5
2011
Hey Reyes, Show Me The OBP And Only Then Will We Show You The Money!
An article by Craig Lerner
Jose Reyes, considered by many to be one of the game’s best leadoff men when healthy, is by most accounts from Port St. Lucie, looking great and ready to go. But is he really a great leadoff hitter?
Sorry to disappoint you, but a career .335 OBP is far from great and as far as leadoff men goes, I’d say it’s probably below average. Even in his best season in 2006, Jose Reyes topped out at a good, but not great, .354 on-base percentage. <yawn>
According to Jon Heyman of SI.com, the team wants Jose Reyes to improve his on-base percentage before they even consider giving him the multi-year deal he craves. Thank the Almighty, that sanity now prevails in the front office in Flushing, because I have no doubt that if Omar Minaya was still running the carnival, Reyes would have been in the first year of a 7-year, $120 million dollar mega-deal right now.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Jose Reyes. He has great energy, he’s a likable guy, I love watching him leg out a triple, and he does cause some chaos for opposing pitchers whenever he’s on base. (keyword being whenever)
Any baseball purist will tell you that the main job of any leadoff man is to get on base, and in 2010 Reyes was a huge disappointment in that regard; posting a.321 OBP. How bad is that? Even Luis Castillo danced circles around Jose Reyes last season with a .337 OBP. (How you like me now!)
I want the Mets to field a great product year after year, and giving a player $100 million dollars to foul up the top of your order is a terrible idea. So my advice to Jose Reyes is, shape up or ship out.
I know that many will disagree, but this is about winning baseball games and not personalities.
About the Author: Craig Lerner
I'm a data analyst and researcher for a leading news agency who loves life and is hooked on the Mets. I love following the Amateur Draft and have a particular fondness for the Mets Minor Leagues who I follow each day. Give me a cold beer, a summer day, and a Mets game, and I'm good to go.
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He’ll be gone by Aug 1st. That would save $3.65 million right there.
Horrendous piece,
If Reyes hits good then don’t worry about his OBP. He only leads of once a game and the rest of the game he has gap power and drives runs in.
Also he’s been hurt for most of the last 2 years so that will bring his numbers down. There’s a LOT more to his game than OBP, he steals, he also hits with tremendous gap power too.
This OBP business has gone off the charts ridiculous and is down right amateurish. Now we have all these fantasy guys think their stats relate to the same thing on the field. If Reyes hits his normal self than he’ll be fine.
Reyes hit good in 2006 and we almost made it to the World Series yet you bring up his irrelevant OBP in 2006? Unbelievable.
You win as a TEAM UNIT. And NO generally accepted number stands above and beyond the sum of the parts. Remember that.
‘I know that many will disagree, but this is about winning baseball games and not personalities.’
Sorry, but I high doubt any Met fan wants Jose resigned because of his personality.
Sorry, that wasn’t meant for a response to you Bayonne. Should have been a stand alone comment at the end of the thread.
Having a leadoff hitter that gets OB at a good rate has been a staple of baseball since at least the 50′s. Earl Weaver used to berate his pitchers for walking guys. Why? He used to always say it’s not the HR that kills you it’s the guy or two you walked before the HR that did it.
I don’t care if my leadoff hitter hits his way on, get on by error, bunts, gets on by catchers inteference, K’s with no one on first and beats the throw down there or gets hit by a pitch. Any or all of those things get you on and get your team going. Let me tell you there are a lot of people in the other uniform glad when Jose goes back to the dugout but none so much as the pitcher. The less often that happens the better for us.
see the thing is, bad obp means bad performance at the plate, case closed. making outs is bad. i dunno why that is so hard to understand. bayonne do you know what “outs” are?
You dont even mention that when he’s on base his singles are almost always doubles! That doesnt show in OBP! Of course we want him to get on base more, but you waved him off like he’s some good for nothing scrub. This is unbelievable! Plus he is only 27 and can still improve, thanks to the worst hitting coach ever in hojo he learned nothing about his approach in 5 years! Reyes is the best shortstop the Mets have ever had! I know I’ve seen them all!
“Reyes is the best SS the Mets have ever had.” To that all I can add is that 2nd place is so far from Reyes it’s not even funny.
If we lose the best SS (by far) that we have ever had because of all these mutants we’ve handed barrel fulls of cash to over the years I’m gonna be sick.
even if he steals 80% of the time, that still means that 20 of his singles are actually outs. anf course he doesnt attempt to steal every time. so you assertion that his singles are almost always doubles is absurd.
It also means an 80% less chance of the next guy hitting into a DP!
That doesn’t count for something?
Not only did his steals help the team by making it easier to score him more than OBP alone, But he reduced by 80% the chance the next guy can hit into a double play compared to the minimal average of that OBP number.
right. the math shows that steals are not that helpful when you take into account the huge negative consequences of geting caught 20% of the time. they are good, but not really important.
Please show the math!
Please show that more than 20% of guys who do not steal aren’t erased anyway on the DP!
read a book. its well established that steals have no real value unless you are stealing at 80%, and that they are tremendously damaging at a rate below that. if you are stealing at a 70% rate and are stealing 80 bases a season that means you are killing your team.
Yeah Mordor was in a book I suppose thats a real place too! LOL
The book is WRONG!
Do the math and show that the 80% success of steals does not lead to LESS outs than if you stayed on first and got erased on a DP!
1129 Caught Stealing last year
3719 Ground into DP!
Seems to me that DPs account for more outs than CS!
And those 80% could have stopped 2975 of those DPs from being possible!
Hate to tell you but your book is WRONG!
Steals have a value that is impossible to quantify. The threat of the steal prevents the pitcher from devoting all of his attention to the batter. The first basemen doesn’t get as good a hop off 1B as he does with a non threat. The 2B or SS has to keep an eye on 1B. That’s not as easy as it sounds when you also have to pick up a GB on the way. Both vacate before the ball gets to the hitter. Even the CFer cheats. There’s holes all over the field. The hitter sees more fastballs, fastballs get turned around better than anything else. If nothing else it puts mental pressure on the pitcher and defense.
It’s always good to make them sweat out there even if it doesn’t put anything on the board. Kinda like body work in the early rounds.
None of this can be measured but it’s all true.
Don’t look but I think I just quantified it in a partial way.
By not stealing 3719 times it allowed a DP to happen. And if you steal successfully 80% of the time that you can reduce the DP number by 80%
Remember a DP is a 2:1 bad compared to a caught stealing.
Thats a reduction of 2975 Out reduction at minimum. Just by stealing 80%!
But yes it does have much more affect than just that but the effect is still quite impressive just on it’s own!
That’s of course if a double play is hit into EVERY TIME a runner chooses not to steal. And that happens in baseball. All the time…….
No it assumes that if they stole and made it 80% of the time that the guy at the plate would have 80% less opportunities to hit into a DP than they do now!
But there are occassions where there is no possibility to steal on a DP with bases loaded say. Which does happen.
Couldn’t find stats on DP sorted by bases the outs were made at.
Most are with a runner on 1st and a GB to the SS 2B 3B and in rare occassions to the 1B.
There are also Fly out pick off.
But the majority of them are that guy on first and a GO and whatever that number is will be more than the number of CS at 20%
Problem is very few actually steal at that 80% clip. Reyes may be one of those few.
I agree and also his defense has gotten worse in the last three seasons.
He’s had so many different problems with his body the last 2 seasons i just cannot believe you would make such a comment. Again, it goes back to understanding the entire game of baseball and what it takes to execute. You guys are just fixated on numbers. That’s it.
I didn’t notice anything wrong with his defense in 2008. Reyes has one of the quickest transfers (do you even know what the hell that is, mr. numbers guy?) i’ve ever seen.
Veterans of this site know i’ve been a critic or Reyes in the past for his clutch abilities and smarts but to want to get rid of him because of his on base percentage is downright……stupid, unintelligent thinking.
