FJM has gone dark for the foreseeable future. Sorry folks. We may post once in a while, but it's pretty much over.
You can still e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach.
Ken Griffey Jr. and Adam Dunn don't have the best batting averages, but Reds manager Dusty Baker doesn't plan on doing anything different with the two sluggers when it comes to filling out a lineup card.
NATIONAL HOLIDAY!
Griffey's .236 average and Dunn's .230 average are the two worst of any active everyday starter. Only part-time catcher Paul Bako's (.213) is lower. But Griffey, the No. 3 hitter, and Dunn, the No. 5 hitter, are leading the way when it comes to on-base percentage, and for that reason, Baker isn't planning any changes.
Baker, long a skeptic of sabermetrics, the study of baseball statistics, began reading a blog called Fire Joe Morgan late Sunday afternoon.
"Those fellas make some good points," Baker said. "They're profane as hell, and they're probably gay, but they make some good points."
That's not what he said. What he said was:
"Their averages are low, but their on-base percentages are still high," Baker said. "Their on-base percentages are higher than some of the guys who are hitting.
I'm afraid. This is some parallel dream world, right? I've just taken salvia and fallen into a utopian fantasyscape populated by black David Dukes, funny Robin Williamses and OBP-loving Dusty Bakers. That is the only explanation.
Why do you love OBP, Dusty? Tell us tell us tell us all of the reasons!
I know they can hit, but it also helps to get on base and put a pitcher in the stretch. That's the thing. Most starters don't like being in the stretch."
Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
I feel sick.
The only...reason...to...get...on base...is...to...put...the pitcher...in the stretch?
?!
!
?
!?
On the list of good things about being on base, the order goes, roughly:
1. You're on base.
2. You didn't make an out.
3. Again, great, hey -- you're on base.
...
...
...
One million, four hundred thousand. The pitcher is in the stretch.
Besides loving OBP, Dusty Baker is also a big fan of the French Laundry.
"It's the most amazing place," said Baker. "What I liked best about it was that they give you a piece of fabric you can use to wipe your mouth, wipe your hands -- whatever you want. They call it a 'napkin.' I highly recommend the French Laundry."
---
ADDENDUM:
I'm actually happy for Dusty. It is a legitimate point to make that pitchers, in general, are a little worse from the stretch. It's just funny that he hates OBP so much that he feels like he has to bring up something relatively insignificant (compared to JUST BEING ON BASE IN THE FIRST PLACE) to justify even talking about it.
Reader Cletus adds:
While I agree that "getting on base" and "not making one or more outs" are by far at the top, putting the pitcher in the stretch is part of the story.
The actual impact is slightly larger, given a runner on first is not a guarantee that the pitcher will go from the stretch (e.g., blowout, LHP with good move, Jack Cust on first, etc.). But even +37 points of OPS is nothing to sneeze at. It's virtually the only aspect of "lineup protection" worth caring about.
Caveat: A little bit of that will be selection bias: Good pitchers will be pitching more often with no one on, thus a mildly disproportionate amount of those 102,842 PA will be against pitchers with low WHIPs.
And another helpful caveat from Ed: Good hitters tend to be clustered together at the top of the lineup. So, for example, your #2 hitter will have a runner on first far more frequently than your #9 hitter.
You guys know how we feel about Juan Pierre. We like him as a dude. We like the way it looks like he's borrowing a giant man's helmet. We like calling him John Peter. And we think he stinks at baseball.
Just for giggles and shits, I plugged the phrase "Juan Pierre" into our Bill Simmons 1980's Movie Reference Software (available at BestBuy), and here's what I got:
"In the world of out machines, Juan Pierre is the WOPR." Not bad for $24.95!
And now, take it away, Jayson Addcox of mlb.com! What is it about the on-base percentage that a player like Juan Pierre -- who leads the Dodgers in at-bats, runs scored, hits, stolen bases, triples and games played -- gets knocked for not having his higher than .350?
