The great Baseball Reference has Advanced Batter Stats which cover about every conceivable hitting statistic, except I haven’t been able to find RBI/(RBI & LOB) which is a measure of success in knocking in available base runners—and perhaps of the manager’s sanity relative to placement in the batting order.
The YTD stats for Poor Pap and Jason Bay—the current Sox RBI leader—are: Poor Pap = 18/(18 + 91 LOB)= .165; Power-wristed JB = 49/(49 + 86)= .363. The surprise in the statistic is not that JB turns out to be having a more run-productive year than Poor Pap—I think we all suspected that, even before it was uncovered in my brilliant research—but that JB, despite his great RBI total, has left almost as many men on as PP. Seems impossible, but I double-checked all the LOB’s in the box scores. (Yikes, I might need to get a life one of these days!) I guess the point to all that is, if my logic is correct, that even if PP had been moved down to 6th in the order much earlier, he might have killed just about as many rallies. I suspect that to maximally minimize his damage without actually benching him, Tito would have to move him all the way down to 9th. (And, again, tell him that his sub .200 BA and especially sub .300 SA are far more embarrassing than placement in the order could ever be.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It is surprising that Bay has left that many on base. I guess he has lots of opportunities with Ellsbury , Pedroia , Youk having good years and Papi leaving them stranded .
ReplyDeleteBay hits good when I watch . Maybe if I kept stats and reviewed them with him , he would pay me to watch all the games and I could finally retire .
Speaking of Pap, before Lasik and without glasses or contacts, I might have been 20/500 or some ridiculous thing. Based on my sad experience, it would be quite difficult to hit major league pitching at 20/500, especially under the lights. So that must be it--when they test Pap's eyes, they're gonna find that he's suddenly been swinging while legally blind, get him some great big black coke bottle goggle glasses, and he'll be back to hitting 50 homers. He just won't look very good doing it.
ReplyDelete