Qualifying Offers, 2015

I'm going to update my post on this topic from last year. It explains this topic, which comes up every year at this time.

So, what's a Qualifying Offer? It's a one-year contract offer teams can make to their players who have filed for free agency. This year, a qualifying offer is $15.8 million for the 2016 season.

Why would teams offer that much money for one year? Two reasons. First, the best free agents are worth at least that much. Second, and more importantly, if the player rejects the qualifying offer, the team offering it gets compensation, and the team signing the player gets a penalty.

What's the compensation? If a team offers a player a qualifying offer and the player rejects it, the team gets an extra draft pick between the first round and second rounds of the amateur draft in June. The extra picks (called "sandwich picks") are allocated in reverse order of standing during the prior season.

What's the penalty? A team signing a player who rejects a qualifying offer forfeits its first draft choice in the June amateur draft. One exception: The first ten picks in the draft are "protected" and don't get forfeited. The teams with the worst ten records last season--the Phillies, Reds, Braves, A's, Rockies, Brewers, Marlins, Padres, Tigers and Mariners--won't lose their first round draft choice if they sign a player who received a qualifying offer. Instead, they'll give up their second-highest round draft pick instead. If a team signs more than one player who received a qualifying offer, it'll give up its next-highest draft pick. 

How onerous is that penalty? It depends on the player. The Nationals didn't think about the penalty when they signed Max Scherzer, arguably the best player in last year's free agent class. Losing a draft pick won't stop a team from pursuing a big star like Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke or Cardinals outfielder Jason Heyward. At the lower end of players receiving qualifying offers, though, relinquishing a draft pick can result in teams being unwilling to sign a player. After the 2013 season, former Mariners DH Kendrys Morales and former Red Sox shortstop Stephen Drew received and rejected qualifying offers and couldn't find anyone to take them. Drew eventually re-signed with the Red Sox in May (there are not penalties or compensation when a free agent re-signs with his original team), and Morales signed with the Twins on June 8 (after the amateur draft, so there was no penalty). Both those players were pretty obviously screwed out of money by the draft pick penalty.

Why is there a penalty? In part it's because baseball wants to compensate teams that lose star players to free agency. But let's be clear: The sandwich pick that the teams receive for losing a player to whom they made a qualifying offer is their compensation. The loss of a draft pick only hurts the signing team. It doesn't help the team losing the player. By penalizing the signing team, it hurts the player, because it reduces his value. It ultimately serves to reduce free agent compensation.

How did they come up with the $15.8 million figure? It's the average salary of the 125 highest-paid players in baseball. It gets recalculated every year. Last year it was $15.3 million, the year before $14.1 million.

Are there problems with the system? CJ Nitkowski wrote a nice piece describing them last year. The most glaring are how they screw players at the bottom of the spectrum. There's also a huge loophole: Players who are traded during the last year of their contract aren't subject to qualifying offers or compensation. They include Blue Jays pitcher David Price, Mets outfielder Yoenis Cespedes, Royals pitcher Johnny Cueto and infielder-outfielder Ben Zobrist, Giants pitcher Mike Leake, and Astros pitcher Scott Kazmir. The two top pitchers in this year's free agent class are Price and Greinke. By virtue of being traded last year from Detroit to Toronto, the team signing Price avoids a draft pick penalty that the team signing Greinke will have to pay.

How often do players accept qualifying offers? It hasn't happened yet. Every player who's received a qualifying offer has rejected it since the system was implemented in 2012. That could change this year, as there were a record 20 players who received qualifying offers compared to twelve last year and thirteen the year before. It would appear that Padres pitcher Ian Kennedy, who was 9-15 with a 4.28 ERA last year and 29-38 with a 4.25 ERA over the past three years, is a candidate to accept a qualifying offer. However, a lot of analysts expect nobody to accept a qualifying offer, given players' preference for multi-year contracts rather than a one-year deal, even for $15.8 million.