When Reyes is healthy and hitting he’s fine. He just has to smarten up that’s all
You think too much of yourself. I’m sure most readers of this site know what a transfer is and yes he has a very quick one and also one of the best arms in the league. However his range and fielding has taken a hit and it’s undeniable. I dont care about clutch because it’s fantasy which I guess makes you a fantasy guy. Reyes profiles as a good number two hitter. Until he improves his on-base skills he’s avaerag to below average as a leadoff hitter. Lets deal with facts Bayonne, and stop relying on fantasy. And by the way, just because we see the game from a more intellectual level than you, it does not mean we are fixated on numbers. We are fixated on baseball – winning baseball.
Clutch is not fantasy, To think it doesn’t exist is beyond sickening and shows not only a lack of understanding of sports competition but a lack of understanding in life itself, which sports emulates.
There is clutch in all aspects of life. How a person responds in important situations, or who is there for you when you need them the most. That’s clutch and the same thing applies in ALL sports. You hear it all the time no matter what sport you’re watching.
Whether it’s coming up to bat in the 8th inning with the game on the line, going for a job interview, having a wing man friend pinch hit for you when you can’t do something…it’s all CLUTCH.
And not everyone is capable of doing that.
to describe an opposing opinion about baseball as “beyond sickening” seems to imply that are not the most rational person around.
Intellect and being a Harvard Grad does not translate into understanding baseball. Don’t flatter yourself buddy because there’s a whole lot about the game you don’t understand.
Reyes played in 133 games last year and had over 600 plate appearances. From 2005 to 2008 he almost 3000 PAs.
So, no, injuries are not an excuse at this point. Besides, even if he were injured frequently enough to use it as an excuse, shouldn’t that give you pause as well?
Maybe you, all great and wise baseball guru, can explain something us ignorant numbers guys. How exactly can Jose Reyes steal a base from the bench? How can the hitters behind him drive him in if he is only on base 35% of the time?
well, hitters behind him did drive him in an average 118 times a season during 06-08, when he was getting on base 35% of the time.
Reyes missed most of ST with high thyroid levels….and he wasn’t able to do ANY athletic activity untill they went down to normal. You don’t think missing most of ST, AND not being able to do any athletic activity, would hurt his performance early on? Let’s look at the numbers.
On may 19th his batting average was .210. His OBP was .256! Why do you think he did so bad early on?
By the end of May, his average was up to .259. He hit over .300 in June (.360 OBP) and then he had the oblique injury in the Marlins series. So for some time he was playing hurt, and was batting right handed against RHP for a little while….so yes he played 130 games, but he played injuried in some, and missed missed most of ST….I believe because he missed most of ST, that was why it took him a while to start hitting.
So, his health is a concern.
All great, and wise baseball guru, I’m not really that concerned,
his thyroid condition, that hurt his numbers the most last year, shouldn’t be a problem in the future.
http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/metsblog/mets_confirm_reyes_diagnosis_as_reAVua1IcMJJFE6ebwcqvN
“Reyes has been told that once his thyroid levels fall within the normal range, through rest and dietary modifications, there is little chance he will have a recurrence.”
Bayonne,
Horrendous Comments.
Jose Reyes’ job is to get on base and make things happen. He’s supposed to be a table setting player. If his job is to get on base, steal bases and score runs then how is OBP a useless stat? You’ve said yourself that you don’t like OBP for power guys (silly) but that for table setters it does matter. You’ve said that.
Reyes’ value as a player is when he’s on base. If he’s getting on base 32% of the time like last year, that’s terrible. No matter what you think, or if he’s your favorite player, his job is to get on base. No more, no less.
Jose Reyes cannot be the players the Mets need him to be if he’s sitting on the bench and making outs.
You can push pins into your OBP voodoo doll all you want but statistics measure a player’s value on the diamond, and OBP is the perfect stat to use when measuring Reyes’ value.
Bayonne prefers his leadoff hitter to only get OB one way. Walking is frowned upon even if the hitter is thrown 4 straight balls.
He has no idea that a healthy OB is simply a side product of having healthy AB’s.
He has no idea that the less gullible you are, the more hits (and xtra base hits) you get.
He hates OB and all “saber” stats because none of them were in any of his coaching text books he learned the game from.
When you’ve been in the box you know how swinging and missing a bad pitch on a 1-1 count puts you in a hole while taking that pitch would have put you in control of your AB.
The difference in the pitch your gonna see at 1-2 and 2-1 is night and day. This is as elementary as it gets.
When even a no brainer move like wanting your leadoff man to get OB 37-38-40 % of the time is met with resistance you know it’s not about the the leadoff hitter. It’s about something else.
“He has no idea that a healthy OB is simply a side product of having healthy AB’s.”
Is it really?
Couldn’t it be a product of batting in front of a guy like Francouer who is an easy out and therefore you got passed to get to him a lot?
The probl;em with OBP is it is a stat that takes into account of EVERYTHING a guy does that is good but ignores ALL of the stuff he might do that is bad! It does not WEIGHT the good just counts it and throws up a percentage with no weight!
It equates everything good as the SAME AMOUNT of good. No distinguishing between a double and a single and a walk they are all EQUALLY VALUED!
So a guy who walks a lot is AS VALUABLE to an OBP focused guy as a guy who hits more than walks or hits home runs more often.
Is a walk REALLY as valuable as a HR?
Is a walk as VALUABLE as a Hit which if someone else is OB means a good chance to drive him in?
With a man on 2nd what is better a walk or a hit? Both are an OB so is OB really a good indicator of what you really WANT in that situation?
Do you know by looking at an OBP what the player’s chance of hitting is? How good he is in a PA? NO!
Well if it doesn’t tell you these things because it OBSCURED the numbers that originally generated it then you are basically putting blinders on and guessing!
the OBP isn’t as important as WHY and HOW he got the high OBP.
A guy with a high OBP who walks alot is not as good a player as one with a low OBP who drives in runs or gets a lot of hits!
OBP doesn’t tell you what he will do at the plate or HOW he did at the plate because it isn’t driven by the batter by himself. The Pitcher the fielders (via errors) the manager (by intentional) and any number of reasons could cause that guy to get on that has nothing to do with his approach and skill at the plate!
BUT if you look at other factors (namely the base stats OBP was created from) you not only see HOW MUCH of that good is based on Batter contribution and as a result can determine just how much OB is attributable to his own personal skill!
But by throwing out all those numbers you are obscuring facts that are important.
Some questions for you:
Does Pujols walk a lot because he has a good eye or because he hits HRs at a 40 per year clip and they walk him so he can’t hit one?
Is a guy who hits .350 worse than a guy who has a .360 OBP? Really? You can tell that without looking at something other than OBP?
Think about it.
A guy with 30 PA has 10 Singles, 5 Doubles 2 Triples and 8 Hrs has an OBP of .833
Is a guy with an OBP of .833 with 20 Walks and 5 singles really as valuable?
If not then that just proves that OBP isn’t a very good way to judge a player!
Not unless you look deeper and until you do OBP is meaningless!
Do they drive him in 100% of the 35% he is on base?
If they did then yes increasing the 35% would be something to improve.
If they don’t drive him in EVERY time he gets on base then obviously it is not as important for reyes to improve as it is for the rest of the team to improve in driving him in!
I know all you guys believe OBP is so important to scoring despite all my evidence to the contrary.
Well let me ask you this. Why is OBP more important than the ACTUAL RS?
I mean if the whole point of getting on base is to get more scoring why not look to see if he actually needs to score more compared to all the other leadoff hitters in the league?
Pujols led the league in RS last year should he be the leadoff hitter in StLouis?
Votto and Cabrera led the league in OBP last year.
One of them had a .420 OBP and the other a .424 OBP
Guess which one scored the most runs?
If OBP is as important or as KEY as everyone who worships it claims then why did the guy with the lower OBP score more than the guy with the higher one?
And if you say because of the hitters around them, then doesn’t that say that the OBP is irrelevant compared to the batters around and behind it?
I’m not worried about his stats from last year…..he missed a lot of time with injuires. It took him a long time to get back to his old form – Remember how bad he was doing when they were batting him 3rd? And he had the oblique injury just when he was starting to hit. I think he was also hitting right Handed against RHP for a while because of that injury….all that really affected his numbers.
Reyes just has to stay healthy, and he’ll be fine – He will win a lot of baseball games for us when he’s healthy – don’t worry about that.
