Some Unlucky Bounces
Looking at a hitter's line drive rate and BABIP has been the generally accepted quick way to see if someone has been getting lucky or not on hits. There's a couple problems with it though. One is that sample size issues can be a problem. Also, hitters are individually different beasts and so applying a one size fits all rule is going to overgeneralize. Lastly, even ignoring those, those two pieces of information cannot tell you what kinds of hits are (or not) falling in.
This is where wOBAr can pitch in. wOBAr takes a hitter's batted ball types and uses his own past success rates on each type to generate an expected wOBA line. There's some more stuff in this thread which I link to with a note saying that I've since exempted home runs from the regression. I took at the Mariners' park-adjusted wOBA's and their corresponding wOBAr's and using the difference (Diff) between the two, calculated the amount of runs that difference would entail.
| Player | Diff | Runs |
|---|---|---|
| Griffey | 15.9 | 0.9 |
| Bradley | 3.6 | 0.2 |
| Wilson | -27.5 | -1.8 |
| Suzuki | 14.2 | 1.3 |
| Figgins | 10.1 | 0.9 |
| Kotchman | 61.9 | 4.8 |
| Gutierrez | -51.4 | -4.6 |
| Lopez | -7.4 | -0.7 |
| Johnson | 27.9 | 1.1 |
| Byrnes | 23.1 | 0.7 |
| Moore | 26.7 | 1.0 |
| Langerhans | 174.4 | 0.2 |
| Sweeney | 62.0 | 1.7 |
| Tuiasosopo | 17.4 | 0.3 |
Negative in the runs column means that the players has been "lucky" and that regressing his wOBA to his wOBAr would subtract away that many runs from the team. The total difference in runs scored? Six. That doesn't sound like a lot but over just 24 games that's a whopping 0.25 runs per game, which is quite huge. And given how close our games are, those missing runs are potentially even more impactful.
True, the offense isn't stellar, but it's also been a tad snake bit so try not to freak yourself out too much.
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I'm glad it wasn't just me who thought Kotchman was lining out a ton.
Hard work never killed nobody, but I won't take my chances.
Fangraphs has him batting
.412 on liners this year…versus league average of .750ish
Apologies if this has been asked and answered elsewhere,
but would you mind passing along the recipe for converting the wOBA*-wOBAr difference into runs?
Oh hey it's nice to be reminded that Matt Schwartz is an idiot
by Graham MacAree on May 2, 2010 8:42 PM PDT up reply actions
Thanks.
Wasn’t sure if 1.15 was still the number to use.
The sig seems to function as a Rorschach of sorts…
It's not really my business as to whether or not you agree with it
I just think it’s funny that a second rate economist with no grasp of common sense calls out a statistic that he doesn’t understand
by Graham MacAree on May 2, 2010 8:55 PM PDT up reply actions
Whether it's your business or not aside, I don't agree with it.
But I also don’t know Matt Swartz, so I can’t comment on his rating as an economist or his grasp of common sense…
My pleasure
Sorry for the tangent.
Anyway, I checked Matthew’s numbers to make sure; he’s definitely using 1.15
by Graham MacAree on May 2, 2010 9:22 PM PDT up reply actions
I checked, too, and probably should've done so first ~ but I was being lazy.
A final question that might be more appropriate to ask Matthew: if I wanted to blatantly rip this analysis off for a similar post at Baseball Time in Arlington, would that be copacetic? (I’d give Matthew and this post a hat-tip, naturally.)
I see you.
And approve.
If Brad Pitt is playing Beane who do you want playing you?
JD: Eddie Guardado.
This team was pretty snakebit during the 3rd game of the Rangers series.
Rob Johnson lines out to CF with the bases-loaded and 2-outs. That ball probably falls in the a bases-clearing double for a normal CF (or Torii Hunter). Kotchman lines into a DP when it was two on and no one out (Figgins doubled off at 2nd). Gutz lines out to RF in extras.
Glad to see some moves being made after today’s game but things just didn’t go our way during the game itself.
So I ran the numbers for each team in the AL, including a recalculation of the Ms.
The difference is now 9.6 runs (individual numbers below).
Any thoughts on the magnitude of the change over one game?
Bradley: 0.5
Byrnes: 0.9
Figgins: 0.5
Griffey: 0.8
Gutierrez: -4.5
Johnson: 2.1
Kotchman: 5.9
Langerhans: 0.2
Lopez: 0.0
Moore: 1.0
Suzuki: 2.8
Sweeney: 1.7
Tuiaosopo: 0.3
Wilson: -2.6

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