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Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Does Linear Weights out value undervalue Ichiro?
So asks Jeff:
Ichiro hits a lot of grounders, and he hits a lot of grounders with men on and fewer than two outs. A groundout with nobody on is worth the same as a strikeout. A groundout with men on will either not advance the runners, which is worth the same as a strikeout, or it will advance the runners or replace one of them with Ichiro, which is worth a little more than a strikeout. (Rarely will an Ichiro grounder result in a guy getting thrown out at third or home.) Some groundouts will go for double plays, but as Ichiro has demonstrated over his career, this is unusual; his double play rate is roughly a third the league average.
So, I have to wonder - is wOBA undervaluing Ichiro a little bit? Given 450 outs a season, if Ichiro’s average out run value is just 0.013 higher than the league average, then we’re talking about an additional five runs. I could very easily be missing something, of course, and all this may not mean anything at all, but it’s been on my mind.
Sure, he’s right, that each event is not equal for each player. One man’s out is another man’s, well, not-so-damaging out. Which is why we have RE24. RE24 counts the run value of each base/out state before and after the batter. So, this handles the out thing, like productive outs, destructive outs, infield singles, long doubles, etc.
Ichiro’s Linear Weights (wRAA on Fangraphs, for Runs Above Average) is +153 runs since 2002. That’s a generic set of run values for each generic event. His RE24 is +223 runs. So, he’s generated some 70 more runs than his Linear Weights suggests. While there may be some truth to what Jeff is saying, I would guess the vast majority of his gain is in his situational hitting (i.e., hitting better with men on base).
But, generally-speaking, yeah, Ichiro is cool.