It’s unbelievable that any old person, any kid in the world can now read a book, be falsely convinced that OBP is so important. Now they all believe it and falsely think they understand baseball.
Falsely convinced? We finally have some writers who have a clue, try and learn something. Dancing, fancy handshakes and smiling doesn’t win ballgames, getting on base at a .370 or better clip does.
what about a .355 OBP? That was his OBP was from 06-09.
When you’re counting his career OBP, you’re counting his seasons when he was first called up. Like 03, 04, and 05 where he averaged a .303 OBP. He was 20, 21, and 22 those years. That’s not fair because he’s a much different player now, than he was in his early 20′s.
That would have been a good argument for bringing him up when he was a little more prepared, had seen 4,000 more pitches in live professional games.
Hey, no numbers! We can only judge a guy by his grit and his heart. This like helping his team score runs are irrelevant.
Yes, that’s what I said. “No numbers.”
come on.
You keep moving the target. Are they or are they not important?
Should we or should we not use OBP?
OB% is a good stat, I use it once an a while, but people like you, make it seem more important than it really is.
People like me?
What do I make it seem like? A good way to tell how often a guy doesn’t make an out?
I’m not talking about what he does in the dugout.
You people have a heckuva lot more to learn about the game of baseball. You read a book, see that all you have to do is get on base, and that’s it. Most of you saber guys, or at least the ones that i come across here have such a bad understanding of the game of baseball it’s pathetic. It’s a LOT more than numbers.
The sum total of the parts is greater than any individual. You can find lots of bad numbers in all kinds of positions on winning teams and also find all the numbers you love on losing teams.
We have GM who can just as well run this organization into the ground for years to come with his beliefs.
“You read a book, see that all you have to do is get on base, and that’s it.”
Who said that? Who? I want to know. Stop lying.
“We have GM who can just as well run this organization into the ground for years to come with his beliefs.”
In other words, maintain the status quo.
The dugout stuff doesn’t enter into anything one way or another. I like to see the players enjoying themselves as long as their playing smart and playing well.
Yep OBP is so important…Tell my why has the one team who actually focused on it not won a WS since they started? How has the king of OBP obsession fared since he started? Sure he won a lot of games. but never enough apparently to win a WS. Other teams with LESS focus on OBP have always won instead!
And before you go spouting Boston, they use sabers not OBP. OBP is about Moneyball not Sabers!
Yankees use deep statistical analysis.
That can be done just as easily with or without sabers. Sabers are nothing more than SOME analysis of the base stats.
Yankess use them ALL which makes them less saber than saber people want to admit!
And the reason they don’t want to admit it is because the Yanks blow Moneyball theory right out of the universe! They buy big and base it on ALL of their numbers not just OBP or SLG or WAR…Only you guys who profess a Saber knowledge are the ones who limit what stats are used in a DEEP statistical analysis. The entire MLB (including Boston and other Sabermetric teams) look at a whole lot more than just SLG and OPB and the few stats that get puked up on a saber daily basis around here!
I say to all the Saber guys that what Sabers are is nothing more than the same old analysis that has ALWAYS been done using the same numbers they have ALWAYS used and the only thing significant about OBP and SLG is someone actually bought into them enough to want to publish them in a website and in a book.
If we stopped recording hits and PA and Hrs and RS none of the sabers would even be possible! Which means nothing in a saber is NEW information it is nothing more than prechewed information mixed up and spit out and it can’t tell you a damn thing about the REASONS the numbers look good or who deserves the actual credit for them!
Take a chicken egg and a Duck egg and scramble them in a pan.
Now try to tell me something about the quality of the eggs or which one contributed more to the result than the other!
Can’t do it can you?
Guy has a .400 OBP. What did he hit? Have to go back and look at the numbers IN the OBP equation don’t you?
Well if I have to go back to my original numbers ANYWAY why both with OBP at all and go right to the UNSCRAMBLED RAW EGGS that make them up?
I can do just as much of not MORE and DEEPER statistical analysis than you can just using Sabers!
Cause I can tell you WHY the sabers are good.
You can’t if thats all you have!
ML teams like the Yankees and yes even Boston know this!
They are nothing more than a subset query of data and not as COMPREHENSIVE as you would believe.
OBP tells you outs but it doesn’t say what good came from those outs.
A guy with a .333 OBP makes 2 outs for every OB. But if he drives in a run in every out or a majority of them then are those outs really as bad as his .333 OBP would suggest?
Sabers are a mix of stats and therefore can not be as PRECISE as the stats they are created from.
A good recipie is only as good as the ingredients and the comparative measure of those ingredients.
A recipie that is two parts water to one part chicken and half part spices can not be uncovered just by tasting the end result!
Unless you know what the ingredients that went in were. OBP says the water, chicken and spices are all EQUAL!
Make a soup one part water one part chicken and one part spice and it will most definitly not taste the same!
THIS above all else is why OBP is such a terrible stat! No Weithing of variables, No indicator of CAUSE, No Guarantor of RESULTS!
It’s just pre ground coffee! No way to tell what beans make it up after it is ground up!
It’s a DISH not a recipie! It’s not even an ingredient!
It is an end result without detail.
Tell the 2010 Toronto Blue Jays OB doesn’t matter. 257 HR’s only yielded 755 because of their .312 OBP (27th out of 30) ahead of only the Mariners, Pirates, Astros, and Angels. In fact only one team in the bottom 20 in OB% even qualified for the playoffs and that was a team who specialized in PREVENTING OB.
Toronto could not even score all 755 of their runs if all of them came on a 3 run HR. The Twins could have scored all of their runs on Grand slams and STILL have had to score 200+ more runs in other ways.
The Red Sox hit 46 less HR’s and scored 63 MORE runs.
The NYY hit 56 LESS HR’s and scored 104 MORE runs.
The Reds hit 69 LESS HR’s and scored 29 MORE runs.
The Brewers hit 75 LESS HR’s and only scored 5 LESS HR’s.
The Rangers hit 95 LESS HR’s and scored 32 MORE runs
The Phillies hit 91 LESS HR’s and scored 17 MORE runs.
The Rays hit 97 LESS HR’s and scored 47 more runs.
The Twins hit 115 LESS HR’s and scored 26 MORE runs.
Being that a HR is by definition a run scoring event (not dependent on other things), what else could the reason be that so many HR’s turned into so many less runs than could reasonably be expected?
Bad luck? Bad timing? Not Clutch? Bad line ups? Dave Kingman was cloned 9 times? I’m sure its all of these and nothing to do with the .312 OB%.
Maybe instead of HRs some other guys were hitting for higher averages? Batting Average is much more important than on base percentage so maybe some guys were hitting better with runners in scoring position. No science there.
But how do they get good batting averages? By swinging at good pitches or by swinging at everything?
I know your going to run this over to the handful of notorious “bad ball hitters” from Yogi to Vlad to “prove” your right but the reason those guys are so well known for their “bad ball” hitting ability is BECAUSE it’s so rare, not because it’s common.
Mere mortals have a far higher BA when swinging at pitches IN the strike zone, not out of it. Having a .50-75 point higher OB% than BA just shows that your swinging at a higher percentage of good pitches as opposed to the guy who has a .25 point higher OB unless it’s one of those few.
Almost all hitters have a better BA in 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, 3-0 and 3-1 counts than in other counts. Anyone who has ever played baseball knows this instinctively. Everyone knows how one close call going the other way puts you behind the 8 ball. Everyone knows that one pitch outside the zone missed or fouled off causes the balance shift in the AB that gives the pitcher the advantage. Anything to the pitchers advantage is to the batters detriment. Everyone knows that.
If all those other teams were making up for the fewer HR’s with better BA’s they would have had to have been doing it while there were men on base no? After all how else do you score a run on a single or double?
Yet they still were top 10 in RS weren’t they?
Why not tell the team they knocked out how important OBP is when with better OBP scored LESS runs than Toronto!
WHat about them?
The top teams in RBI are ALWAYS at the top of RS.
The top OBP teams are NOT ALWAYS the top of RS.
The teams who are good at both ALWAYS make it but since the top RBI Always do and Top OBP does not which one is actually more important OBP or RBI when looking for ALWAYS having a high RS?
ANSWER RBI!