Who's received qualifying offers? The twenty players are, by team:

• Baltimore pitcher Wei-Yin Chen, first baseman Chris Davis, and catcher Matt Wieters
• Chicago Cubs center fielder Dexter Fowler
• Chicago White Sox pitcher Jeff Samardzija
• Houston outfielder Colby Rasmus
• Kansas City left fielder Alex Gordon
• Los Angeles pitchers Zack Greinke and Brett Anderson and second baseman Howie Kendrick
• New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy
• St. Louis right fielder Jason Heyward and pitcher John Lackey
• San Diego pitcher Ian Kennedy and left fielder Justin Upton
• Seattle pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma
• Texas pitcher Yovani Gallardo
• Toronto pitcher Marco Estrada
• Washington shortstop Ian Desmond and pitcher Jordan Zimmermann

When do the players have to let the team know? The players who received qualifying offers were notified last Friday and they have a week to respond. So by the end of business on Friday, November 13, they have to make a decision.

What happens if they reject the offer? They become free agents, able to sign with any team (subject to the compensation for their former team and penalty for their signing team) described above.

Are the parties happy with the system? Players understandably don't like any system that reduces their value, and attaching a penalty to signing a player reduces their value. Owners like getting compensated for losing players. So that's the impasse, and the qualifying offer system is the latest attempt to bridge it. I expect the qualifying offer system to be modified the next time the players and owners negotiate their collective bargaining agreement. The current CBA runs through December 1, 2016.

Rewind: Carlos Quentin

As noted here, this is primarily a Pittsburgh Pirates blog. However, I'll handle general baseball topics from time to time, including an occasional lookback to prior posts.

Back in January, I advocated the Baltimore Orioles trading for Carlos Quentin, then a spare part in the San Diego Padres' outfield. The Orioles had lost designated hitter Nelson Cruz to the Seattle Mariners via free agency. Quentin was a bust with the Padres, partly because of lost time to injuries, but from 2008 to 2011 he averaged 120 games per season as on outfielder/designated hitter for the Chicago White Sox. With the Orioles, I envisioned him as primarily a DH, since his work in the outfield (1) contributed to his injury-related absences and (2) stunk. He'd fill a roster hole for the Orioles, and I pointed out that

Quentin is good at getting on base. Among the 168 players with 2,500 or more plate appearances between 2008 and 2014, he ranks 47th with a .352 on base percentage. The Orioles led the majors in home runs last year, easily, with 211, and were second in the AL in slugging percentage with .422, but only sixth in runs scored, with 705. The reason is that their .311 on base percentage was fifth worst in the league. They didn't get enough guys on base to take advantage of the long balls. The current Orioles roster has only three hitters with 30+ games played last year with a 2014 on base percentage better than the league average of .316. Quentin would address the team's key offensive weakness.

Since then, two things have happened:

1. The Orioles have mixed-and-matched at DH. Travis Snider and Chris Davis have started three games each, Delmon Young's started twice, and Steve Pearce once. Collectively, they've been awful: .152 batting average (second lowest in the league), no extra-base hits, .243 on base percentage (third lowest in the league).
2. Quentin was traded to the Atlanta Braves on April 5 in a blockbuster deal involving closer Craig Kimbrel. The Braves designated him for assignment (or DFA, a precursor to releasing a player under contract) the next day and released him on April 14. Quentin's a free agent, and can be signed by any team for the major league minimum of $507,500, with the Braves responsible for the remainder of his $8 million contract.

So I thought: No-brainer! The Orioles don't really have a DH, the guys they've used have been lousy, and cheapskate owner Peter Angelos can get Quentin for the major league minimum! Let's do this!

Then I read an article by Matthew Trueblood of Baseball Prospectus, entitled, appropriately enough, "Carlos Quentin's DFA is This Godforsaken Era in a Nutshell." Matthew posits that

Carlos Quentin is the victim of the modern MLB roster, and he helps explain the offensive famine that has so starved us all for runs over the past five years

Why is that? Matthew explains:

The reason is that teams are so loaded with relievers that their bench spots all need to go to versatile players who can play a premium defensive position. You get a backup catcher, a fourth outfielder (who had better be able to play center), a utility infielder (who had better be able to play shortstop), and one other guy.