So much to digest, so quickly. Let's chuck the grammatical wonkiness out the window and just try to deal with the question at hand: Why does Juan Pierre get knocked for having an on-base percentage below .350? I made a list!
1) Because he's a lead-off hitter. 2) Because he has no power to make up for his lack of OBP. 3) Because he's being paid $45 million by the Dodgers. 4) Because his OBP isn't just a hair below .350 -- it's .324 this year. 5) Because .324 is good enough for 134th out of 171 eligible MLB batters. 6) Because there's a massive conspiracy against Juan Pierre.
By the way, why didn't he just say "gets knocked for not having his higher than .400"? It would have made Pierre look a lot better to anyone who was too lazy to look up his actual OBP.
Of course, Juan Pierre leads the Dodgers in triples, so I'm supposed to let it go, I guess. I'm supposed to forget that he's a lead-off hitter who doesn't walk for a second, and give him credit for leading the team in AB's? Wait -- hold on -- I'm supposed to be giving him credit at all for leading the team in AB's when in the same sentence you're admitting that he can't get on base? Ba-wuh?
He's batted in four different spots in the lineup this season. When he's hitting well, he's in the leadoff or No. 2 slot, but when he's slumping, manager Grady Little hasn't hesitated putting Pierre in the seventh or eighth slot.
I know I'm opening myself up to "you wouldn't know because you never played baseball" criticism here, but is it really so difficult to hit in different spots in the line-up? Does Juan Pierre's head explode when he sees that he's batting in the 7th spot? Is he suddenly going up to the plate and trying to catch the ball in his mouth because he has no idea how to hit 7th?
(Incidentally, I did play baseball, at least when I was young. Played 3rd base for my little league team. My coach encouraged me to play 3rd like a hockey goalie, and ended up earning the nickname "Reggie" that year thanks to late 80's Bruins goalie Rejean Lemelin. What were we talking about again?)
The issue with Pierre is that he doesn't walk. Plain and simple, his OBP suffers because he averages one walk every 21 at-bats. On the season, he has just 24 walks in 510 at-bats, which is the lowest in the Majors. On the flip side, Pierre doesn't strike out often, either. He has struck out just 32 times this season, which is once every 15.9 at-bats, making him the hardest batter to strike out in the Senior Circuit.
In the red corner: walking. Getting on base. Not getting out. Making the pitcher throw at least four pitches to you. Getting to first base so you can do the one thing you do well: steal bases.
In the blue corner: not striking out. In Pierre's case, finding other ways to get out. If you believe us, not really a good thing. Not a bad thing, just not a good thing.
Not striking out isn't "the flip side" of not walking. It's a different goddam coin. A coin that you keep in your pocket when talking about baseball because it's not really relevant, unless you want to talk about the virtues of the coin itself in a vacuum. You know what I mean. (Hopefully. Because I don't.)
Also, those of you who like not-striking-out-ability usually point to things like productive outs and "good things happening when you put the ball into play." Of course, Pierre's a lead-off hitter, so more than any other player in the line-up, he's going to have the lowest percentage of opportunities for "productive outs" anyway. This season, Pierre leads the Dodgers with 147 hits. He is fifth in the NL with 45 multi-hit games, he leads the Majors with 14 sacrifice bunts and he's second in the Majors only to Jose Reyes with 50 stolen bases, and yet his OBP supposedly isn't cutting it.
"Jayson, it's Darryl. Just going over your copy for the latest mlb.com article...No, yeah, it's fine. One thing. Looks like the word 'supposedly' somehow got into the last sentence of paragraph eight...Right...No? You sure?" "He's a disruptive force when's he's on base," Little said. "The other team has to be concerned with him regularly and it disrupts the pitcher. The whole key is for him to get on base and that's what we like."
Write it down, kids: When writing an article in support of Juan Pierre, it's okay to admit that he has a low OBP, as long as you quote the manager of his team saying that the whole key is for him to get on base. A thing, which, you've already pointed out, he does poorly.
