like Dayan Viciedo. When the questions is "is Viciedo good and worth having on the team," the refrain will always be, "but he's only X years removed from hitting 25 homers!" This is dishonest because it intentionally warps context to make it sound like the guy had a good season. It was a terrible season! It was only "good" under the lens that it hopefully didn't represent his ceiling. He did EVERYTHING else poorly at the plate, on the basepaths, and in the field. If someone makes that argument, you have to come back with the information that tells the true story about how he performed that year.

 

Part of being able to make a complete argument is selecting the information that is applicable to the argument. This means ignoring information that does not get you closer to the truth. Greg argues that, if you want to know if a hitter is making a positive contribution, batting average is always going to get you closer to the truth than OBP/SLG and his evidence is that he sees batting average more often on TV. Greg is flat-out wrong. And it has nothing to with WAR, it has to do with common sense.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Eminor3rd

[Eminor3rd]

I was thinking earlier today while I was taking a s*** about how a good way to quantify a teams pitching performance might be to compare total batters faced to total outs recorded in the full season, and then just comparing that figure to the league averages. You need to face a minimum of batters anyway, but how many extra PA are we allowing beyond what is necessary and how does this compare to the league average? Then just go down the list, each pitcher gets a ratio of batters faced to outs recorded, each number is compared to league averages, and we base our decisions (i.e. the Danks decision) on this. Rather than money.

 

Anyway stats are great in theory. But you want as many useful ones as possible and you want them to be as unique as possible so you can find different opportunities in them and so on.

 

It would be an interesting stat. But you'd also have to control for quality of defense and quality of opposition somehow.

[The Ultimate Champion]

I think if we ever get access to batted ball MPH's - how hard guys hit balls off of pitchers on average and on what pitches - it's going to totally revolutionize how we evaluate pitchers. You look at a guy like Belisario's peripheral statistics and see his ERA of 5.43 and you kind of wonder how that's possible - solid K numbers, fantastic ground ball rate, good control, not prone to giving up a homer, an inability to strand runners (which is and isn't skill...some luck, some lack of pitching), and a higher BABIP than normal - and you think to yourself "well why has he been so bad?" I think some of it has to do with dumb luck (seeing-eye singles and duck farts) and some of it has to do with the fact that opponents hit the ball really hard against him.

 

If and when we ever get access to that (in future situations), we could hopefully help figure out which is luck and which is not. A ground ball rate that high is good, but if you hit a ground ball 100 MPH into the holes on either side of the infield, there are not many guys who can get to those. Strong contact, as opposed to weak contact, will allow more hits and runs.

 

I thin it will also allow us to see why some guys who consistently outperform FIP and xFIP - Mark Buehrle and Tim Hudson - will be properly credited with the numbers they do as I think that will be worked into the equation. That to me, more than anything, will help us determine the true quality of a pitcher.

There's a lot of potential there I think, as you say.

 

BABIP is my most hated stat and what you say would jab a knife right into the heart of that. Guys who mentally are off all year, high contact guys or guys who still make contact close to career rates but who are "unlucky" I hate that stuff. Being in front of everything slow and behind everything harder to the tun of hard-hit balls right to the 2B and lots of weak little grounders to SS - there's nothing involving luck there. The pitchers are actually probably doing less to get the same hitters out consistently, and the scouting report doesn't have to change much because they keep rolling over/Alex Riosing the ball the again and again. Having stats related to speed of the ball off the bat, point of contact, bat position at point of contact, that's a f***ing gold mine.

 

I made a thread a while ago about barreling the ball up, I just have a suspicious/guess that if you had the ability to view point of contact as a range in a zone you'd call the barrel, I think you'd probably find statistically that some of the best hitters (guys who consistently make strong contact and hit the ball hard, especially to all fields) have an innate, unteachable skill that allows them to keep the bat barrell in a closer proximity to the ball than everyone else, and I think that you'd probably find trends where these guys keep these abilities even as their physical bodies age and as they lose skills. If you could isolate point of contact only, i.e. keep out all non-contact scenarios and ignore the number of PA/AB when looking at it, and view a stat as an integer + or - from 0 where 0 was perfect point of contact and + goes toward the end of the bat and - moves toward the handle, then I think you would have a pretty damn good idea who in the minor you would NEVER trade as well as what hitters you really would not mind giving 7-10 year contracts to (remembering the value of insurance in the worst conditions).