Basically, the roster spot that a hitter like Quentin would fill is now being occupied by a team's 13th pitcher. Why did the Tampa Bay Rays give 111 plate appearances at DH--17% of the team's total--to utility infielder/outfielders Sean Rodriguez and Logan Forsythe last year, who combined for just three home runs? Because they didn't have room on the roster for a bat-only guy. Eight-man bullpens squeeze the hitting side of the roster, exacerbating the lack of scoring today. Some 22-year-old who can hit 98 on the radar gun is a team's sixth inning specialist, while Carlos Quentin and his .484 career slugging percentage (28th among 127 active players with 3,000 or more plate appearances) sits at home, texting his agent every other day asking whether anybody called. 

In this year's Hardball Times Annual, longtime baseball analyst Craig Wright proposes gradually capping the number of pitchers on major league rosters at 9 or 10. This, he believes, would have many benefits: Fewer pitching changes (so shorter games), pitchers pacing themselves more (so fewer strikeouts and, possibly, fewer arm injuries), more hitters and fewer tough pitcher/hitter matchups (so more scoring). Add to that list: The liberation of Carlos Quentin.

If the Orioles Are Really Going to Do Something

I think the Orioles should trade for San Diego's Carlos Quentin.

Let me rewind a bit. It's been a very quiet offseason for Baltimore. They lost three regulars from their 2014 American League East championship squad to free agency: Right fielder Nick Markakis, designated hitter Nelson Cruz, and left-handed reliever Andrew Miller. They replaced them with...well, they haven't done much of anything. Until yesterday, their biggest roster move was to re-sign free agent left fielder/DH Delmon Young, who had 255 plate appearances last year. Like every team, they added some fringe-type players, mostly signed to minor league contracts. But until yesterday, when they traded for Pirates outfielder Travis Snider, who started 47 games in right field for Pittsburgh last year, they've done nothing to replace the three players I listed above. And while Snider had a decent year in Pittsburgh, with a .264/.338/.438 slash line in 359 plate appearances, it was his first above-average season since 2010. 

There've also been questions raised about the reason for their inactivity. The Toronto Blue Jays wanted to hire Baltimore's general manager, Dan Duquette as their CEO. Duquette is under contract with the Orioles through 2017. Orioles owner Peter Angelos reportedly demanded a king's ransom (three top prospects) from the Blue Jays in order to take Duquette. (Not that this is a common occurrence, but the industry standard appears to be to let a front office employee depart for a promotion, and to get perhaps one prospect as compensation for a lateral move. This would be a promotion for Duquette, who is the Orioles' executive vice president of baseball operations, so Angelos insisting on compensation is a bit aggressive, and going for elite compensation is pretty out there.) This leaves the Orioles in the bizarre position of having their top everyday executive apparently desirous of working for one of Baltimore's American League East opponents. In turn, there's a question as to how dedicated Duquette is in improving the team. Yesterday, the Blue Jays announced that their incumbent CEO, Paul Beeston, will stay on through the end of the current season, after which he'll retire. That, of course, leaves open the question of who'll fill the role in 2016.

Lost in this controversy is the fact that the Orioles didn't do a lot last winter, either, until the very end. In December 2013, they traded for outfielder David Lough, who was basically a late-inning defensive substitute in the outfield (112 games played, but just 47 started) and signed right-handed reliever Ryan Webb, who pitched 49.1 innings of middle relief spread over 51 games. They traded their closer, Jim Johnson, to Oakland in what turned out to be a brilliant move, as Johnson turned into a pumpkin, going from 50 saves and a 2.94 ERA in 2013 to two saves and a 7.09 ERA in 2014. They signed the aforementioned Delmon Young in January. That's pretty much it. Their big moves--signing free agents Ubaldo Jiminez and Cruz--didn't occur until late February, and only the Cruz signing worked out. Jiminez, signed for four years and $50 million, was 6-9 with a 4.81 ERA last season. Cruz, signed to a one-year $8 million contract, led the league in home runs with 40 and finished seventh in the MVP voting. The Mariners signed him to a four year, $57 million contract in December.

