THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Should we credit (fast) hitters at all for reaching base on an error?

This is one of those things announcers like to talk about when a fast guy “makes a fielder rush” leading to an error. Does this actually happen? And if so, should we be giving credit to hitters who routinely (is it a repeatable skill?) get on base via lots of errors?

Reaching on error is not random, it is tied to the identity of the batter (not much, but it’s there).

Actually, Raines is below-average in this regard.  But, it adds to his counting stats.  According to Rally’s database, through 2008, here are the leaders/trailers in reaching on error, in terms of runs:

36 jeted001
36 wynnj101
32 biggc001
30 younr001
30 aaroh101
...
-23 fairr101
-23 willb104
-23 palmr001
-30 willm102
-35 rosep001
-36 yastc101

Jeter keeps padding his resume.

Rose at the bottom is a big surprise.

KY, maybe there was a scorer bias where what would have been an ROE was scored a hit for Rose. (Maybe the scorer in Cincy was pushing for Rose to get the hit record.) I wonder if looking at Rose’s ROE rate at home versus on the road would be illuminating here.

Is there a correlation between ROE and batted ball type and direction? Groundballs produce more errors than flyballs I believe, and Jeter is a notorious groundball hitter. I’m not sure about the others though since we deal with historical data. Biggio doesn’t seem to be a groundballer though.

Colin,

I was born in ‘84, so I missed all of Rose’s career. But from what I know, he was pretty much popular everywhere. I wonder if Rose might have gotta some extra hits even in road parks, especially as he approached the all-time hits record. There could be a scorer bias everywhere, and I’m not sure this would show up in the stats.

Ooooooohhhhh… Pete Rose, through 1974, was -6 runs in reaching on error.  From 1975 to the end of his career, he was -29 runs.

I will bet you that scorers were very biased toward Rose, giving him hits that would otherwise be errors.

Fantastic JD!!

Tom, there’s a real home/road split here. He averaged a rate of 0.035 ROE on balls fielded by infielders in his career on the road, and only 0.025 at home. (The average player over that time period had the same error rate at home and on the road.)

Jeter is fast, bats right handed so likely hits more balls to the left side where it’s a longer throw, and is one of the most extreme ground ball hitters.

I’ve been watching baseball since 1970, and I can assure you Rose that during that time span Rose was never liked in Pittsburgh.

I can also add that I did a ROE study a year or so ago that looked at how the rates for everyone have dropped over time. IIRC the drop accelerated in th late 70’s, so this has some effect on Rose’s late career ROE, but not on his home/road split.

"so this has some effect on Rose’s late career ROE

I’m going to presume Rally normalized it on an annual basis.

What is with our obsession with round numbers (300 wins (20 in a season), 500 homers, etc.) It’s completely, completely arbitrary. Who cares if it’s 4000 times on base or 3997? I mean, c’mon.

Interesting stuff.  Yes, ROE is normalized to each year’s league average.  The players who do the best at reaching on errors are:

1) right handed
2) hit the ball hard
3) run well
4) hustle

No surprise that Jeter is among the best, or that Robin Yount did so well.  Righthanders hit the ball more often to 3b/ss, and those positions have less time to recover a bobble and throw a runner out than 2b/1b.  This should be obvious.

Rose was a numbers obsessed guy.  I have no doubt that he was the type to let the scorer have it if a decision went against him.  Official scorers are (still?) team employees, not league officials, and probably more vulnerable to player pressure than most people think.

In recent years I remember 2 players who made spectacles of themselves for disagreeing with scorer decisions, Mike Greenwell and Juan Gonzalez, and in both cases I think the pissed off player got his way.  I have no idea how often this really happens.

Add Orlando Cabrera to the list of players b****ing about a scoring decision (link is in my name).

http://sportsphd.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/the-importance-of-hometown-scorers-to-pete-rose/

There is room for questioning the objectivity of hometown scorers when a player with nearly identical home/road splits on a judgment call like an error suddenly develops a split when approaching 3,000 hits or the all-time hit record. These splits occur regardless of home park, meaning this is not just a product of Cincinnati.