 

And I think mr. wite that if we had a stat/way of measuring like what you are talking about and a stat/way of measuring like I am talking about, you know what else we'd be able to do? We'd probably be able to figure out who can and cannot bunt. The bunt is one of the best defense killers in the game, maybe the best one. It's like a grenade but you can only benefit from it if you throw the thing far enough away from you and close enough to your target. You can hurt your own team with a bunt as much as you can help it and hurt the opposition, but that doesn't mean it isn't a terrific tool for the right players to use in the right situations. But people are scared of it/don't want to see it because their players all suck balls at doing it. But say you found a hitter who couldn't barrel the ball up at an elite level, routinely caught it more toward the end of the bat, and you had the ability to monitor things like speed of the ball off the bat, etc. This is someone who in the minors spends 20+% of his PA bunting the baseball, especially if he's speedy and left-handed, and you don't call him up until he masters it. Now maybe you have a real weapon, and even if the infielders come in every time, then the extra bat control would likely make him far more capable of shooting the ball past the fielder for a hit. And with runners going that's a 2-base play and who knows, maybe you get them to make an error on the throw.

 

Re: Belisario though he just can't keep the f***ing ball down. I highly doubt Coop is telling him "leave all your sinkers up in the zone today, Bella." Farmio and Hawk both always talk about a sinkerballer having two pitches, a sinker and a stinker. Belisario has everything you want, velocity, late movement, 2-plan break, but he leaves the goddamn baseball up every single time out there. All the hitter has to do is stick the bat out there, not over swing, and Belisario provides the velocity for him. Just putting a decent swing on one of his middle of the plate, thigh-high sinkers can get the ball to bounce off the OF wall. He's basically Maikel Cleto, only he's got a sinker instead a few mph slower, and he's in the strikezone more than out of it. Overall just as erratic and ineffective as he is talented.

Edited September 19, 2014 by The Ultimate Champion

[The Ultimate Champion]

It would be an interesting stat. But you'd also have to control for quality of defense and quality of opposition somehow.

Yeah it would be a stat IMO you'd use more like WAR or something, as a starting point, and then you'd dig deeper from there. A lot of the major stats are really just starting points of the discussion IMO and then you would want to look at things situationally and so forth and get video on things.

 

For us as fans we don't have time or access for all the really deep analysis and all that but for a Major League organization that, even when they make relatively "small" player personnel decisions such as bringing in a veteran bench bat or signing a middle reliever, are literally talking about margins of error that cost millions of dollars. Eric Surkamp is at least as capable if not more so than Scott Downs is right here in 2014, and the difference there is what almost $4M or $3.5M or something? You can't win 'em all but any time you'd want to make a major decision you'd want to look into it as much as possible & pay the right people to analyze everything.

[Eminor3rd]

Yeah it would be a stat IMO you'd use more like WAR or something, as a starting point, and then you'd dig deeper from there. A lot of the major stats are really just starting points of the discussion IMO and then you would want to look at things situationally and so forth and get video on things.

 

For us as fans we don't have time or access for all the really deep analysis and all that but for a Major League organization that, even when they make relatively "small" player personnel decisions such as bringing in a veteran bench bat or signing a middle reliever, are literally talking about margins of error that cost millions of dollars. Eric Surkamp is at least as capable if not more so than Scott Downs is right here in 2014, and the difference there is what almost $4M or $3.5M or something? You can't win 'em all but any time you'd want to make a major decision you'd want to look into it as much as possible & pay the right people to analyze everything.

 

It's crazy to think that Scott Downs vs. Surkamp is a $4m decision that is kinda like "meh oh well," when there's probably a sales guy in the organization somewhere just BEGGING for a $5,000 increase on his base pay.