Compared to some of the elite leadoff batters in the game, Pierre's .324 on-base percentage is considerably low. Reyes has an OBP of .375, Hanley Ramirez is at .392, Chone Figgins is at .392 and Ichiro is at .396, so the consensus is that a No. 1 or 2 hitter in the lineup needs to have a .350 or higher OBP.
How Angry Do You Think He Was When He Said This Stuff?
Jim Hendry is the general manager of the Chicago Cubs. The Chicago Cubs had, well, a comically bad offensive showing last year.
In short: among all major league clubs, the Cubs finished 17th in batting average, which wasn't good and wasn't bad. It was average. (The Red Sox did them only .001 better.) And yet the Cubbies somehow managed to parlay that .268 average into an on-base percentage of .319 (the lumbering Red Sox went for .351). Was that bad? Yes, it was very, very bad -- second-worst in baseball (to the Devil Rays, who batted .255, also worst in that category).
Where do you think the Cubs finished in runs scored? Well, they were third to last, nestled between the tiny-market, tiny-payrolled Pirates and Brewers.
Naturally, with these results, some complaints were raised. Perhaps there were some franchise-wide, deep, institutional problems here. Perhaps not.
Jim Hendry is finally, extremely begrudgingly, huffing- and puffingly sort of admitting that there were. Now, the headline of this Daily Herald article is
Higher on-base percentage to take higher priority with Cubs
but from his quotes, it really sounds like Hendry is fighting himself the whole way.
“We hired Gerald Perry, who was the hitting coach of the Oakland A’s,” Hendry told a gathering over the weekend as he mentioned the Cubs’ new hitting coach. “They’ve set the standards for higher on-base percentage and working the count.”
Grrr, thinks Hendry, that'll hold 'em. Damn nerds. How long can I keep myself from disparaging numbers and touting experience? Hendry: “Nobody sets out to ignore it. Guys don’t try to have lower on-base percentages. Certain guys in our game are still great players who don’t have high, high on-base percentages.
Backtrack. Defend. Backtrack. Come on. Your heart's not in this, Hendry. Stay the course, that's what I say.
I like that Hendry's defense here is to say "God, it's not like I'm telling the guys to try and get out, God." Humorously juvenile.
“Still, more importantly, you have to knock people in, knock the runs in the right way with two outs in the seventh, eighth and ninth inning.
Read that again. According to Jim Hendry, getting on base is less important than knocking in runs "the right way."
Jim Hendry's List of the Wrong Ways to Knock in Runs -Using a cricket bat -Catching the ball with your bare hand and throwing it into the gap -Forcing a balk -Grand slams (rally killers) -With one or zero outs (not clutch) -Walking (embarrassing) -During the first six innings (A-Rod style) -If you're a "run scorer" and not a "run producer" -With your face -With your ass
You can fluctuate the numbers a lot of different ways to create your own argument.
Here are the numbers I'm fluctuating. 17th in batting average. 29th in on-base percentage. 28th in runs scored. But again, those are just my fluctuationations. Certain guys are going to be run producers that you need, but they’re not extremely high on-base guys. A lot of times, you want somebody to hit one off the wall to knock in 2 and maybe not take that walk depending on who’s up next.
Right. You're going to want to hit a double because the guy coming up after you is a Chicago Cub and there's no way he's getting on base.
“It goes hand in hand with your experience level as much as looking at the back of a baseball card or a STATS, Inc., book on certain numbers.
I'm surprised he held it in that long. Forget the number of runs your team scored -- that's just a number. That's found on cards and in books. Last time I checked, baseball is played on a field, and unless that field is somehow sitting on a planet that's inside a galaxy shaped like a book, I don't want to hear about numbers.
That's experience talking.
The game’s all about two things: scoring runs and knocking in runs, and you have to have a balance of all of it.”
And pitching. You forgot pitching. (Although as reader Ben points out, perhaps he just doesn't care about pitching -- explains the Jason Marquis (2005 OPS+: 102) signing.)
Seriously, though, this little quote does indicate that Hendry genuinely believes the letter R ("scoring runs") and the letters RBI ("knocking in runs") are better measures of a player's offensive worth than the letters OBP. This even though Hey guys, I hired the A's hitting coach, whaddya want from me?