Sure you could score more runs if you had more guys on base. But you could also do it if you had more HRs and RBI.
There is only one OB that actually increases RS. And thats the one that is also a HR a RBI and an OB!
The other three OBs all fail to score a run unless the RBI increases as well!
None of that has anything to do with the question I asked you.
I asked you what do you think is the reason that a team like any of those I mentioned could hit so many less HR’s and yet still score so many more runs?
Rarely will a single double or triple score a run unless someone is already OB, yet a HR always scores at least one run.
You don’t believe that all those teams got all their hits in the same inning do you?
Why because they hit! Because they hit RBIs
I did answer you!
Now answer me why teams with higher OBP do not ALWAYS score more runs than those who have those RBI?
“Rarely will a single double or triple score a run unless someone is already OB, yet a HR always scores at least one run.”
And NEVER will a run score if all you get is an OB!
Does getting OB make the guy hit him in? If so How?
You do realize don’t you that the only way OBP works is if they ALL get OB in the same inning right? And even if 3 guys get OB it doesn’t mean a run is scored.
A team who gets 3 guys on base per inning does not score more runs than a team who gets one guy on base then has a guy after him drive him in!
Three walks, No RS
One walk One RBI 1 RS
Which is the most efficient way of scoring runs? Getting on base or driving in the few who do?
Which would you prefer to be the guy who loads the bases but strands them or the guy who only gets two guys on but scored a run while doing it?
Who wins that game if that is the only thing that happens?
No one “hits RBIs.” RBIs are awarded when a runner on base scores as a result of the outcome of the hitter’s plate appearance. You don’t need a hit to get an RBI. RBIs are a resultory stat , like runs scored. That’s why they always match. A CAUSE, like the ball put in play (whether it’s a hit or not) results in an RBI when someone scores. So OBP is the most important cause of runs scoring. Because without the runner, that ball put in play scores no one, unless the batter/runner becomes a baserunner by touching first base after he hits a ball over the fence.
Ok I’ll ask you again…
Who was on base when I hit the HR? NO ONE!
Did I get an RBI?
YES!
The HR and the RBI is awarded based on what happened at the plate not based on who was on base at the time those things happened!
If there was a guy on base he gets a bonus! But the guy on base did not CAUSE him to make the hit that earned him the RBI!
No more than a Batter can FORCE a pitcher to walk him to increase his OBP!
If the pitcher refuses to throw him ball four he can’t walk!
He could get a hit but OBP isn’t about hitting it is about not making an out! Striking out can even get you on base!
The simple act of hitting ball over the fence does not mean a run or RBI is awarded. The guy who hit it still has to touch first base, second base, third base and home plate. In that order. Only then, after he was a “base runner” do those stats count. Ask Robin Ventura how many RBIs he got when he hit the ball over the fence with the bases loaded. Ask him if he scored a run, too.
So, having men on when those other teams got hits had nothing to do with those other teams out scoring Toronto even though they were out homered by a pretty significant margin?
R/S and RBI are inherently part and parcel of the same event. Related to each other in exactly the same way mail in your mailbox is related to the postman arriving. Once in a while there just is no mail for you on a certain day but 95% of the time there is, and by coincidence it comes at exactly the same time as the postman.
Sure you could get on and be stranded on base, not score a run and still have helped your team score. How? by advancing your line up so that instead of your best HR hitter watching the 3rd out from the on deck circle he gets one more shot.
40 PA’s in a game beats 35 any day. Whether they come from hits, errors, walks, HBP a combination or anything else
and gets your top 5 one more AB each than they would have had.
I wonder why Earl Weaver never asked his pitchers to make sure you walk the first batter.
Ok Tag for WHATEVER reason you think teams scored more than toronto. WHY did TORONTO score more than teams with the HIGHER OBP?
Yes X and by your logic walking 5 miles is responsible for going 10!
It was the act of hitting the ball over the fence that was the key to the RBI not touching first!
In fact you can’t touch first UNTIL you actually hit the ball at all!
So your logic is as backward as OBP is as far as predicting RS!
Disproven 20 times without any answer from you!
Just backlwards logic!
I fell and broke a tooth it must have been the broken tooth that caused me to fall!
You really would fail logic as a subject cause your causality is based on reverse TIME!
I touched a base after I hit a home run so touching first base must have CAUSED it in some way!
Really dude lying repeatedly is no substitute for the truth and simple logic!
“It was the act of hitting the ball over the fence that was the key to the RBI not touching first!”
That’s not “logic” or “my interpretation.” It’s the RULES of baseball. Read the rulebook. It’s one of the most famous plays in Mets history. The “grand slam single.” Don’t you know that? Ventura only got a single because the play was dead once Pratt tackled him before he got to second. The only base he legally touched in order was first base. So he got a single. He hit the ball over the fence and got a single, only one RBI and no run scored for his total. Explain that, Mr. 5 miles.
You do understand that under OBP a walk is as good as a HR…
Do you agree with OBP?
Guy has an OBP of .400
Do you know how many were walks, hits and HRs?
No you don’t do you?
OBSCURED DETAILS!
LACK OF INFORMATION!
BAD DECISIONS!
BAD PLAN!
Toronto got far less value out of their HR’s for a very simple reason. They had no one on when they hit them.
Whats easier? Hitting a HR or getting on base? They did the hard part, but only got half value out of it.
Think about it.
Team A hits 257 HR’s
Team B hits 142 HR’s
That’s 115 more HR’s by Team A than by Team B. Who would you think would score more runs?
Remember we’re not talking about doubles, singles, walks, sac flies, sac bunts, Catchers intefearence, double plays or any other non guaranteed run scoring event. We’re only discussing a guaranteed to produce at least one run event.
We’re also not comparing the relative worth of a double, single, walk, sac fly, sac bunt, catcher interfearnce, HBP, to a guaranteed to score a run event like a HR because you can’t. One is guaranteed to put a run(s) on the board while ALL the others are not. No comparison.
In this instance of team A homering 115 times more than Team B Who would you believe scored more runs?
Team A or Team B?
As you know Team B scored more runs even being out homered 257-142. Can you offer us a reason why that might have happened?
Yeah your posting the rules of baseball and I’m talking about the rules of Physics here which apply to every atom in the universe!
Something that happend LATER than something else can NOT CAUSE something that ALREADY HAPPENED!!
It is the Laws of physics and I would say they take precedent over the laws of baseball!
Especially since statistical analysis is supposed to be about WHAT HAPPENED not how it was recorded!
Toronto got more value out of their HRs than the other teams got out of their OB!
SO until you get that I guess we are done talking about Toronto. They had the 24th ranked OBP and scored more than teams in the top 10 of OBP!
OBP LOST! They got less from OBP than Toronto got from their HR!
When you offer why it didn’t happen to the 15 teams that had higher OBP than Toronto you will have your answer.
What you fail to note is that most of those teams with high OBP also had Higher RBI than Toronto too!
But you didn’t look at that!
21-5 RBI beats OBP in correlation to RS!
Of the top 10 in RS 8 teams had BOTH HIGH OBP and High RBI!
The two who didn’t make the top 10 had high OBP but fell off the top 10 because they didn’t have the RBI to make that OBP pay off!
So you ALWAYS need high RBI to lead the league in RS!
But you don’t always need High OBP!
And if Gibson doesn’t hit the HR what Shelby did had no meaning!
GAME OVER!
BUT with no Shelby if Gibson hits a HR you can still win the game!
A HR is the most valuable commodity for any baseball teams offense for its capacity to put immediate runs on the board, anywhere from 1-4 of them.
One team hit 257 of them and wound up scoring less runs than 8 teams in the Majors. Those 8 teams averaged only 175 HR’s and yet also averaged 42 MORE runs.
How is it possible to hit 82 LESS HR’s and still score 42 MORE runs? That’s 126 more runs scored by means other than a single guaranteed to produce at least 1 run event.
Very inefficient to say the least.
Every team gets more value out of a HR than any other offensive asset possible.
Gibson’s HR only tied the game, how can the game be over?
All hitting the ball over the fence does is give you an unabated path around the bases. You still have to touch them for it to count. We can’t discuss anything else until you bone up on the rules of baseball.
