THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I don’t mind—in fact I welcome—the homer a game for each team on average, but until MLB does something about all the damn strikeouts, it ain’t gonna be the same. Let them put the ball in play and get singles and triples and scurry a bit.

On the bright side, since league stolen base percentages are so much higher nowadays, not only could we get the extra running, but it might not be as stupid as it was at times.

I wouldn’t expect to see strikeouts come down unless HR also came down.  Players and teams are willing to trade strikeouts for the payoff of the big fly.  I did a quick rundown the leaderboard of strikeout rate last year for hitters and Austin Jackson and Franklin Gutierrez were the only ones below the league average ISO out of the top 35.

Bill James had an article awhile back when I was still a BJOL subscriber about strikeouts. His thesis was that strikeout rate has been increasing pretty much every year and that it will continue to increase because a) pitchers’ performance increases when their strikeout rate rises and b) batters’ performance at worse stays the same and at best increases when their strikeout rate rises.

No surprise that as run environment approaches the 1969-1992 years so is attendance.

However, with slower playing surfaces, smaller parks, and more k’s, we will see fewer triples and hits in general than in 1969-1992. Yawn.

So we might even be headed to the 1963-1968 years but with a few more SB.  Snoring.

To each his own.

No surprise that as run environment approaches the 1969-1992 years so is attendance.

Maybe that’s a joke and I missed it. Attendance is nowhere near 1969-1992 levels.

1969: 1,119,009 per team
1980: 1,654,390 per team
1992: 2,148,934 per team
2001: 2,419,370 per team
2011: 2,233,737 (current per-team pace)

Overall attendance will be down this year, but it will go up from where it is now. And I know people (Holy Writers) commonly bemoan the impending death of baseball, but I think folks fail to realize just how much attendance speaks to how popular the sport has become.

Since 1920, baseball has had about 2.9 billion total attendance. We’ve seen 43% of that total since Selig became commissioner in ‘93. No, it’s not simply expansion. The 1920-1992 period represents 1422 franchise seasons. 1993 onward has had 560 franchise seasons, and that’s counting 30 for this year which is only about a quarter complete.

I’m not sure what attendance in 1980 has to do with attendance in 2000, and trying to correlate anything to runs scored like that.

There’s been a huge shift, not the least of which may be exposure via TV.  And maybe the economy too.  You’d have to look at attendance in other sports as well, in addition to other entertainment venues (including concerts, movies, etc).  In addition, you’d have to look at ticket prices for all these different kinds of events.

In short: the world has changed, and baseball changes with it.

Tango,

You know I respect you, and your work.  Immensely.  But I have to point out that you’re comparing April 2011 numbers to 1969-1992 full-season numbers.  Many a MSM writer has done something similar, and absorbed a thorough, methodical rhetorical beat-down, here and elsewhere on the web.

Now, perhaps when you just look at April of all those years, the comparison holds, but that’s still the way we ought to look at it. 

This is comparing apple blossoms to apples…

I think I pointed out in another thread that the weather would be one thing that could affect run scoring.

Perhaps I should have said “April 2011 is ...”, without implying that we are necessarily in the midst of a shift.

Another factor for April run scoring is the abundance of scheduled off-days and rainouts, which will naturally lead to a larger proportion of games being pitched by top-of-the-rotation starters.  Later in the year when the scheduled off days drop, and some even get eaten up by makeup games, and when doubleheaders bleed in, you have weaker starting pitching than in April, which would bump runs up…

Poz does the April to April comps:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-i-think-steroids-are-out-of.html

From 1994-2010, hitters in April hit .264—so that’s down 15 points.

Their on-base percentage was .345—so that’s down 26 points.

Their slugging percentage was .421—so that’s down almost 40 points.

But it’s more than just the averages. There has not been a single year since 1994 when batters hit this sparsely. The lowest batting average since 1994 was last year’s .256, so that’s down. The lowest on-base percentage was a .330 in 2007, so that’s way down too. And in no season since 1994 have hitters slugged less than .400 in April.

So even just comparing April to April, early season to early season, the numbers are quite stark. That’s if you go back to 1994. But, as you probably already know, if you go back to the decade or so BEFORE 1994, well, suddenly the numbers look perfectly in line.

To remind you, this year’s core numbers: .249/.319/.382
From 1981-1993: .252/.322/.378

Yep, that’s just about the same.