My point is: maybe the headline of this article wasn't so accurate.
There was an article a few days ago in a journal called the Boston Metro. It's not available online, except on page 20 of this digitally unwieldy pdf file. A few different readers pointed us to this one, so a specail FJM thanks to Patrick D., Bart L., and Fake G.
The author, Bob Halloran, not only writes for the Metro, but covers sports on-air for WCVB. My Dad once told me that the "V" is the roman numeral for "5," as in Channel Five Boston. Thanks Dad. Anyway, Halloran also used to work for ESPN. Go get 'em, Bob.
Say good-bye to “Moneyball.” We didn’t need on-base percentage (OBP) or on base plus slugging (OPS) to tell us that Ted Williams and Babe Ruth were great hitters.
You guys remember “Moneyball,” right? The book by Michael Lewis, where he chronicles the fight to prove that Babe Ruth and Ted Williams were great hitters by using only two statistics: OBP and OPS?
If you haven’t read it yet, you should really check it out. You’ll just fall in love with the main character, William Beane. For decades, not one human being could prove that either Ruth or Williams were great at baseball. Call it the baseball equivalent of Fermat’s Last Theorem. You’ll never guess how Beane finally proves his case – or maybe you already have! That’s right, he invents two new statistics called OBP and OPS. It’s like Andrew Wiles or that Beautiful Mind guy all over again.
Well, anyway, this Halloran dude doesn't seem to think very much of Beane’s efforts. Apparently – and I don’t know where people come up with this sort of thing – he thinks we could’ve known that Ruth and Williams were great without OBP or OPS.
I don’t know who to believe anymore!
Baseball remains a game of scoring runs and preventing runs. The best hitters are the ones who either score the runs or drive them in. It’s that simple.
It’s way more complicated than that. But let’s try to keep it relatively simple anyway. In general, yeah, the best players are usually around the top of the league in runs and / or RsBI. Sometimes they’re not. But sometimes great hitters don’t get the chance to score a lot of runs, or drive a lot of them in, for a number of reasons. Here are some of those reasons:
1) They hit in front of players who are bad 2) They hit behind players who are bad 3) They have a manager who insists on hitting them in, say, the 7 spot in the order because the manager thinks the player is “too young” or “not a great contact hitter” or some other bullshit 4) The majority of their at bats come in a “pitcher friendly” ballpark
Of course, the converse is also true. Players often have their run or RBI totals “inflated” because, say, they bat at the top of a tremendous line-up, or they bat behind Barry Bonds, or whatever. (There’s a great example, for those who own the 2001 Bill James H.B.A., of a hypothetical season in which Gino Cimoli drives in 151 runs batting behind Babe Ruth. It’s a bit of a cheat in this case because they’re walking Ruth every time, but you get the point. Fellow baseball nerds willing to spend inordinate percentages of disposable income on giant books can turn to page 785.)
Yes, individual performance influences Runs and Runs Batted In to a great degree. Unfortunately, they’re also influenced by the team you play for and the line-up you hit in. And that’s why they’re bad to use when evaluating individuals. Am I wrong in thinking that this is pretty basic stuff? Bob Halloran is paid by multiple news outlets to cover baseball. Do any of them care that he doesn’t get this?
[silence….a night watchmen at WCVB takes a slow sip of coffee…somewhere in the Boston Metro offices an old man empties a garbage basket into a larger garbage basket…Bob Halloran sleeps peacefully in his beautiful New England colonial home in Medfield or Concord or Westerham (pronounced “Wesham”) or North Southborough] Batting average, home runs and RBI are the only categories needed to tell us who the best hitters are in the game. All the other stats created by disciples of “Moneyball” and fantasy league geeks are redundant, superfluous and redundant.
I feel like I’ve seen that joke on a t-shirt before.