Rule 6.09 (d): The batter becomes a runner when a fair ball passes over a fence or into the stands at a distance from home base of 250 feet or more. Such hit entitles the batter to a home run when he shall have touched all bases legally.
Rule 7.05 (a): Each runner including the batter-runner may, without liability to be put out, advance to home base, scoring a run, if a fair ball goes out of the playing field in flight and he touched all bases legally.
Rule 10.06 (a): …it is a home run if the batter
touches all bases and scores. (Notice it says nothing about the ball going over the fence. Ever heard of an inside the park home run?)
What does how efficient hitting HRs have to do with scoring runs?
What does RBI off HR have to do with it?
The HR is just ONE type of hit that can score a run.
And OBP doesn’t address your ability to hit them just makes them a bit more effective. But if you increase the HRs then it doesn’t matter how many guys are OB.
Cause your getting more RS eevn if no one is on!
Point you simply are refusing to see is you don’t NEED to get on base more to score more runs!
If you don’t HAVE that guy hitting the HR in the first place OBP fails and the REASON it fails is because getting OB or picking high OBP does nothing towards HITTING a home run, It only incidentally makes it better if and when it happens!
Without the home run itself the OBP in your dataset is useless!
No HRs and no score at all if you pick OBP centric!
Pick for the HR (since thats all you seem to consider will happen to score a run) and you get the RS regardless of anyone being on base!
“A bit more effective?” I would say a 2 run HR is twice as effective. A three run HR 3 times as effective and a grand slam 4 times as effective. And I’d be willing to bet that the Blue Jays would agree.
If Shelby doesn’t get on Gibson’s HR just ties the game.
Twice as effective as what? 6 walks? YEP it is!
Cause if all you have is OBP thats what you need!
Without the HR you score NONE don’t you?
So whats important and more efficient. Going for the thing that doesn’t work WITHOUT something else or going for the thing that can do it with no other help whatsoever?
Toronto 24th in OBP, In the top 10 of RS!
If what you say were true why wern’t all the top 10 OBP guys there?
And Toronto isn’t the only one to do that!
I’m just not at home right now to repost the list that has in the past ALWAYS shut all you OBP guys up!
Because it proves OBP isn’t important to RS at ALL!
RBI is and you don’t need OBP to get one of those!
I think thats what your saying about Toronto. They didn’t need it but if they had more OBP they might have scored more runs! Which can be said for any team with High OBP but actually would correlate to their rankings of run scored better on a 21-5 margin!
21 times RBI will correlate only 5 for OBP!
It is not a predictive or useful stat for scoring runs.
And the reason why it assumes someone is actually going to get the important hit to make it worth something and I hate to break it to you but that hit doesn’t always come!
OB:RS is probably a 3:1 ratio or worse! And that is even accellerating OB because of a need to touch a base while scoring yourself on the HR!
60295 OBs league wide last year
21308 Runs Scored league wide last year! (Hmm I was corect 3:1 Ratio. You need three OBs to make 1 run!)
20288 were due to RBI!
You require three good OBs at minimum to score one run
I need one HR!
Who is more efficient? Who can score 10 runs in 10 at bats and who scores only 3 statistically?
You do understand getting on base is not just limited to walks, right? A player can increase his OBP by also getting hits? And yes, home runs?
“you don’t need to get OB to score more runs.” Your right Metsie I am refusing to get this.
The way I see it is there are two things you can do. Get on or get out. Getting on doesn’t guarantee that I’m going to score but getting out does guarantee that I will not score, plus it gets us one out closer to guaranteeing that NOBODY will score.
How is that going to help you score more runs?
you asked for it.
now someone is going to give you the sac fly / grounder that scores the runner from third argument, and remind you that you obviously don’t know anything.
It is possible that you could load the bases and all 3 runners fail to touch their respective base, subsequently getting picked off one by one by the hidden ball trick and lose to a team who has just one base runner all day. Got on by error, stole 2B, Stole 3B and Stole home.
That could happen.
Or hit a HR!
Keep skipping over that part!
And yes it could happen but about as often as a guy walks 4 straight batters which is what a .4 OBP could really be!
You don’t know because you threw away the pertinent information!
Oh and by the way in my previous numbers I forgot to mention that 4631 of those RBI, OBs and RS were from the HR all by itself!
“OBP is about Moneyball not Sabers!” is compltely backwards. “Moneyball” has nothing to do with OBP. OBP was just in the right place in the right time. If the market undervalued purple underwear at the time, then that would have been the subject of the book.
Conversely, while a sabermetrician obviously did not invent OBP, it’s the stat sabermetricians put the most emphasis on. OBP leads just about all saber discussions. OBP is about sabermetrics, not a book.
Your wrong Xtreem. Sabers are not about OBP!
If they were then there wouldn’t be any other sabers OTHER than OBP!
Read Bill James please!
He is concerned with OUTS yes and OBP says what percentage of things will not be an OUT!
And it works well provided ALL OUTS produce nothing!
But in baseball that isn’t the case.
His Bias towards outs and lumping them all in as the SAME BAD is why OBP lumps all good as the SAME GOOD!
Yet hitting a HR is the best thing you can do sabermetricially isn’t it?
Does OBP tell you how many HRs you hit or obscure that?
Can you tell me how many HRs a guy with a .400 OBP hit or how many times he scored or how many runs he drove in?
NO! Why because the premise bill james is trying to put forward does not VALUE the numbers as much as he values his bias that ALL bad and ALL good are EXACTLY the same!
Every scientist on the planet will tell you that they learn more and discover more value by examining the failures as they do by examining the success!
It is only when you WEIGHT the data that went into that success or failure do you learn anything about the proccess and causality of things to happen in a predictable way!
A guy with a .600 out percentage (opposite of OBP) may have driven in 20 runs while making those outs. Compared to a player who only scores 10 with the same OBP which player is better?
Will OBP tell you?
Sabers as Bill James proposed are very different than how they are used by the major league teams!
They use them as supplemental stats but NONE of them (save the failed beane moneyball experiment) actually subcribe to what Bill James was trying to propose. If they did then they would not look for HR hitters or pay them what they DESPITE their low OBP and high out potential!
They use sabers to complement THIER concept on what makes a baseball team and the numbers they use really have very little to do with the concept Bill James proposed was correct when he created the Saber Numbers!
I don’t think you have actually come to grips with that yet.
If they followed James as religiously as you think then HR hitters would not be making the big bucks now High OBP Leadoff hitters would.
You’re actually telling ME to read Bill James? Tremendous. Can’t make it up.
Yep because you read an entire book and came out with Sabers = OBP!
You obviously either missed the comprehension of what he wrote, was saying, and conveying!
DO you really think it took 300 Pages to say OBP is what it is all about?
If it did it had to be a pretty weak argument since it couldn’t be proved in a concise manner!
There is a lot of information in that book. A lot more than just OBP!
HAHAHAHAHA. Nice.
Just trying to point out how many (and I am not accusing you although you do walk into them when posting sometimes) that things in baseball and life are way more complicated than you would percieve and trying to over simplify a concept usually leads you to drawing wrong conclusions because you missed the detail.
Using sabers and nothing but sabers OBSCURES details.
They are fine to use but if thats all you use you are going to miss out on the MUCH BIGGER picture!
Which is why teams don’t just look at OBP and claim they did deep statistical analysis.
Which is what I was trying to point out to you in some other thread where I have no clue as there are now at least 15 on this subject! lol
I don’t recall insinuating that teams ONLY look at OBP. I’ve been on record many times saying that much more goes into an analysis than just stats, let alone just OBP. I think the misconception you and others are getting is that you feel the term “most improtant” means “only.” That’s not true and that claim was never made.
Not in so many words but you say the following at different times which is what gets you in trouble because you can’t keep your logic straight.
1 Sabers IS OBP
2 Boston is a Sabermetric team
Well if you think Boston is all Sabers then you by your own statement are implying that is all they used and since SABERS=OBP that was about it!
I know what you ACTUALLY think and what you say are probably very different things and it has always been language that gets you in trouble!
Which is why I don’t put you in the same trick bag as others. I know you and Tag both have a more sensible approach to stats and analysis than you certainly seem to let on here.
