Luck-Neutral Batting Lines

[Rob]

You know how sometimes I post a bunch of luck-neutral batting lines for misc. players? Yeah, I did it again

[Guest]

Rob,

 

First off, thanks for stepping up to write for the site! I look forward to a lot more great articles.

 

second, I had to go look up Geo's k-rate after reading that. I had assumed his BA was low because of bad luck. But he was genuinely bad with way too many strikeouts.

[Little Slide Rooter]

So Soriano should be much better than his 2011 stats. Byrd too.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Awesome!

 

Darwin Barney also came out looking a bit better.

 

And I'm reminded how awesome it is that our new GM won't Neifi us with Reed Johnson.

[Rob]

I remember one of the first times I did this sort of evaluation was back in 2008 when we picked up Jim Edmonds off the scrap heap and everybody thought he was finished. I used a pretty bastardized version of this process to show he wasn't done just yet. And then he took off the with the Cubs and I've loved this sort of evaluation ever since.

 

Of course then I was doing all the calculations by hand with a methodology that was pretty sloppy. Now I have a better xFIP formula and a spreadsheet (thank god) that can do as many players as I want at once. So if anybody has any interest in seeing full team numbers from previous years or even other teams, just lemme know.

[MWV]

Interesting stuff Rob. Thanks!

[Clem Fandango]

Starlin Castro: Just a little bit sexier

[chopsx9]

Any chance you can do it for a couple, random, other NL teams?

 

What do you make of all the pitchers suffering from bad luck?

 

 

EDIT:

For some reason I was including Montanez as a pitcher so its really only three. I wasn't counting Z because he's such a good hitter, although, then we should include Hill since he hits like a pitcher.

[brinoch]

Thanks, Rob. That was really very interesting.

[Rob]

Any chance you can do it for a couple, random, other NL teams?

 

What do you make of all the pitchers suffering from bad luck?

 

Got a team or teams in mind?

 

Pitchers suffering from bad "luck" may be the result of a slight systematic bias. The xBABIP formula is designed to project players with large amounts of plate appearances (you can observe actual lines approaching adjusted lines as plate appearances go up just by looking at the Cubs). Guys who hit as poorly as most pitchers do tend not to get many plate appearances, so they may not be adequately represented. Also worth noting, most pitchers are told not to try to beat out grounders. With this few plate appearances, beating out a couple could make a HUGE difference in an overall line.

[KingKongvs.Godzilla]

Thanks Rob. This is pretty cool.

 

Mind doing some for possible Cub targets and/or top FAs...Headley, Wright, Reyes, Pujols, Fielder, Beltran, Sizemore, etc....? That would be cool.

[CubColtPacer]

Any chance you can do it for a couple, random, other NL teams?

 

What do you make of all the pitchers suffering from bad luck?

 

Got a team or teams in mind?

 

Pitchers suffering from bad "luck" may be the result of a slight systematic bias. The xBABIP formula is designed to project players with large amounts of plate appearances (you can observe actual lines approaching adjusted lines as plate appearances go up just by looking at the Cubs). Guys who hit as poorly as most pitchers do tend not to get many plate appearances, so they may not be adequately represented. Also worth noting, most pitchers are told not to try to beat out grounders. With this few plate appearances, beating out a couple could make a HUGE difference in an overall line.

 

Also outfield positioning can hurt weak hitters like pitchers (and this could be true for players like Campana and Barney too). When a player has so little power that the team can play in, some line drives and bloops that would have been hits for a different player are going to be caught for outs.

[TruffleShuffle]

Any chance you can do it for a couple, random, other NL teams?

 

What do you make of all the pitchers suffering from bad luck?

 

Got a team or teams in mind?

 

Pitchers suffering from bad "luck" may be the result of a slight systematic bias. The xBABIP formula is designed to project players with large amounts of plate appearances (you can observe actual lines approaching adjusted lines as plate appearances go up just by looking at the Cubs). Guys who hit as poorly as most pitchers do tend not to get many plate appearances, so they may not be adequately represented. Also worth noting, most pitchers are told not to try to beat out grounders. With this few plate appearances, beating out a couple could make a HUGE difference in an overall line.

 

I suspect there is more to it than that. All batted balls of a certain type are not created equal, but the system will treat them all equally. Starlin Castro will hit ground balls harder, on average, than Ryan dempster, because Castro is good at making hard contact and dempster is not. So yes, castro's speed will help him get more hits, but he's also going to hit more ground balls that elude the fielders.

 

I suspect that if you did this exercise on Rey Ordonez you'd conclude that he was "unlucky" throughout his career, because he only had a babip of .271 and kept the ball on the ground a lot. But in reality he was just a weakling who couldn't run fast and didn't hit the ball hard frequently enough. I think that Barney may be a similar type - a better player than Rnez, but weak and not fast, so possibly prone to regularly "underachieving" his expected line.

[Dirt Dog Sparly]

Rob,

 

What should we view as the "margin of error" when looking at these lines? Given 100 seasons how close to the X line should a players 100 year average be?

 

I am discalculic, which is dyslexia with numbers, so much beyond 7th or 8th grade math is very much a turkey shoot for me. My biggest problem with stat based evaluation lies there. I see and understand the methodology. Think that they are very good predictors and metrics of measurement. Just cant get the math to come out on a consistent basis so that I can do them myself.

[Rob]

Any chance you can do it for a couple, random, other NL teams?

 

What do you make of all the pitchers suffering from bad luck?

