czman
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For those who do not want to read the entire thing. SO= real bad.
I think it is somewhat important that I lay the ground work for this. I had this idea that the outfield defense was more important now than ever before. There were two main reasons for this.
1) With the prevalence of the shift the need for great defense would in theory be diminished. You can’t really shift too much in the OF because there is too much space and not enough players. If you shift yourself into nonstandard position in the IF it means you are also leaving gaping holes for a ball to be hit that can easily turn into extra bases if the OF is slow. I feel like the IF shift puts more pressure on OFs and less on IFs.
2) With the decrease in PEDs there are fewer HRs. I thought there would be more balls hit in the OF though and that those fly balls would mean more 2b/3b. Well I was wrong on this. I decided to look at the data for 1996-2015, 20 years worth. I was very surprised what I found though.
I am not going to bore you with everything. Here are the nuts and bolts though. I used a specific data set for most of this. I took AB and subtracted SO and then used that as a basis for Balls in play. I know there are sacrifices, but they are too small a % make me do all the extra work. I also have data for PA %s based on total hits.
The HR/2b/3B rates have been just about stagnant when you look at balls hit in play.
The extra base hit rate to AB-SO not including HRs has not deviated more than 6 per 1000 during that 20 year time. The HR rate has not deviated more than 7 per 1000 and the total XB hit has not deviated more than 12 per 1000. That is extremely small.
If you draw a nice clean line at 2007 you are dealing with an average HR difference of 3 per 1000. If you look at the HR rate to total hits it is only 2 more per 1000. While the extra base hits minus HRs is only 1 more per 1000.
I would call that significant. Here is where I started scratching my head. Why are Runs down if the rates are basically identical? Well the answer is SOs. If you draw the line at 2008, where SOs really start to take off, you see a drastic drop in Runs per game.
From the data that I collected it looks like SOs are the most impactful statistic for league average run scoring. HRs are probably secondary. I want to point out now, that I am looking at hue data sets. Entire seasons. There are going to be teams that anecdotally defy the trend in any given season.
Example:
If you look at 2015, 2012, 2008, 2007, 1997 you have league average HR rates between 163 and 166.
2015: 164 HRs --- 1248 SO ---- 4.25 RPG
2012: 164 HRs --- 1214 SO ---- 4.32 RPG
2008: 163 HRs --- 1096 SO ---- 4.65 RPG
2007: 165 HRs --- 1073 SO ---- 4.80 RPG
1997: 166 HRs --- 1069 SO ---- 4.77 RPG
In all 5 of these years the HR rates do not change much, but the SOs do.
I think you can still blame some of this on PEDs, but there is no way to prove it. It makes sense to suggest that if I can swing with more force, but use less of my full available strength I can still maintain enough bat control to make contact and put the ball in the seats. I would buy that, I just can’t prove it.
My real take away though is that the opportunity cost of SOs is far greater than what I used to believe. I have heard on MLB TV people say that a SO is only a little more costly than a regular out. The problem with that is not all babip are outs. Babip does not even seem to be that important when it comes to actual runs scored.
Not making an out is by far the most important thing to scoring runs. I know that seems obvious. A SO is almost always an out, you are not going to get to first safely on dropped 3rd strikes enough. Making contact and putting the ball in play gives you about a 30% chance to reach safely. Extra base hits / PA have not exceeded 54 per 1000 in the time that I looked at. They are just not frequent enough. Timely hitting is really just putting the ball in play when you think about it.
From the Cubs point of few:
The Cubs need fewer SOs as a team.
The Cubs pitchers lead the majors in SOs. This is why I think the bad OF defense did not hurt them as much as it could have. I don’t know if the Cubs can do this again. If they move closer to the league average it will put a lot more balls in play for the shaky defense. I also suspect, since SO are the worst thing for an offense, that the Cubs RA may have been lower than it should have been based on the defense that they play.
Sorry for the length.
I think it is somewhat important that I lay the ground work for this. I had this idea that the outfield defense was more important now than ever before. There were two main reasons for this.
1) With the prevalence of the shift the need for great defense would in theory be diminished. You can’t really shift too much in the OF because there is too much space and not enough players. If you shift yourself into nonstandard position in the IF it means you are also leaving gaping holes for a ball to be hit that can easily turn into extra bases if the OF is slow. I feel like the IF shift puts more pressure on OFs and less on IFs.
2) With the decrease in PEDs there are fewer HRs. I thought there would be more balls hit in the OF though and that those fly balls would mean more 2b/3b. Well I was wrong on this. I decided to look at the data for 1996-2015, 20 years worth. I was very surprised what I found though.
I am not going to bore you with everything. Here are the nuts and bolts though. I used a specific data set for most of this. I took AB and subtracted SO and then used that as a basis for Balls in play. I know there are sacrifices, but they are too small a % make me do all the extra work. I also have data for PA %s based on total hits.
The HR/2b/3B rates have been just about stagnant when you look at balls hit in play.
The extra base hit rate to AB-SO not including HRs has not deviated more than 6 per 1000 during that 20 year time. The HR rate has not deviated more than 7 per 1000 and the total XB hit has not deviated more than 12 per 1000. That is extremely small.
If you draw a nice clean line at 2007 you are dealing with an average HR difference of 3 per 1000. If you look at the HR rate to total hits it is only 2 more per 1000. While the extra base hits minus HRs is only 1 more per 1000.
I would call that significant. Here is where I started scratching my head. Why are Runs down if the rates are basically identical? Well the answer is SOs. If you draw the line at 2008, where SOs really start to take off, you see a drastic drop in Runs per game.
From the data that I collected it looks like SOs are the most impactful statistic for league average run scoring. HRs are probably secondary. I want to point out now, that I am looking at hue data sets. Entire seasons. There are going to be teams that anecdotally defy the trend in any given season.
Example:
If you look at 2015, 2012, 2008, 2007, 1997 you have league average HR rates between 163 and 166.
2015: 164 HRs --- 1248 SO ---- 4.25 RPG
2012: 164 HRs --- 1214 SO ---- 4.32 RPG
2008: 163 HRs --- 1096 SO ---- 4.65 RPG
2007: 165 HRs --- 1073 SO ---- 4.80 RPG
1997: 166 HRs --- 1069 SO ---- 4.77 RPG
In all 5 of these years the HR rates do not change much, but the SOs do.
I think you can still blame some of this on PEDs, but there is no way to prove it. It makes sense to suggest that if I can swing with more force, but use less of my full available strength I can still maintain enough bat control to make contact and put the ball in the seats. I would buy that, I just can’t prove it.
My real take away though is that the opportunity cost of SOs is far greater than what I used to believe. I have heard on MLB TV people say that a SO is only a little more costly than a regular out. The problem with that is not all babip are outs. Babip does not even seem to be that important when it comes to actual runs scored.
Not making an out is by far the most important thing to scoring runs. I know that seems obvious. A SO is almost always an out, you are not going to get to first safely on dropped 3rd strikes enough. Making contact and putting the ball in play gives you about a 30% chance to reach safely. Extra base hits / PA have not exceeded 54 per 1000 in the time that I looked at. They are just not frequent enough. Timely hitting is really just putting the ball in play when you think about it.
From the Cubs point of few:
The Cubs need fewer SOs as a team.
The Cubs pitchers lead the majors in SOs. This is why I think the bad OF defense did not hurt them as much as it could have. I don’t know if the Cubs can do this again. If they move closer to the league average it will put a lot more balls in play for the shaky defense. I also suspect, since SO are the worst thing for an offense, that the Cubs RA may have been lower than it should have been based on the defense that they play.
Sorry for the length.
