Yesterday, I was reading an article the other day about baseball players who are struggling this year. You know, the standard mid-season type thing about guys who aren’t earning their paycheck and all that standard formulaic journalism.
In the article, a scout for the Royals spouted that standard line that even the best hitters in baseball fail 70 percent of the time and it’s a really hard game. We’ve all heard that statement before, and it’s even used as a metaphor for other aspects of life.
Unfortunately, it’s not true.
You might say that this borders on nitpicking, but the best hitters in baseball don’t fail 70 percent of the time. In fact, if a hitter is failing 70 percent of the time, he should be benched and not allowed to see the field.
What those people are referring to is that if you are getting a hit in 30 percent of your at bats (batting .300), you’re pretty good at baseball. And yet, you are still failing to get a hit in 70 percent of your at bats.
The problem with this line of thinking is that there are other ways to not fail when batting. As a hitter, the only real measure of failure is making an out. If you make an out as a hitter, you have failed at your job.
In order to not make an out, a hitter can do the following things:
- Get a hit
- Draw a walk
- Get hit by a pitch
When you add those things together, you end up calculating a hitter’s on-base percentage. This is the percentage of times a hitter has gotten on base instead of making an out. And therefore, has not failed.
The current major-league leader in on-base percentage is Chipper Jones, at .466. That means that Jones has only failed in about 53 percent of his at bats. In Barry Bonds’ incredible 2002 season, his OBP was .582. Granted, that number was almost unreal, but it did happen.
I realize that this is not a major distinction. However, it sounds far less impressive to turn to your buddy Hank down at the diner when he describes his latest life struggle and say, “Hell, damn it, even the best baseball players ever are up there flailing and failing 43 percent of the time! And those are the ones that are good! You’re doing OK, Hank.”
Hank is not doing OK, of course. And neither is Pedro Feliz, who actually does fail 70 percent of the time he goes to the plate.
While you’re here (if you’re still here), let’s go over one other common baseball conception that need to be killed. Again, if you follow baseball closely, you probably know these things. Although, as Fire Joe Morgan has proven, following baseball closely does not mean you know anything. So let’s move forward to another baseball misconception.
Pitcher wins mean something
All throughout the summer, we hear about pitchers who “aren’t getting it done” because they haven’t won as many games as some other pitchers. Often, the speaker will say something like, “The rest of his numbers look great, but the wins aren’t there. And that’s what matters the most.”
Except it isn’t.
A few summers ago, John Kruk was arguing with someone on Baseball Tonight about the Cy Young race between Johan Santana and Curt Schilling. At the time, Santana had 20 wins and Curt Schilling had 21 wins. Santana, however, had an ERA (earned-run average — the average number of runs given up per nine innings) that was almost a full run lower. On average, he gave up one run fewer than Schilling did every nine innings. That’s significant.
Old Krukky didn’t care about that. He firmly stated that Schilling should get the Cy Young award because of that one extra win. When Karl Ravech pointed to the ERA differences, Kruk said the only stat that mattered was helping your team win, and Schilling had done that better than Santana.
Let’s examine that idea closer. Here are two pitchers:
Frank Driziwisczki plays for the Montana Mopes. He has a 97 mph fastball and one of the best sliders in the league, along with pinpoint control. He has used these skills to compile a 2.15 ERA (very good) to go along with 220 strikeouts in 190 innings (anything above one strikeout per inning is great). Unfortunately, the rest of his team sucks at hitting. They truly are the type of hitters that fail 7 of 10 times. So despite his great number, Frank’s team loses a lot of 2-1 or 1-0 games when he pitches. So he only has 12 wins on the season.
Steven Marcatopolous plays for the Biloxi Bashers. He is 39 years old and has had five elbow surgeries. His fastball is only 84 mph and his curveball doesn’t curve anymore. But, since Biloxi spent their all of their money on hitters, they have to employ pitchers like Steven. Opposing hitters love batting against Steven, and he has an ERA of 5.85 (terrible). However, since Biloxi has a bunch of awesome hitters, they score a lot of runs. So even though Steven gives up 5 or 6 runs every start, Biloxi will sometimes score 8, 10 or 135 runs. Because of this, Steven technically wins a lot of games.
This does not mean he’s good. Make sense?
If it does make sense to you, and you can also grasp that on-base percentage is more important than batting average, congratulations, you’re smarter than Tim McCarver.
***Note****
If you’re totally new to baseball and looking for a general guideline about these stats – in case you see a game on TV, or you’re at a ballgame, here are some basic guidelines about numbers that are good and bad.
On-base percentage
Below .320: Awful
.320-.340: Needs work
.340-.370: Useful
.370-.399: Great
Above .400: Outstanding and awesome
ERA
Above 5.00: You suck
4.50-5.00: You still pretty much suck
4.25-4.50: The fringe of average, or worse
3.75-4.25: This is good-to-average production
3.25-3.75: Very good
Below 3.25: Pretty studly
I’m aware that ERA has its flaws, and OBP shouldn’t be used totally without context but this is supposed to be a basic intro to baseball stats. Maybe in another installment we’ll dive into more stuff. But for now, ERA and OBP are good things to know.