I’m just trying to get you guys to admit it so we don’t have to deal with the parrots who echo you and him without having a clue or ability to even try to defend the position!
OBP is not IMPORTANT nor a CAUSE of anything but guys on base. What happens as far as RS is based on what happens AFTER that fact.
Sometimes (the HR) it has NOTHING to do with being on base. It is consequential to hitting the HR not touching the base. Touching the base did not cause the run to score nor did it cause the ball to go over the fence! Didn’t cause the batter to hit the ball any better than he would under normal circumstance so it has no AFFECT on the HR”s contribution it’s a BY PRODUCT!
And as I stated before good OB is a BY PRODUCT of good hitting and a good PA!
That is the cause of everything!
But if you really insist it is so important to look for then why have the guys who looked for it in the past always failed to win a WS?
Oakland for example?
Why weren’t they killing everyone when they were the only ones going for OBP as an exclusive club secret? Why aren’t they killing everyone now?
A Book? LOL
Ya, reading and learning is for suckers. We need to just sit at the feet of old guys and not question what they feed us.
Another thing the Alderson apologists forget is that whenever Reyes has been out of the lineup the rest of the offense has tanked. Badly. With Reyes, even with his below avg OBP, the Mets offense is as dangerous as most. Reyes, Wright, Beltran, Bay, Davis, and Pagan are a pretty good core of hitters. Even more so if Bay bounces back from a poor ’10 and Beltran’s knees hold up for 130 games in RF. But without Reyes to set the table they will struggle to score runs. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see Jose get his OBP up to .355-.360 because he’d be even more dangerous. But what he’s produced when healthy can’t really be argued with either. Funny, I don’t hear any complaints from Boston over Carl Crawford and his “awful” .337 lifetime OBP. Nor do I recall anyone from Tampa Bay complaining about it either. So why is it such a big deal with Jose Reyes? Oh, yes, it’s because our god like GM believes OBP rules the baseball world. So long Jose, been great having you as a Met. Too bad our fantasy league GM doesn’t want you around any longer.
You could say the same exact thing about Beltran and Wright. Until Beltran got hurt in 2009, the Mets were 1.5 games out in wild card. If the Mets lost Wright for a season the Mets would suffer just as much as losing Reyes, if you think otherwise than all I can say is that you are lost.
When Reyes went down in 2009 we were 13-14. When Delgado joined him we were 21-15. When Beltran went down we were 35-33. In other words we were 14-18 WITH Beltran and WITHOUT Reyes and Delgado.
Even though Reyes and Delgado went down they still had contributed to our 35-33 start a total of 63 games between them and we were playing .437 ball from the day the 2nd one of them (Delgado) went down which is about where we wound up.
It wasn’t losing Beltran that caused us to fall out of it, we were already on the way. Losing him caused us to collapse but to think that him remaining healthy would have kept us in the WC is not supported by the way things were trending BEFORE he got hurt and certainly wouldn’t have prevented Ollie and Maine from going in the tank, Redding needing to be cut, Livan pitching to a 5+ ERA, Parnell proving not to be ready, Church and Schneider playing poorly, Wright getting beaned, Thole learning on the job or any of the other things that happened AFTER Carlos got hurt.
I don’t think the way to look at Reyes should be what he doesn’t do. The only way to look at him is in comparison to what other SS do. The fact is there is a dearth of good SS’s in the Major Leagues right now and only two decent enough prospects near the Majors in all of baseball. the Dodgers Dee Gordon (Flashe’s kid) and Julio Iglesias with Boston.
The amount of dinosaurs playing SS is beyond belief. Uribe, Cabrera, Renteria, Jeter, Miguel Tejada, Alex Gonzalez and Scutero is second only to how many one (or no) dimensional SS’s there are. Tulo, Muelens, A. Escobar, Castro, Drew, Ramirez, Andrus and Y. Escobar are the only good or decent SS’s out there. Rollins too but going forward? I’m not a believer.
The biggest spending teams would absolutely look at Reyes as an upgrade. Boston, NYY, LAA, SF, and my biggest fear, Philly. They could lose their very late first round pick and get a better one from losing Rollins, plus a supplemental round pick, get 5 years younger, and better and still only pay what they have to anyway.
The Cards could let Pujols go and get Reyes and a big time ace plus a first and second basemen for the same money.
Reyes is not locked into leadoff but he is one of the very few SS’s who can both hit and field and he is the only one available in his prime. His bat plays great for a SS at any spot in the order. This is yet another downfall in the rushing of prospects before they are ready. Jose did not have the pitch recognition skills when he got up here at 19. It took him a few years to develop them at the ML level and then they regressed when he got hurt in 2009 and missed ST in 2010 and now he’s a free agent at 27 instead of 29.
The thing to do with Jose is get him signed 4/90 + club option and then decide if he hits leadoff.
A post that talks about Reyes and OBP? I already know where this post’s comments are headed. I’ll pass thank you.
lol
But does the subject really make a difference?
I mean it always turns into a Bayonne against the world slugfest even if the starting subject were daisy colors in spring!
Jose Reyes from 2006-2008
He averaged 118 RS, 34 2B, 16 3B, 16 HR, 69 RBI, 66 SB, 65 BB, 80 k’s .292 BA .356 OB%
Go find me a better SS, not named Ramirez or Tulowitzki.
If there is a better one he’s not in the Majors.
If you want to cherry pick any shortstops three best seasons I can name a dozen better ones. If you want to stick to 06-08 off the top of my head Rollins was better and oh, btw he won an MVP in 07.
If he wants a Crawford deal, it will break the back of the Mets for the next 7 years. He’s not worth it.
Unfortunately the Crawford deal is the most relevant example and 7/142 is too long, too much and too risky. Reyes original deal was very team friendly, even his signing bonus was well below average. With as much debt as this team has piled on and as much cash as they’ve flushed down the toilet, it really doesn’t look good.
Anaheim will be all over him as might SF, St.L, Boston, NYY, Atl, Philly. Toronto, Wash and TB could even be in on it. With the collective bargaining agreement almost sure to change in some fashion lower market teams might find a salary threshold they have to meet.
Not all of these teams have to be major players in order to drive up the cost, just the shear number of interested teams will do that.
I have a bad feeling about this one.
Okay, so if you want to count 2 seasons when he wasn’t healthy, and three years of him just coming up, and getting his 1st taste of the big leagues, and say that’s how good Reyes really is, then fine.
Rollins was better from 06-08? Do you know he averaged a LOWER OBP than Reyes did in those years? Rollins .342 OBP, Reyes 356.
Oh and rollins never had a season where his OBP was higher than .356.
2007 was a major aboration (outlier) year for Rollins. And the thing that got him the MVP was his HRs, but that was heavily aided by playing in a wiffle ball park.
Im sorry, show mw where Rollins is better than Reyes?
Here is the career of Rollins:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rolliji01.shtml
Here is Reyes:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/reyesjo01.shtml
Seems to me Rollins wins BB, HR, 2B and RBI. Reyes wins EVERY OTHER CATEGORY! Even the hated OBP
They’ve both been good 2 way players for their teams. One thing I would point out is that Rollins had 800 more minor league AB’s than Jose did and while you can’t draw a clear conclusion from that to ML production the fact is that when Rollins got up here he was ready to play at a top level Reyes was not. Plus, as usual, there was the position shift to learn once he got here as well.
Rollins also grew up in California where some of the best and most competitive amatuer programs any where in the world are found.
Jose was born (not sure if he grew up here though) about 45 minutes north of Santiago DR where there is an extensive baseball culture. Luis Polonia runs a baseball school up there and the team from this area (Aguilas, who Murphy played for) is known as the Yankees of the DR. I’m sure there are very good coaches and teams (probably some of the best) for amateurs to play on in this area but I’ve driven through here and lets just say it’s not uncommon to see kids of 9-11 playing with a tree branch or kids playing with a broom stick and a bottle cap. My point is supplies are limited, real fields are far away I think it’s pretty safe to say that Rollins probably needed those extra 800 AB’s in the minors less than Jose. Now he’s a free agent at 32 while Jose is a free agent at 27 and who’s first couple of years were spent learning on the job.
