As Gary “Sarge” Matthews lid-flippingly said the other day…“With the dimensions here at Citizens Bank Park…Mike Schmidt would average 50 HR’s a year!”
Watch a game today and count the number of hittable fastballs the run producers watch go by in those counts. Again, in a perfect world, the get-on-base guys would only swing with two strikes, but the thumpers need to remove the safety and pull the trigger. I wish there was a stat that told this story, what a hitter would have done had he swung at 100 more 1-0, 2-0 and 3-1 fastballs. Can you imagine it being unproductive over the course of a year? On the flip side, make the table-setter take 100 more pitches in those counts and his OBP goes up 20 points.
Hitters, look at the lineup card. If you are in the 3 through 6 hole, you are a producer of runs, an RBI guy. Listen to me, you must work for the fastball counts and be aggressive. No stat other than RBIs matters. Pitch count has no bearing on your approach. Look for a fastball and do damage. Do not, I repeat, do not be lethargic when ahead of a pitcher. There are no hitters in the Hall of Fame who “Moneyball”-ed those 1-0 fastballs.
Walks are good, walks create scoring opportunities, run up pitch counts, keep rallies alive, and help batting averages. But if you are a run producer and you go to the plate with the “Moneyball” mindset, don’t plan on hanging an MVP award in your den.
...With on OBP so important today, why hasn’t it replaced batting average as the game’s key hitting barometer?
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1. AJM Posted: October 01, 2011 at 11:25 AM (#3947180)If you let a 3-1 fastball go by that you would otherwise have mashed, that's a cost that needs to be reflected in advanced statistics. Whatever happens after that, including a walk, is not without that opportunity cost.
Yes, in fact, I can imagine that being rather unproductive over the course of a year. I see a lot of pop ups and weak ground balls. Just because it's a "hitter's" count, doesn't mean the pitchers are throwing bp fastballs down the middle.
If you let a 3-1 fastball go by that you would otherwise have mashed, that's a cost that needs to be reflected in advanced statistics. Whatever happens after that, including a walk, is not without that opportunity cost."
Who needs advanced stats for that? If the outcome is a walk, or even worse an out on 3-2, that is an inferior result to the extra base hit you could have had by mashing.
Woot! Boston won the League!
Racist!
Logic fallacy #1: Arguing from the general to the specific. Does Mike really know that these high walk sluggers do just that, or is he merely assuming they don't change their approach with runners on? Just because guys have a take and rake philosophy doesn't mean they are looking for walks in specific RBI opportunities.
Could have had, not would have had. Hitters, even good ones, have been known to make outs on 3-1 pitches.
MLB as a whole batted .349/.686/.630/1.316 on 3-1 this season, and .218/.447/.347/.794 on 3-2. So taking a strike is obviously not a good thing, but then again, swinging and missing or fouling one off is the same thing. There are also the complicating factors that not all 3-2 counts follow 3-1 counts, and more than half of all 3-1 pitches are ball four. Can't just use the "after 3-1" split either, since that includes the 3-1 results (and I'm not feeling like doing the arithmetic myself right now).
Since the whole point of working the count is to get "your pitch", why would we now want hitters to expand the definition of that term when they finally get to that hard-earned hitter's count? Hitters mash on 3-1 precisely because they enjoy the freedom to be extremely selective.
The problem with these lines is that it is impossible to strike out on 3-1 while it is possible to walk, thus the obscene OBP. I'd like to see a stat line which factors in getting a strike there (taking, swinging, foul, all of them) as an event. See what the real batting average and OBP are. So, the average instead of hits/(hits + outs), it's hits/(hits + outs + strikes).
But you also can't ignore the flip side of the cost. You can't simply say "swing at 100 more cookies"*. If you swing more, you are also going to swing at more bad pitches to hit, making more outs, costing yourself walks, and putting yourself in worse hitters counts.
*I doubt any player actually sees that many without swinging
Well like I said, you'd have to do the arithmetic yourself (AFAIK at least).
3-1 is 8493 PA, of which 4408 are ball four (BB + HBP). The .349/.630 is 4045 AB (there are 12 SH and 28 SF). There were at least 1706 other PA where the batter took a strike, swung and missed, or fouled one off (we know this because they went on to strike out). Just adding those eventual K's in drops the BA more than 100 points.
Agreed. I wasn't saying hitters should expand the zone in tha situation, simply that I do think some hitters that are too willing to take all the way in tha situation. Thats why I mentioned Youk as a hitter who I think has done well to strike the balance of being aggressive in good counts without getting himself out. Pedroia on the other hand sometimes goes through these stretches where he takes spit he's a an alarming rate to his detriment.
I believe that stat is known as "Roberto Clemente's Batting Average." Unfortunately another term for it is "Pete Incaviglia's Batting Average."
How could you not write "Jeff Francoeur's career."
2011 AL
on 3-1: 348/684/639 with 431 RBI
after 3-1: 280/577/488 with 737 RBI
1990 AL (splits by count don't go back as far as I thought)
on 3-1: 334/674/558 with 389 RBI
after 3-1: 274/590/443 with 632 RBI
So, if anything, hitters in 1990 hit for lower average, less power and walked a bit more. Ignore the RBI as you need to adjust for there being more teams now and I'm way too lazy for that.
1988 is the earliest year I find with splits by count and the numbers are quite similar to 1990.
Schmidt's last two years were 1988-89 and he was a much different hitter by then (and old). In 1988, on 3-1 he hit 154/556/154 (27 PA) and after 3-1 (45 PA) he hit 222/511/370. So 40% of his 3-1 ended up with a strike of some sort and about 30% ended up in a walk or HBP.
In 1989, in 11 PA he hit a staggering 000/818/000 on 3-1. Only 3 times did he go to 3-2 adding another 0 for 3.
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