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Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Offensive rates as a function of base/out state…
I have spend a lot of computing time (it takes forever to “run") trying to figure out what the league average rates for the various offensive categories are as a function of the base/out state. Any differences from overall rates would be due to batters and pitchers changing their approach and the fielders being in different positions and perhaps doing different things when the ball is hit to them.
It appears from the data that the batters trump the pitcher in terms of their approach (although, as you will see, there are times when the pitchers truno the batters, as with BB and HP rates), or perhaps the pitchers don’t “care” as much as the batters, and perhaps rightfully so. For example, with a runner on second base and no outs, batters in general (lefties and righties, BTW), do in fact hit more balls to the right side, even though to some extent the pitcher is trying to “force” then to hit to the left side. We mostly see that effect with no outs, BTW, which is pretty much what we would expect. If a commentator ever tries to say that batters try and hit to the right side with a runner on second and ONE out, don’t believe him (it is certainly possible that that happens SOME of the time - but on average, there is not much evidence of that).
For all situations other than at least a runner on second and no outs, batters hit fly balls to the left side 51 or 52% of the time and ground balls .55 or .56. This is RHB and LHB combined. With no outs, however, and a runner on second only, it is .47 and .48 (FB and GB), respectively. With first and second and no outs, it is .53 and .52, so fly balls are normal and ground balls are hit more to the right side, I guess to help stay out of the DP, or maybe as a function of the hit and run. With 2nd and 3rd, it is .5 and .55, so ground balls are normal and fly balls are a little to the right side. With a runner on third in general, we see more fly balls to the right side. My guess is that with zero and one out and a runner on 3rd, the batter is trying to hit a fly ball, which results in more fly balls to the opp field for both lefties and righties. In fact, with a runner on 3rd only, we see .48 for FB. With one out, we see .5 and with 2 outs, we see .51.
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