Reyes’s career OBP is misleading. He is actually a dead reliable low-.350s guy. From 2006-2009 (short season), he was between .350 and .356 every year.
Maybe you would like a little higher from a lead off guy, but reyes offsets that by having more power than normal for a lead off guy, and of course is a big SB threat.
even in 2010, if you consider the first month to be his ST, from mid-may -> year end, he had excellent numbers. Including a .345ish OBP, and a full year pace of 20 HRs and 80ish RBIs. And that includes when he should of been resting his oblique, instead of playing all wrapped up and hitting from just 1 side.
others noted how dismal the SS landscape is, especially in terms of what is available on the market. Reyes as a FA will be in huge demand.
I don’t care if he doesn’t bump up from the .355 range. If he has a normal year (and there is no chronic injury or damage to indicate he won’t stay on the field), he is primed for a huge year.
IMO, not trying to lock him up early last fall, at a moderately team friendly deal, was a huge, huge blunder. it is going to cost a ton more at year end to keep him, and you run the risk of a gigantic PR nightmare letting him walk.
I agree ANY about not buying low last year. Not just a big PR problem but a problem in winning games. You can’t look at him only as a leadoff hitter he has to be looked at in comparison to what other SS’s do. It’s just not as much. Not by a long shot. His defensive range has slipped a little to average but even that might get better with a run of good health and certainly isn’t going to fall below average over the next 5 years.
Concentrating on selectivity would increase his BA AND his OB. So would the bunt. There is no reason why Jose is not OB 38% of the time bare minimum. He rarely strikes out, he can beat out infield hits, he can be less gullible and get himself better pitches to hit that wind up going for doubles, triples and HR’s. Some of the pitches he chases are ridiculous and he does it more often with 2 strikes than any other time.
I have no problem with him swinging at the first pitch, if it’s the best pitch. Then lets see how they start him off in subsequent AB’s. Could get him started 1-0, now he can sit dead red and before you know it it will be the pitcher trying to nibble rather than Jose going outside the plate. Get into more hitters counts by staying within the strike zone.
Maybe it’s me, but I’m not worried about Jose and his OBP. The problem truly lies on his ability to draw walks. In 2007, he drew 77 walks and wound up stealing 78 bags. I wish Reyes was able to have patience at the plate like Rickey Henderson. Henderson was capable of drawing 70-100+ walks a year in his day. One of those years, he managed to demolish the single-season SB record. I always thought (and still believe) Reyes could be the one to challenge Henderson’s record, but he needs to draw more walks.
OBP wise, Reyes is capable of being a .380-.400+ OBP hitter nowadays when healthy. For example, 2008: The last year Reyes was truly healthy and played 150+ games.
May: .383
June: .364
July: .403
August: .363
Notice I didn’t mention April or September. Those were his low months (April: .307, September: .314). His BA didn’t help matters either (April: .250, September: .243)
Bottom line is, if he manages to play 150+ games again, be patient and shatter those numbers I just mentioned all year long, he ain’t going nowhere and if you ask me, he’s gonna do it.
Its not even the walks. A high BB rate is usually a sign of plate discipline, but if Reyes was turning more of those Ks into hits, that’s even better.
If he has better plate discipline, he’ll draw more walks. then, pitchers will know they can’t get him to chase and will throw more hittable pitches. Even if he gets around 50 BBs, his OBP can go up. And he can hit a good line drive into the gaps, so he’ll cause all sorts of chaos.
hey listen, i’ve been outta town..and cannot access you guys easy…because i am a dinosaur….but give Reyes a freaking break….he has, still, the highest upside of any shortstop in the majors, save Ramirez/FL (that guy’s a flake)…and Jose has had 2 bizarre years in a row that have impacted his stats and his personna. i beseech Mets fans to root the guy to the stars this year. He will reward us with the banner year of his short career…to be followed by many more.
Hey, where the hell do we ‘ever’ get another shortstop like Reyes? Give me a break. He’s freaking electrifying..when he’s healthy and zoned-in.
Jose Reyes is the best SS in team history.
Jose Reyes is the best lead off hitter we’ve ever had.
PERIOD!
Mookie Wilson had a career OBP of 314. But yet, we had some decent years with him batting lead off if I recall.
“Mookie Wilson had a career OBP of 314. But yet, we had some decent years with him batting lead off if I recall.”
Yes we did. Mookie’s best years without question were ’86-’88…and I’m not only talking OBP wise. I’m talking BA, SLG, OPS, and OPS+. He was also in the top 5 among the starters in OBP in ’87 & ’88.
Right,
Because there’s a lot more to a leadoff hitter than just being able to WALK. Eddie Gaedel can walk.
I know that for some reason you guys would like to find the leadoff hitter with the lowest OB and somehow prove that that’s the way to go.
Facts are Mookie’s OB was .317, .314, .300, .308 when he hurt his shoulder in 1985 and the Mets brought up Dylstra. Dykstra’s .338 was a big improvement and Wilson saw first hand how effective that made the line up so HE bagan to raise HIS OB and went .331, .345 .359 and .345. Dykstra went .377 and .352 in ’86 and ’87. That’s why he got tp hit against all the RHP. He got on more often. That’s why Mookie only got LHP to hit despite the fact that he hit RHP better than LHP. That’s why Dykstra always hit leadoff when they were in the line up together. The guy who got on more often hit leadoff. That wouldn’t be a surprise to most baseball people.
I would love to see the line ups some of you guys would come up with. Lowest OB at leadoff, sac bunter hitting #2, ect.
reyes will show the mets his middle finger, which I’m sure they can see from the Bronx.
Last I checked you need runs to win games, and Reyes has lots of run scored.He my give up some outs but he scores plenty. Guess it depends on what you weigh more, also not to much of that “imaginary” clutch hitting behind him.Is it me or do the Mets strand more high % scoring opportunities on base than most teams.
1) Clutch is not imaginary, regardless of it’s sports or life
2) Sometimes during the journey that is a 9 inning game, you have to give up outs in order to win
The only reason why some of these so called writers want Reyes traded or leave for free agency is because it will be a good story.
If the Mets lose Reyes all I can say is I’m done.
Like Alderson wants to wait and see what Reyes will do this year….I too will wait and see what the Mets as an organization will do at the end of this year.
I’m a long time Mets fan and I”m tired of rooting for crap….and make no mistake about it…if Reyes leaves this team it will be crap.
I’m not watching Ruben Tejada starting at SS…I’ve seen too many Mets teams that sucked over the years and this is it, I’m not doing it anymore.
I’m a Knicks fan and I like the way that team is going now…I refused to watch them for 10 years until they got Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmello Anthony.
I am prepared to dump more than 30 years worth of loyalty to the Mets.
I’m tired of accepting mediocrity from this organization.
Just like Reyes…(currently the longest tendered Met who has done nothing but do what he’s been asked to do)….can be put on notice….I’m putting the Mets on notice.
as long as the mets are broke, reyes is a goner. if ownership doesn’t change by July, you’ll see him traded at the deadline. it’s that simple.
Oh my gosh… afew metsies have brains and want Reyes to stay. The rest of you are without doubt the stupidest group of fans in baseball. So for your sake, I want Reyes gone., i want rReyes coming back and beating you over and over for years to come while you sit at your keyboards thanking Sandy Alderson for getting rif of that horrid player and replacing him with the totally mediocre singles guy Tejada. Last place forever. You all certainly do deserve it. Jose is South Philly, ooh la la….. Tejada in FLUSHing, the city dump with an avg of 13,000 fans. YIPPEE!!!!! Enjoy loser lovers. Ah can’t wait to come back in a year or two and you all writing hate on today’s love Sandy. lol..
Yeah I know the Phillies, Giants, and Yankees are salivating at the chance to get Reyes.
Reyes has been taken for granted for years by some of these know it all fans who complain about some B.S. OBP.
Dude will score 100 runs a year. If he had adequate medical attention on his hammy his contract wouldn’t be in question. Dude led the N.L. in hits before he got hurt, Reyes was stymied by Randolph, misused by Manuel, kicked out of his position by an unproven Japanese dude with orange hair…and has never complained.
Why is David White..pardon me…David Wright considered face of the franchise and not Reyes who has been here longer?