So maybe the plan is, like last year, to more or less stand pat and then make some moves once spring training starts. Still, the team is down a right fielder (unless Snider takes a big step forward), a DH, and a middle reliever. Middle relievers are pretty fungible in modern baseball--every team has young guys in their system who can throw gas for an inning. They probably can't do it a skillfully as Miller, who compiled a 2.02 ERA over 73 games split between Boston and Baltimore, striking out 103 and allowing just 53 baserunners (hits, hit batters, and unintentional walks) over 62.1 innings last year, but the Orioles at least have options there. As for Markakis, I wrote back in December that Alejandro de Aza, whom the Orioles acquired last August, may provide comparable value. So I don't view those as glaring holes.

Plus, the Orioles will enter the season with a presumably healthy catcher Matt Wieters (who played just 26 games last year before undergoing Tommy John surgery last June) and third baseman Manny Machado (who missed half the season with various knee ailments). First baseman Chris Davis is done serving a drug suspension for Adderol. So three key players will be back, although Davis was pretty bad last year (.196/.300/.404 slash line and 26 homers after hitting .286/.370/.634 with 53 homers in 2013). If Davis falters, Steve Pearce, who had a .293/.373/.556 slash line last year, easily the best of his career, can play first.

Which leaves designated hitter. That's where Quentin comes in. He was awful for San Diego last year, and only a half-time player the two prior seasons:

Year	Age	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
2012	29	86	340	284	44	74	21	0	16	46	36	41	.261	.374	.504	.877	146
2013	30	82	320	276	42	76	21	0	13	44	31	55	.275	.363	.493	.855	145
2014	31	50	155	130	9	23	6	0	4	18	17	33	.177	.284	.315	.599	75
SDP (3 yrs)		218	815	690	95	173	48	0	33	108	84	129	.251	.352	.464	.816	132

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/28/2015.

So why should the Orioles trade for him? Here's my logic:

• The Orioles can buy low on Quentin, given his lousy recent performance.
• The Padres have a serious logjam in their outfield. They added three full-time players via trade (former Dodger Matt Kemp, former Brave Justin Upton, and former Ray Wil Myers). They still have Will Venable (146 games played last year) and Cameron Maybin (95 games). They need to deal somebody.
• Quentin is signed for $8 million this year, the same as Cruz earned in 2014. His contract has a $10 million mutual option for 2016, subject to a $3 million buyout if he plays 320 games in 2013-2015, which he won't. In other words, he'll cost $8 million in 2015 and $10 million in 2016 if all goes well, nothing if it doesn't. That's pretty reasonable.
• The reason he's missed so much time is that he's had a series of injuries. Since joining the Padres, he's been out with knee, wrist, shoulder, and groin injuries, including three stints covering 152 games on the disabled list. Quentin is a bad outfielder, enough so that he'll probably be healthier if he doesn't have to spend half the game running around chasing balls while wearing a glove. (He also gets hit by pitches a lot.) Paul Molitor and Edgar Martinez are Hall of Fame-caliber players who went from oft-injured to extremely durable once they became full-time DHs. Not that Quentin's another Molitor or Martinez, but a full-time DH role could keep him in the lineup more.
• Amplifying that point, prior to playing in San Diego, Quentin played for the White Sox, mostly as an outfielder but also as DH, with better durability:

Year	Age	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
2008 ★	25	130	480	96	138	26	1	36	100	66	80	.288	.394	.571	.965	149
2009	26	99	351	47	83	14	0	21	56	31	52	.236	.323	.456	.779	98
2010	27	131	453	73	110	25	2	26	87	50	83	.243	.342	.479	.821	119
2011 ★	28	118	421	53	107	31	0	24	77	34	84	.254	.340	.499	.838	122
CHW (4 yrs)		478	1705	269	438	96	3	107	320	181	299	.257	.352	.505	.857	124

