Cuban Ballplayers' Names: Y Do You Ask?

In 2014 there were 13 Cuban-born players who appeared in 50 or more major league games. They are:

Player	G	Age	Tm	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	Pos
Alexei Ramirez	158	32	CHW	657	622	82	170	35	2	15	74	24	81	21	4	.273	.305	.408	.713	SS
Leonys Martin	155	26	TEX	583	533	68	146	13	7	7	40	39	114	31	12	.274	.325	.364	.689	CF
Yoenis Cespedes	152	28	TOT	645	600	89	156	36	6	22	100	35	128	7	2	.260	.301	.450	.751	LF
Yasiel Puig	148	23	LAD	640	558	92	165	37	9	16	69	67	124	11	7	.296	.382	.480	.863	RF
Adeiny Hechavarria	146	25	MIA	574	536	53	148	20	10	1	34	26	86	7	5	.276	.308	.356	.664	SS
Jose Abreu	145	27	CHW	622	556	80	176	35	2	36	107	51	131	3	1	.317	.383	.581	.964	1B
Dayan Viciedo	145	25	CHW	563	523	65	121	22	3	21	58	32	122	0	1	.231	.281	.405	.686	RF
Yunel Escobar	137	31	TBR	529	476	33	123	18	0	7	39	43	60	1	1	.258	.324	.340	.664	SS
Yasmani Grandal	128	25	SDP	443	377	47	85	19	1	15	49	58	115	3	0	.225	.327	.401	.728	C
Brayan Pena	115	32	CIN	372	348	23	88	18	1	5	26	20	42	2	3	.253	.291	.353	.645	1B/C
Kendrys Morales	98	31	MIN/SEA	401	367	28	80	20	0	8	42	27	68	0	0	.218	.274	.338	.612	DH
Yonder Alonso	84	27	SDP	288	267	27	64	19	1	7	27	17	36	6	1	.240	.285	.397	.682	1B
Aroldis Chapman	54	26	CIN	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0					RP

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/28/2014.

Of them, you'll note, over a third have first names starting with the letter Y. Those ranks will increase in 2015, as the Diamondbacks signed Cuban outfielder Yasmany Tomas to a six-year, $68.5 million contract this week. That'll make six Cuban players with a first name starting with Y. In 2014, the only players appearing in 50+ games with a first name starting in Y that were not Cuban were Mariners reliever Yoervis Medina, Yankees/Padres third baseman Yangervis Solarte (both from Venezuela), Indians catcher Yan Gomes (Brazil), and Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina (Puerto Rico). 

It turns out there's a reason. As this article explains, 

...the preponderance of names starting with the letter Y may reflect the contact Cubans had with Russian advisers sporting names like Yuri and Yevgeny in the years when the Soviet Union was bankrolling Castro's revolution.

That probably explains the Y-names for Medina and Solarte, both hailing from socialist Venezuela. That's also why the Cuban player who saw the most playing time this season, Alexei Ramirez, has a name you'd associate more with Russian than with a Spanish-speaking island.

So there you have it. Cuban ballplayers have first names starting with the letter Y because their parents wanted to pay homage to the USSR.

Sorry, that's all I've got for now. You'll have to find something else to read while you're standing in the checkout line at Target.

Nolan Arenado, Ball Magnet

This morning I was scrolling through baseball stats at the mlb.com mobile site, and I noticed something curious. This is the list of major league leaders for assists: 

Rk		Tm	G	Inn	A ▾	Pos Summary
1	Troy Tulowitzki	COL	27	234.0	101	SS
2	Aaron Hill	ARI	29	260.0	92	2B
3	Starlin Castro	CHC	26	230.0	91	SS
4	Alexei Ramirez	CHW	29	260.0	90	SS
5	Brian Dozier	MIN	26	238.2	87	2B
6	Jimmy Rollins	PHI	24	204.1	87	SS
7	Nolan Arenado	COL	30	267.0	83	3B
8	Marcus Semien	CHW	29	251.0	83	2B-3B
9	Jose Altuve	HOU	28	249.1	81	2B
10	Ben Zobrist	TBR	30	237.2	80	2B-OF-SS

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/2/2014.

Tulo, Hill, Castro, Ramirez, Dozier...all make sense. They're middle infielders, and middle infielders get a lot of ground balls. But there's the Rockies' Nolan Arenado tied for seventh. He's a third baseman. That seems out of place.

Arenado is in just his second year, but he's already won plaudits for his glovework. He won the National League Gold Glove last year as a rookie, and he hasn't let up this year. Still, how unusual is it for a third baseman to rank in the top ten in assists?

Really unusual, it turns out. As in, it hasn't happened since baseball expanded in 1961. The only third basemen in the 53 seasons since then to have finished in the top 20 in major league assists were Brooks Robinson (No. 13 in 1967), Ron Santo (No. 15 in 1967, No. 20 in 1966), Brandon Inge (No. 19 in 2006), Clete Boyer (No. 19 in 1962, No. 20 in 1961), and Graig Nettles (No. 20 in 1971). Nobody's been close to the top 10 until now.

Is this a fluke? I figure there are three things that could give Arenado a big advantage. First, handedness. Right-handed batters hit grounders to the left side of the infield more than left-handed batters, and managers load up on right-handed batters in order to gain a platoon advantage when they face lefties. Do the Rockies feature an unusual number of southpaw pitchers, resulting in opposing lineups full of right-handed batters, hitting grounder after grounder to third?

