Those Shifting Pirates

Baseball Prospectus is running a series entitled "Winter is Leaving." It examines each team in the league. The author chooses something obvious about the team--e.g., the Giants article today talks about how Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner are both good--and expands on it. It's been an entertaining series, and, for those of you unwilling to pay for a BP subscription (despite my recommendation that you do so), it's free.

Anyway, I wrote the article on the Pirates. It's here. The obvious thing I discuss is that the Pirates shift their infielders a lot. The analysis is that the shifts are only the most visible manifestation of the Pirates' run prevention strategy: Get catchers who get a lot of borderline pitches called strikes, pitchers who, aided by the strike calls, generate a lot of ground balls, which are hit to infielders who are positioned optimally to make the play. It's the biggest platform for which I've written. If you click the link, I hope you like it.

And, to follow up on the blatant self-promotion, here is a link to the PowerPoint and here is a link to the audio for the presentation at the Society for American Baseball Research conference I mentioned last week.

Crisis Averted at Analytics Conferece

PHOENIX, Arizona, March 14 - A potential hostage situation was averted in a hotel in Phoenix as an intruder at a conference fled. There were no injuries. The suspect has not been apprehended.

The incident broke out at the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Analytics Conference at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix on North Second Street in downtown Phoenix at approximately 4:45 PM local time. It occurred during a panel discussion led by regular participants on MLB Network's "Clubhouse Confidential" program.

The highlight of Clubhouse Confidential panel was an appearance by the show's host, Brian Kenny, via video link. Kenny was leading the ritual killing of an "egregiously preposterous" win (Wade Davis, May 15, 5.1 IP, 9H, 3 BB, 2K, 4R), to the cheers of the conference attendees, who rhythmically beat their slide rules against their pocket protectors. (A Hyatt Regency employee present described it as "sort of like Lord of the Flies in reverse.") At that point, the intruder, described by some on the scene as "probably some kind of retired New York Times writer" ("Well, he was old, and he used big words") burst into the hotel's ballroom. He apparently was able to elude hotel security by flashing a Baseball Writers' Association of America card, insisting, "It doesn't matter that I retired years ago, I'm a lifetime member!"

Kenny immediately offered to spare the win in order to appease the gate-crasher. (Those on the scene speculated he had another win backstage as a fallback, Jonathon Niese, April 2, 5 IP, 5H, 4 BB, 1K, 5R.) When the intruder was unmoved, Fangraphs managing editor Dave Cameron ordered his dog, who had been on stage quietly chewing panelists' shoes, to attack, but the canine's incessant playing with its squeaky toy failed to distract the interloper. Ben Lindbergh, editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus, tried to shift attention from the panel, suggesting that the perpetrator consider baseball played on ice skates by nine-person teams that run the basepaths clockwise, to no avail.

The intruder was wearing a large "Morris '14" button, which investigators believe could indicate his support for John Morris, a candidate for Los Angeles County Assessor. He appeared to be primarily interested in panelist Rob Neyer, Senior Baseball Editor for Fox Sports. The assailant was reported to say, "You're why I have to keep voting every January" to Neyer while scanning the audience, muttering, "Where's that bald guy?" (At one point, his attention was drawn to SABR President Vince Gennaro, the fourth panelist, but he appeared to be looking for someone with glasses.) This led to speculation that Neyer's recent job switch from SB Nation to Fox Sports was an effort to elude the attacker.

The incident was defused when alert conference attendees began pelting the intruder with copies of the "SABR Defensive Index," a document that had been presented earlier in the day. The suspect fled, screaming, "Gold Glove gobbledy goop. Help!"

Investigators, suspecting the perpetrator is what police psychologists termed "a self-hating blogger," are conducting a door-to-door search of mothers' basements in the nearby area.

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. 

How the Bucs Did It

Great Pittsburgh Tribune article, by way of the Society for American Baseball Research Facebook page, on how the Pirates went from perennial loser to playoff contender. I don't know about you, but I figured it was beefing up the lineup so it was no longer Andrew McCutchen and the Seven Dwarfs*, getting creative with low-budget bullpen options, and getting lucky with some starting pitching reclamation projects. (I'm lookin' at you, A.J. Burnett and Francisco Liriano.) The article points to more 21st-century moves: employing infielder shifts on defense and changing pitchers' repertoires to induce more ground balls (hit to those shifted infielders). And, of course, selling it to players and management. Great example of the marriage between traditional baseball skills and modern analysis.

*I was wrong about that, anyway. They're 10th in the NL in scoring this year, the same as last year.