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/28/2015.
• The Padres' home field, Petco Park, is the most extreme pitcher's park in baseball. The 2015 Bill James Baseball Handbook estimates that it suppresses home runs by 12%, home runs by right-handed hitters like Quentin by 24%, and runs by 17% compared to the average NL ballpark. In his three seasons there, Quentin slugged just .394 at home but a robust .510 on the road. His overall numbers were clearly dragged down by his home park. Oriole Park, by contrast, is more hitter-friendly, boosting runs by 5% and righties' homers by 7%. Quentin's overall numbers would benefit from a move.
• Quentin is good at getting on base. Among the 168 players with 2,500 or more plate appearances between 2008 and 2014, he ranks 47th with a .352 on base percentage. The Orioles led the majors in home runs last year, easily, with 211, and were second in the AL in slugging percentage with .422, but only sixth in runs scored, with 705. The reason is that their .311 on base percentage was fifth worst in the league. They didn't get enough guys on base to take advantage of the long balls. The current Orioles roster has only three hitters with 30+ games played last year with a 2014 on base percentage better than the league average of .316: Pearce (.373), Young (.337), and Machado (.324). Quentin would address the team's key offensive weakness. 

Track record as a DH, buy low, reasonable contract (always a plus for Angelos), fills a need...all the Orioles need is for Duquette to continue to show signs of life. Do it, Dan. You're not going to work for the Blue Jays this year anyway.

Flyover: Baltimore Orioles

This continues a series of looks at each team over the past month.

The Baltimore Orioles are leading the American League East with a 75-56 record. Their six-game lead over the second-place Yankees is the largest in the league. They moved into a tie for first on July 3 and stayed there ever since. As was the case the last time they qualified for the postseason, their record has some lucky indicators--they lead the league in both extra-inning wins (12-5) and one-run wins (25-19), but they also have the fourth-best run differential in the league and the second best record against winning teams. 

How Are They Doing Lately? The Orioles' 17-10 record over the past 30 days gives them the second-most wins in the American League, behind the 21-7 Royals and tied with the 17-9 Mariners and 17-11 Angels. It's allowed them to expand their lead from 2.5 games a month ago to 6.0 today. They've done it with pitching (2.89 ERA, third best in the league), particularly the bullpen (an absurdly good 1.73 ERA, easily the best in the league) and an offense that's been good enough: sixth in runs scored, second in OPS, way more home runs (42) than anybody else (the Astros are second with 32). About the only thing they haven't had--not that they've needed it--is team speed, as they have no triples and just six stolen bases over the past month. The only dark cloud was the loss of third baseman Manny Machado to season-ending knee surgery. He last played on August 11. They're 8-6 in the games since.

What's Going RIght? The starting pitchers have been decent, with a 3.49 ERA over the past month. That's eighth in the league, but way ahead of the ninth-place Tigers at 4.17 and the league average of 3.90. The bullpen, as noted above, has been lights out. The Royals, Mariners, and Orioles haven't blown a save in the past month, and the Orioles relievers have allowed only three homers, tied with the Mariners for fewest in the league. While they've made fewer pitches in the strike zone (46.5%) than any other AL relief corps, they're third with swings induced on 34.7% of pitches outside the strike zone. The relievers have the league's fifth-highest strikeout rate and third-lowest walk rate over the past month. 