This year, lefties have pitched 37% of Colorado's innings. That's a lot. But it's not extreme: The Rangers, White Sox, Angels, Rays, Phillies, and A's all have had a greater proportion of innings pitched by lefties. So Arenado's pace isn't because he plays behind a steady stream of left-handed pitchers. 

How about the pitchers' tendencies themselves? Do Rockies pitchers, in an effort to keep batted balls out of the thin air at Coors Field, generate tons of ground balls? 

Again, yes, but it's not dramatic. Rockies pitchers have induced grounders on just under 49% of balls in play. That's high, but not highest: The Pirates, Phillies, Giants, and Dodgers have all gotten more. So that's not the explanation.

Finally, how about games played? Have the Rockies played more games than others, giving Arenado a chance to see more balls hit his way? Again, kind of yes. The Rockies have played 30 games so far, second-most in the majors. But other than the Tigers, every team's played at least 26. Maybe when the games even out, two of the players below him on the list above, Marcus Semien and Jose Altuve, will pass him. But that's probably it, at least on that basis. (And no, Arenado's assists aren't inflated by shifting, because, as Rockies Zingers points out, the Rockies do relatively little shifting.)

More likely, he just slows down. When a player's on pace early in the season to do something that's never been done before, the easy answer is to assume that he won't do it, either. But for a while here, I'm going to keep track of Arenado's assists and see if he can keep hanging with the middle infielders.

Why Slugging Percentage Matters

If You Don't Want to Read the Whole Thing: I assume you know what batting average is. Here, I showed that on base percentage has more of an impact on run scoring than does batting average. In this post, I show that slugging percentage is even more predictive. A player's slash line (batting average/on base percentage/slugging percentage, like .280/.350/.445) is an easy way to display all three figures.

But If You Do: I've already written about on base percentage and why it's important, more important that batting average. I'm going to take the same approach in looking at slugging percentage.

Slugging percentage has been around for a long time. I remember reading a piece in a SABR publication about 30 years ago that referred to an article from around 1915 or so. The author of the older article was trying to make a point about Gavvy Cravath, a slugger (given the context of the time) for the Phillies*. He said that batting average is like asking how much money someone has in his or her pocket, and getting a response of "nine coins." It doesn't tell what the coins are worth. Slugging percentage gives you the dollar value. Batting average is hits divided by at-bats. Slugging percentage is total bases divided by at-bats. To calculate total bases, a single's worth one, a double's worth two, a triple's worth three, and a home run's worth four. A triple might not be worth three times as much as single, as batting average suggests, but it's certainly worth more than a single. The major league leaders in slugging percentage last year were Miguel Cabrera (.636), Chris Davis (.634), David Ortiz (.564), Mike Trout (.557), and Paul Goldschmidt (.551). The major league average was .396.

The difference between batting average and slugging percentage is pretty intuitive. Albert Pujols batted .258 in 391 at bats. Placido Polanco batted .260 in 377 at bats. Close, right? But Pujols hit 19 doubles and 17 homers. Polanco had 13 doubles and a homer. That gives Pujols a .437 slugging percentage compared to .302 for Polanco, illustrating who's the better hitter.

How important is slugging percentage? As I did with on base percentage, I'll check the correlation with runs scored. The higher the correlation, the more more slugging percentage is tied to scoring, which is the object of offense. As I pointed out, the correlation between batting average (BA) and runs, using data from every team since 1995, is 0.80, which is pretty good. The correlation between on base percentage (OBP) and runs is better, 0.88. The correlation between slugging percentage (SLG) and runs is higher still, 0.90. Roughly speaking, this means that BA explains about 65% of run scoring, OBP 78%, and SLG 81%.

When talking about OBP, I noted that last year 24 players batted .300 or better. Joey Votto's .491 SLG was 24th. So we'll say a .490 slugging percentage is like a .300 batting average, just as a .370 on base percentage is like hitting .300.

Enter the Slash Line

I hope I've made it clear why on base percentage and slugging percentage are more important measures than batting average. But this doesn't mean batting average is unimportant. A 0.80 correlation's a good one. So analysts talk about a batter's slash line, defined as BA/OBP/SLG. (The slash separates the figures.) Miguel Cabrera's slash line was .348/.442/.636. That's insanely good, as expected, as Cabrera led the majors in all three categories. The major league average slash line last year was .253/.318/.396. 

You can tell a lot from a slash line. Cleveland's catcher/DH/1B Carlos Santana, .268/.377/.455: Great at drawing walks, decent pop, doesn't get a ton of base hits. (Players with a low BA and high OBP usually strike out a lot, as did Santana.) White Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez, .284/.313/.380: A lot of his value is in his batting average, i.e., he doesn't walk a lot or have a lot of power, given his below-average on base and slugging percentages. 

I'm going to use slash lines going forward (starting with the footnote below). If you forget what they are, click on the Glossary at the top of the page.




*I've seen Cravath listed as the player whose career home run record Babe Ruth topped. That's not true. Ruth hit his 139th career home run in 1921, at which time he vaulted past Roger Connor, a first baseman, primarily for the New York Giants, who hit 138 homers during a 18-year career from 1880 to 1897. Cravath was the 20th century record holder, with 119 between 1908 and 1920. He hit all but two of his home runs for the Phillies, who played at Baker Bowl, a hitter's park that was only 281 feet down the right field line, though with a Green Monster-esque 60 foot fence in right. Cravath, though, was a right-handed hitter. Baseball-reference has split data for Cravath only in the last five years of his career, past his prime, but during that time he hit .304/.392/.547 at home and .254/.351/.386 on the road--basically David Ortiz at home and something like the Cardinals' Jon Jay on the road.