I’m going to give Halloran the benefit of the doubt here, and try to deduce that the point he’s making is that the 3 “Holy Trinity” stats of the Old Guard – BA, HR, RBI – at least tell you different aspects of a player’s abilities.
To say that newer statistics don’t do the same only makes sense when the only "new" stats you understand are OBP and OPS. Certainly EqA gives us a different story than say, P/PA. (I know, not exactly a “new” stat, but one that’s become a little more valued in recent years.) Or K/BB vs. WHIP – 2 “geeky” or “fantasy” stats which are simple enough that even Halloran should be able to understand them.
If you want three stats to determine how good a position player is, well, fuck, I’ll take a player's WARP3, Games Played, and his Middle Name over Batting Average, HR and RsBI.
While it’s true that heading into yesterday’s action, 18 of the top 30 in batting average are not among the top 30 in-base percentage. The hitters that replace those 18 include Travis Hafner, Jim Thome, Jason Giambi, Ryan Howard and David Ortiz. With sluggers like them, it’s not their on-base percentage that jumps out at you. It’s their run production. Those five guys are in top eight in homers and the top 13 in RBI. To tell me they’re also in the top nine in OPS and top 11 in slugging is just overkill.
Bob. You see, everyone except you understands that OPS is made up of on-base percentage and slugging percentage. We get that. No one’s forcing you to look at OBP, SLG, and OPS. That’s not overkill, that’s wasting your time. Nobody does that. Stop doing that.
Also, am I wrong here or is he disproving his whole case in second sentence by giving us this list of amazing hitters who excel at getting on base but not at BA?
The “Moneyball” theory was really created to find productive players at a cheaper price. The long-ball hitters make big bucks. So, small market teams need to find productive players who lack the flash, less obvious players like Kevin Youkilis, Scott Hatteberg or Nick Johnson. But “Moneyball” has the potential to backfire, because it can be misleading. Heading into yesterday, Youkilis ranks 23rd in on-base percentage. But the reason he’s a bargain at $350,000 this year is because he’s 16th in runs scored.
There are 2 reasons which explain 99% of why Kevin Youkilis is 16th in runs scored, in my opinion. 1) He gets on base at the 23rd best clip in the league. 2) He’s spent most of the year hitting at the top of the line-up featuring two historically ridiculous batters in the 3 and 4 spot.
Hatteberg is 13th in OBP, but he’s only scored 51 runs and driven in 38. Sometimes, a walk is not as good as a hit.
Right. He also has 150 fewer plate appearances than Kevin Youkilis. True: a walk is very often not as good as a hit. This has very little to do with why Scott Hatteberg has only 51 runs.
It’s true that you have to be on base in order to score – unless you’re blasting home runs – but among the leaders in runs scored – Chase Utley, Jose Reyes, Grady Sizemore, Jimmy Rollins and Alfonso Soriano – only Utley (at 28th) ranks in the top 40 in OBP. What they lack in OBP, they more than make up for in SPEED.
Here are the ranks of those same players in total number of Plate Appearances in all of baseball:
Chase Utley (11) Jose Reyes (17) Grady Sizemore (4) Jimmy Rollins (5) Alfonso Soriano (7)
I’d call that a lurking variable.
As far as "SPEED" goes -- by the way, really? All caps on that one? -- sure, some of these guys are fast. But then again, Carlos Lee has more steals than Chase Utley. Sizemore has 18 – these aren’t exactly Roadrunners. They’re good hitters (one in particular is amazing this year) who hit at the top of the line-up.
Do you like Michael Young as a hitter?
I like him. I don’t love him. He’s not having what I’d consider an outstanding year. Do you?
He led the league in average and hits last year. He’s 85th in OBP right now.
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to tell you. He’s having a pretty mediocre year. Did you know that his EqA this year is only .276? Pretty pedestrian. I’m sorry – what was your point?
If you’re trying to figure out if a guy is a good hitter or not, just look to see how often he’s crossing home plate and how often he’s driving someone else across. That’s what’s money.
“And by ‘money,’ I mean largely dependent on the performance of every other hitter on your team who is not the hitter in question.”