On offense, the story has been the power surge. Over the last 30 days, first baseman (and now, with Machado hurt, third baseman) Chris Davis has six homers, tied for fourth-most in the league, and the O's have three players with five (LF-DH Nelson Cruz, catcher Caleb Joseph, 1B-LF Steve Pearce) and four more with four (shortstop J.J. Hardy, CF Adam Jones, RF Nick Markakis, 2B Jonathan Schoop). There are a lot of unlikely sources there. Davis has batted .149 over the month with three singles, four doubles, and six homers. Joseph is a 28-year-old rookie catcher who's playing only because catcher Matt Wieters is out for the season with Tommy John surgery. Pearce has an interesting history: The O's bought him from the Yankees in June 2012, lost him to the Astros on waivers in July 2012, claimed him on waivers in September 2012, released him on April 27 this year, and then re-signed him two days later. Rookie second baseman Schoop has the lowest on base percentage in baseball (.251) among players with 390 or more plate appearances. The team's second-best .433 slugging percentage has outweighed a league-worst .297 on-base percentage.

What's Going Wrong? Obviously, if some of those fly balls stop clearing the fence--the O's have had nearly 15% of their fly balls land in the stands over the past month compared to the league average of 9% and the team's season-long average of less than 11%--that lousy on-base percentage is going to be a problem. They have a middle-of-the-pack .247 batting average but they've walked in just 5.7% of their plate appearances over the past month, well below every team in the league but the White Sox and Royals.

While It's hard to knock the performance of the relievers, the starters gotten batters to swing at only 28% of pitchers outside the strike zone, perhaps indicating that the starters aren't fooling opposing batters. Both the starters (.272) and the relievers (.228!) are sporting batting averages on balls in play well below the league averages of .296 and .286, respectively. Gaps that wide are hard to preserve. 

Who's Hot? The relievers are all hot. In particular, over the past 30 days, Darren O'Day, Brad Brach, and Andrew Miller have combined for a 0.25 ERA, 44 strikeouts, and 24 baserunners in 35 innings. That's allowed closer Zach Britton to go 9-for-9 in saves, even though his 3.27 ERA is the worst over the past month for Orioles relievers with more than one inning pitched. The standout starter has been Chris Tillman (4-0, 1.26 ERA), helped by a .174 batting average on balls in play. 

Among batters with more than 60 plate appearances in the past month, Hardy, Pearce, and Joseph hold the top three positions among Orioles batters in batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage. I listed all the Orioles hitters with four or more homers over the 30 days above; all but leadoff hitter Markakis has at least 10 RBI, and all but bottom-of-the-order Schoop and Joseph have scored at least 10 runs. 

Who's Not? Ubaldo Jimenez has pitched himself out of the rotation for now after compiling an 8.36 ERA over his last three starts. The club's two biggest sluggers, Nelson Cruz and Chris Davis, have been pretty bad. Davis is batting .149, worst in the league over the past 30 days, has a second-worst .219 on base percentage, and has stuck out in 36.5% of his plate appearances of late, the most among American League hitters. Cruz is batting .200 with a .248 on base percentage, sixth worst in the league. On July 7, Cruz went 3-for-5 with a homer, capping a three-game streak in which he went 11-for-16 with two homers and five runs batted in, raising his batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage to 2.94/.359/.591. Since then, he's hitting .173/.247/.333. And as noted above, outside of the homers, Schoop's bat has been bad.

What's the Outlook? It's a virtual certainty that Baltimore's bullpen won't remain this good nor that its hitters won't continue their torrid home run pace. But it's also unlikely that Davis and Cruz will stay this bad, and there's little to make you think the starting pitchers can't remain solid, particularly with Jimenez now in the bullpen to work out his problems. The Orioles have built up enough of a lead that they're favorites to win the division even if the relievers' ERA and the hitters' percentage of fly balls becoming home runs return to earth. Whether they'll go deep into the postseason is another story. They seem to be the best team in what has surprisingly become a weak division.

