That 10% by one guy is a help, that 10% by 3 guys is huge, that 10% by 6 guys is Yankee RedSox like.

Point of reference: Believe it or not you can actually have a lower OB% than BA. Barajas (or maybe Benjie) had that for a while last year.

So if I do not reply to anything else said here you know why.

I’ll oogle some contestants for you!
lol

You know what you SHOULD worry about when at the plate?
Putting the bat on the ball and hitting it where they do not have a fielder!

Thats all you should be thinking about. Then depending on how well you do that you will get either a single double triple and even sometimes a home run!
hell Santana hit one this year didn’t he?

Thats what is important. If you worry about getting on base you are worrying about something other than the task at hand.
Putting good wood on the ball and driving it!

Whatever base you get does not matter! If you do that consistently you will have a HIGH BA, and even HIGHER OBP and quite possibly more RBI as well because you are hitting the ball far enough to score a run even on a fly ball out! Or advance the runner so the next guy can.

Maybe even score yourself because you hit the HR.

You should not concern yourself with the OB or what base because that is putting the cart before the horse!
Making good contact and working the pitcher to get the pitch you can drive is the most important part of batting and scoring runs. Because everything else falls into the place you want it to be if you do that!

If your willing to settle for a walk you are basically leaving all the work for the next guy!

But the way I did it those are accounted for in the 75% that require both a OB and an RBI.

It seemed to be the fairest way to break it down given the data set we have to work with.

This is why I say the better Metrics are not available because baseball doesn’t record stats that could be important to better metrics.
Sabers tries to attempt to better use what is there but it too is limited by the stats that are actually kept by the MLB and which those metrics are based on.

They are usually kept on the scoresheet but rarely ever put into a statistical ledger.

Total Pitches a batter saw, BA with two stikes, little things that tell you about the PA which is where I think the most important stuff is happening.

Circumstances always force a team to SETTLE and if your at that point then fine settling for OBP at that point is fine.
But you do not look for the OBP first until you are sure the ideal your looking for is not there!

Put it this way…

A Player’s OBP will always be higher than his BA.
It will never be LOWER! It simply can’t happen!
Because OBP adds all these extra Nice but not as good as a hit stats it should not be looked at FIRST, Maybe second but the BA will tell you what the player will do in the most important aspect.
High BA = High OBP!
But High OBP does not mean High BA ever! You CAN have a high OBP and a lousy BA!

So why bother looking at the stat that can lie to you about what is important instead of looking at the stat that IS and which also ensures that High OBP will follow as well?

You get on first you should try to steal 2nd and get into scoring position and hope someone makes your on base worth having. Thats really the issue, OB isn;’t worth squat till SOMEONE does something with it and thats why in the case of the HR the OB means squat because someone already did something with it before he got to the first base!

Or is it a lack of doing something that makes it occurr?

The Yankees take the walk cause it is given to them by the pitcher. Tampa takes what they get too. It is what happens the rest of the time that gets the Yankees those walks because no one wants to throw them a strike and I will bet Tamps’s has something to do with that too!

All in All the Walk is a failure by the pitcher not a success of the batter!

Most stats are incomplete in telling a full story which is why there will NEVER be a holy grail stat! That is until some grand unified theory of everything is invented to plug all these numbers into! lol

Here is what I do know leaguewide.

There were
21,308 runs scored last year
20,288 of them were by RBI.
4613 were via HR
Only 1020 were recorded without an RBI meaning RS less likely to happen without an RBI.

4% of RS can be attributed to ON BASE with no help!

21% are due to a batter hitting a HR all by himself without any input or help from the guys on base (if any)!

the remaining 75% require SOMETHING with SOMETHING ELSE!

OB and RBI together. Neither is REALLY any more important than the other 75% of the time.
But when you factor in the 21% of the HR and the 75% of the remaining RBI 96% of all scoring involves the PA (Batter’s Box Activity) compared to the 79% of the time the OB is involved.

And THIS is the most important point I have tried to get accross to MMO and Xtreem in particular.

Something that is involved only 80% of the time should not be as important as something that is needed 96% of the time!
Especially when 21% of your RS comes from the batter not the runner!

The Yankees have led the league in OBP for a few years and it isn’t why they score all their runs.
Good teams have good numbers all around. They get a lot of hits, drive in a lot of runs and get on base while doing it!
They walk a lot because who wants to throw a strike to them they can clobber?

It all starts at what the guy does in the batter box. How good he hits will be indicative of how much he walks, gets on base, scores a run and drives one in.

In ALL cases the batter has to do something in the batter’s box to make any of it work. Getting on base is a result that does not tell you squat about what he will DO in the box. And if it doesn;t tell you that then really what good is it and how important should it be?

I look at the Box not the base. If he does his job in the box then the base will be a given!

This is why I am such a proponent to fighting with two strikes even if you think a pitch could be a ball. If it is close enough to call you had better try and hit it, even foul so you get one more chance to get that pitcher to throw me a mistake I can drive!
If there is no way it could be called, sure I will take the walk.
But I would much rather get the Mistake pitch than the base!
Cause with the mistake I can ensure an RS. If I take the base alone? Who knows?

There are some Rays that walk a lot and others that don’t. All the Yankees take the walk. Every single one of them. The Yankees haven’t brought anyone over here in 15 years that won’t take the walk. I think the last guy was Mariano Duncan. Every trade, every FA, every homegrown player and this has been going on since the early to mid 1990′s.

I really believe the whole money ball thing was a tactic to expose the Yankees philosophy after Beane and the A’s lost Giambi. The one player they really couldn’t afford to lose.

Basically they caused the market to over value what the Yankees were doing so it would cost them more money.

The A’s under Beane have always been about the pitching.

For the record he didn’t say your name but rather he was referring to “saber people”.

That is why i asked you 1st if you considered yourself a saber person.

It was said in the shoutbox so it is no longer there but I have the screenshot since I have had him say later that I misinterpreted him in the past.

I do start to worry when #4 or #5 start not getting x base hits because they want to hack away. You cannot make a pitcher throw you a strike but you can let him get away with it by swinging at them.

You can’t tell me that you haven’t had guys who would rather swing at s**t then take the walk in that situation and what do you tell them?

I know what you tell them. You tell them to take the freebie and next time you’ll get your pitch, don’t get yourself out. Take your base this guy’s not going to want to walk two guys in a row so get ready to score from 1st.