 

Got a team or teams in mind?

 

Pitchers suffering from bad "luck" may be the result of a slight systematic bias. The xBABIP formula is designed to project players with large amounts of plate appearances (you can observe actual lines approaching adjusted lines as plate appearances go up just by looking at the Cubs). Guys who hit as poorly as most pitchers do tend not to get many plate appearances, so they may not be adequately represented. Also worth noting, most pitchers are told not to try to beat out grounders. With this few plate appearances, beating out a couple could make a HUGE difference in an overall line.

 

I suspect there is more to it than that. All batted balls of a certain type are not created equal, but the system will treat them all equally. Starlin Castro will hit ground balls harder, on average, than Ryan dempster, because Castro is good at making hard contact and dempster is not. So yes, castro's speed will help him get more hits, but he's also going to hit more ground balls that elude the fielders.

 

I suspect that if you did this exercise on Rey Ordonez you'd conclude that he was "unlucky" throughout his career, because he only had a babip of .271 and kept the ball on the ground a lot. But in reality he was just a weakling who couldn't run fast and didn't hit the ball hard frequently enough. I think that Barney may be a similar type - a better player than Rnez, but weak and not fast, so possibly prone to regularly "underachieving" his expected line.

 

As I talk about in the comments section, the formula I'm using for xBABIP does look at HR/FB% and IFH% and uses them to adjust for power and speed respectively. It's not perfect, but it does do a pretty good job of it (though it wouldn't shock me if it was not accurate enough for extreme cases, such as many pitchers).

[SouthSideRyan]

Rob, I read through the source material and didn't see anything regarding bunts. If they are considered ground balls in the calculation, I'd imagine this would affect the numbers for all pitchers as well as a guy like Campana.

[Rob]

Rob,

 

What should we view as the "margin of error" when looking at these lines? Given 100 seasons how close to the X line should a players 100 year average be?

 

I am discalculic, which is dyslexia with numbers, so much beyond 7th or 8th grade math is very much a turkey shoot for me. My biggest problem with stat based evaluation lies there. I see and understand the methodology. Think that they are very good predictors and metrics of measurement. Just cant get the math to come out on a consistent basis so that I can do them myself.

 

I didn't design the xBABIP formula so I can't give you an exact answer as to how many season in 100 the line will be within 'x' (my contribution is mostly basic algebra ;)). But let me see if I can't help explain a bit better... The simple fact of the matter (and the point of the exercise, really) is that even given a full season of 650 plate appearances, BABIP does not stabilize sufficiently. You can look at the back of a baseball card for your favorite player and probably pick out 2-3 seasons where he performed way over or way under what he normally did in the rest of his career. The purpose of this exercise is mostly to smooth out those sorts of years from a players career.

 

If you put a gun to my head and made me answer, I'd probably say not to read too much into anything within 10, maybe 15 points of batting average for most players.

[Rob]

Rob, I read through the source material and didn't see anything regarding bunts. If they are considered ground balls in the calculation, I'd imagine this would affect the numbers for all pitchers as well as a guy like Campana.

 

Another excellent point and something I considered after I went to bed last night. It's hard defending your writing after midnight.

[rocket]

could you adjust adam dunn's line? i'm sure it's still horrific, but i didn't know how much of his bad year is attributed to bad luck

[Rob]

could you adjust adam dunn's line? i'm sure it's still horrific, but i didn't know how much of his bad year is attributed to bad luck

 

I can't right at this moment but I have looked at it before and I can tell you with certainty that it's still horrific. His strikeout rate jumped up and his HR/FB took a dive. Those are much bigger problems than any BABIP stuff.

[wvcbxl]

Rob, I read through the source material and didn't see anything regarding bunts. If they are considered ground balls in the calculation, I'd imagine this would affect the numbers for all pitchers as well as a guy like Campana.

 

Another excellent point and something I considered after I went to bed last night. It's hard defending your writing after midnight.

 

I was wondering where on earth that Campana line came from - thanks for the explanation.

 

Excellent work, Rob.

[Dirt Dog Sparly]

Rob,

 

What should we view as the "margin of error" when looking at these lines? Given 100 seasons how close to the X line should a players 100 year average be?

 

I am discalculic, which is dyslexia with numbers, so much beyond 7th or 8th grade math is very much a turkey shoot for me. My biggest problem with stat based evaluation lies there. I see and understand the methodology. Think that they are very good predictors and metrics of measurement. Just cant get the math to come out on a consistent basis so that I can do them myself.

 

I didn't design the xBABIP formula so I can't give you an exact answer as to how many season in 100 the line will be within 'x' (my contribution is mostly basic algebra ;)). But let me see if I can't help explain a bit better... The simple fact of the matter (and the point of the exercise, really) is that even given a full season of 650 plate appearances, BABIP does not stabilize sufficiently. You can look at the back of a baseball card for your favorite player and probably pick out 2-3 seasons where he performed way over or way under what he normally did in the rest of his career. The purpose of this exercise is mostly to smooth out those sorts of years from a players career.

 

If you put a gun to my head and made me answer, I'd probably say not to read too much into anything within 10, maybe 15 points of batting average for most players.

 

Rob, thank you for taking the time to answer.

 

So if I understand you right, anything within 10 to 15 points of a players average means his luck was pretty "normal". Anything beyond that means he needs a slumpbuster diet or needs to play the lottery more.

 

Could you do this with a players career to see how lucky/unlucky they are or is that stretching it?