Reality Check: Defensive Shifts

Tom Verducci writes about baseball for Sports Illustrated and talks about on the MLB Network. He's a smart guy and a great writer. He's passionate about the game as well, writing on occasion about ways it could be better. He did so last week, proposing that baseball do something to limit defensive shifts: moving fielders to one side or the other of second base in order to take advantage of hitters' tendencies to hit the ball there. You know, like this:

Verducci cites the situation pictured above in particular, when the player at the plate is lefthanded, he tends to hit balls to the right side of the infield, and, in addition, he's slow. (I can't speak to the speed of the guy at the plate in this picture; I can't make him out.) He cites slow left-handed batters who pull having down years: Chris Davis, Ryan Howard, Jay Bruce, Adam Dunn, Brian McCann, Shin-Soo Choo, David Ortiz, and Adrian Gonzalez, among others. He has a pretty convincing table: batting average on balls in play (i.e., excluding at bats that result in strikeouts or home runs) for left-handed hitters when they hit the ball to the right side of the infield:
   2005   .379
   2006   .386
   2007   .353
   2008   .358
   2009   .350
   2010   .351
   2011   .332
   2012   .313
   2013   .323
   2014   .301

Verducci:

In 2010, Howard, McCann, Ortiz, Bruce, Dunn, Choo, Curtis Granderson and Adam LaRoche all were among the best lefthanded hitters in the game. None of them were All-Stars this year. Fewer hits to the pull field – into the shift – is one reason. Throw in former All-Stars Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran, two more slow-footed sluggers (and using only their numbers batting lefthanded), and you can see how the shift is harming lefthanders...

Ignore that some of those guys haven't been good for years. His point, that the shift's affected lefties since the Tampa Bay Rays started becoming shift-happy in 2008, seems to be borne out by the numbers above. His solution: That baseball should look into establishing an "illegal defense rule" that'd limit the number of infielders on either side of second base to two. 

Verducci's proposal met with a fair amount of criticism on the Internet, partly because he's proposing a pretty significant change to the rules of the game. I don't really buy that. The rules of baseball aren't inviolable; we added replay and removed home plate collisions this year. If there's a problem in the game, let's address it.

The problem I have is that I'm not sure the response Verducci's proposing--limiting defensive shifts--will address the problem of a decline in offense, simply because there's not a lot of evidence I can see that shifts are the culprit. I'm going to show you a somewhat busy table, so let me explain the columns. The first one, Year, is self-explanatory. BABIP is the batting average on balls in play--that is, the batting average when the batter puts the ball in play (doesn't strike out, walk, get hit by the pitch, etc.) and doesn't hit a home run. Ground is the batting average on ground balls. L vs. L is the batting average for left-handed hitters--the focus of Verducci's research--against left-handed pitchers. L vs. R is the batting average for left-handed hitters against right-handed pitchers. If defensive shifts are hurting offenses, particularly with lefties at the plate, we should see all of these batting averages decline with time, as shifted fielders turn what used to be hits into outs. Here's the table:
   Year    BABIP  Ground  L vs. L  L vs. R
   2005    .295    .233    .295     .299
   2006    .301    .236    .294     .302
   2007    .303    .239    .301     .312
   2008    .300    .237    .298     .302
   2009    .299    .232    .286     .299
   2010    .297    .234    .299     .298
   2011    .295    .231    .291     .301
   2012    .297    .234    .287     .299
   2013    .297    .232    .293     .300
   2014    .299    .237    .297     .307

Do you see any evidence from those number that defensive shifts--which have grown in popularity especially in the last couple years--have hampered offense? I can't. As of today, the batting average on balls in play at its highest level since 2009. The batting average on grounders is the highest it's been since 2008. Left-handed hitters are hitting better against lefties than any year since 2010 and against righties since 2007. Offense is surely down, but it's not because defensive shifts are resulting in plummeting batting averages. So I don't see a need to legislate against shifts.

As to why offense if down: batters are striking out in 20.3% of plate appearances, the most in history--the rate's risen for nine straight years--the walk rate's declined for five straight years and is now at its lowest level since 1968, batters are hitting balls on the ground,  which produce a lower OPS than balls hit in the air, at the highest rate since stats became available in 2002, and the percentage of fly balls leaving the park has declined for two years, to the lowest level since 2011. That's why. Sounds like a problem of good pitching rather than innovative defense.

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.