Any astute observer knows the answer.
The answer is why some of these foolish Met fans want Reyes out of here.
You know I really tend to think some of you so desperatly want to believe you know some SECRET MAGICAL KEY about what makes a player good and you go around picking obscure stats that most logical people would say is not really DIRECTLY related to the numbers people try to say are IMPORTANTLY related.
But here is a little something for all you OBP folks to think about.
If Reyes has an OBP of 1.000 and Beltran, Wright and Bay hit .220 does Reyes’ OBP really lead to scoring runs? Will he lead the league in RS?
ANSWER=NO!
So really how important is it that Reyes get on base compared to what the guys after him do when he DOES get on?
It is kind of like saying if I perfectly balance my right front tire I will get better gas mileage but the truth is that won’t happen unless all the other tires are balanced perfectly as well!
SO to focus on a single player (which is why Sabers tend to fail in building a winning team and those that use it and DO win have to go and get a bunch of big name FA players to make it work) means nothing unless the players around him actually play well enough for your theory to work!
This is my biggest problem with Sabers. They are so focused on taking all the TEAM out of numbers and ignoring stats that are driven by the TEAM around him that it can’t possibly succeed until you have the team to make those numbers get put to good use. RBI? No Good! RS? No Good (despite it being the reason you want high OBP!)
A guy with a high OBP coming from the Phillies will not have a high RS going to the Nats!
No more than a guy who has a high RBI on the Yankees will have a good year in RBI on a team that doesn’t get on base!
We have had this discussion many times and despite all the OBP guys swearing up and down that OBP isn’t all you look at it sure is all any of you ever talk about UNTIL someone proves that OBP isn’t the stat GENERATOR you all professed and then you punt and move onto SLG and OPS and any other subterfuge to try and weasel out of the fact that Sabers don’t take everything into account they more or less obscure the base stats they were created with.
You use OBP because using RS you claim is team dependent but the truth is OBP is just as DEPENDENT on that team to increase RS as RS is itself!
If the goal is to get more RS then why not look at that stat instead of some incidental stat you THINK contributes but does not ENSURE it contributes at all!
I know a guy with 119 RS relied a lot on the guys behind him to drive him in.
Well he doesn’t rely anymore on that than the guy with the .395 OBP does now does he?
So really if you want to increase RS why not just improve what BOTH RS and OBP rely on and not the Subset of numbers which does not clearly relate or ENSURE the numbers you want?
If we were doing chemistry, which is most important to making water? The Hydrogen or the Oxygen? Can increasing oxygen increase water production? NO! Can increasing Hydrogen increase water production? NO!
Water is the RS. OBP is the Hydrogen here. Most abundant element in the universe! RBI is the Oxygen! Without both in sufficient quantities you get NO CHEMICAL REACTION! NO WATER!
So increasing OBP has zero effect unless you increase the Oxygen (RBI) it needs to make more water!
This is the point that seems to get lost on anyone who spouts off about the importance of OBP!
It is an INGREDIENT! Not a cause of the reaction!
Which means it is useless to try and stockpile one ingredient unless you have the other already waiting!
If you take the 2010 Top 11 teams in OBP, they averaged 89 wins… I’m sure that’s just some voodoo trick though… only 2 of those 11 failed to reach the Top 11 in Runs Scored.
And now do that for the top 11 teams in RBI now….
I believe you will find that NONE of them failed to reach the top 11 in RS.
Bet you will also see they won AS MUCH if not more than the teams with HIGH OBP!
Why? Because they actually did the most important peice. They drove in all their OBP where many high OBP teams did not drive it in as often.
And did you notice WHO knocked out those two from your comparison?
One was 24th ranked in OBP! But they were high in RBI!
And knocked out teams who did what some feel is more important to scoring runs.
Problem is it isn’t important unless those RBI are there!
Oh and Jessup, Feel free to EXPAND the sampling and look at the top 10 teams in RS over the last THREE years!
After all deep statistical analysis can only benefit from LARGE samples!
No?
Awful article, deserving no comment other than that!
Taking it down here….
“Every team gets more value out of a HR than any other offensive asset possible.”
And you intend to search for LESSER value as a plan? You say that and then go for OBP and not the most value? Say that to yourself 10 times and tell me that makes perfect sense?
As for the Game over if Gibson doesn’t hit the HR then the game is likely over as an out. If SHelby isn’t on a Gibson hits the HR they still had a chance to tie!
And nothing Shelby did matters without the HR! He’s just sitting on base waiting for something productive to happen.
How’d it work out for Toronto? They hit 115 more HR’s than Minnesota and scored 26 LESS runs.
They got the hard part right, they just forgot to hit the singles, take the free passes, hell, they could have just turned into a pitch every once in a while.
It takes 3 singles, 4 walks, 4 HBP to score 1 run. They could have scored 3 more just by any combination of all of those in front of their HR’s.
“you don’t need to get OB more to score more runs?” Well I guess you could hit 283 HR’s but you’d still be outscored by Minnesota despite out homering them 2-1.
And they scored more runs (755) on 257 Hrs with a .312 OBP than:
Team/OBP
White Sox .332
Tigers .335
Brewers .335
Atlanta .339
Cardinals .332
Marlins .321
Diamondbacks .325
Giants .321
Cubs .320
What’s their excuse they had more OBP what did it get them?
The Guys ahead of Toronto?
Yankees 823 RBI
Red Sox 782 RBI
Tampa Bay 769 RBI
Reds 761 RBI
Rangers 740 RBI
Twins 749 RBI
Phillies 736 RBI
Rockies 741 RBI
SO 8 of 10 OBP guys made the list yes. ALL of the top RBI teams made it!
Now you explain why 9 guys with higher OBP didn’t score more runs than Toronto if OBP is so efficient or more efficient than RBI and HRs which you already admitted is the best thing you can do in baseball.
Why aren’t you looking to get more of the BEST THING YOU CAN DO and going for the thing that failed 8 teams who had better and still wond up with fewer runs.
I already explained why you can’t use RBI as a cause for runs scored. It’s really very simple.
Yeah it had something to do with actually being RELATED to RS and your whole point is to find something NOT RELATED to RS and RELATE it as the MOST IMPORTANT THING!
How is that Physics lesson going?
Have you produced an experiement that shows that something that happens AFTER something caused the thing that happened first?
Did you use the HG Wells principle or somthing from Bobby Darren?
Hey, I posted the rules of the game. It’s not a saber thing, or a traiditional thing, or a heart attack thing……
But I digress. It’s the rules of baseball. Not physics.
Ok one more time and I’ll use sports.
A TD is not SCORED until the Ref raises his arms to say TD!
is the REF the CAUSE of the TD?
Physics my friend. CAUSE is about PHYSICS not RULEBOOKS!
Events are not RULES they are not CAUSED by the temporal of the rule they are caused by the action!
And the action was not touching base!
No more than the action of the Football Ref raising his arms to say TD caused it to happen!
Hence you lose your shirt again arguing about things that are wrong only to try and prove a theory which is wrong because it doesn’t take EVENTS into consideration Just RESULTS!
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Seriously? The ref raising his hands has about as much to do with the touchdown as the umpire twirling his finger around has to do with a home run. Come on, really? If a home run is a home run as soon as the ball goes over the fence, why make the guy actually jog around the bases? For posterity? Why do you think during walkoffs when there’s a huddle around the plate, the ump stays put and makes sure the guy touches the plate before leaving the field. Why do you think not one person in that huddle touches the hitter until he touches home plate? Why do you think Robin Ventura only got a single?
You’re so lost and you refuse to let me find you.
Hey your the one who goes by the rulebook not the actual cause
I’m just pointing out your rediculous assumption and rule book defense to solve your temporal issues.
All these weird examples are just as illuminating as your premise that “you don’t need to get OB to score more runs” or that drafting good players instead of bad one’s would “take too long” and the team would “go broke.” while waiting for these players to get here.
You have any instances where a fielder catching a fly ball before it hits the ground doesn’t result in an out? Any temporal qualms with that rule? This is silly. You’re just being silly now.
Ventura recorded a single but nothing stopped him from going all the way if he wanted to he already did all he needed to do that.
Well tag you don’t need to get OB to score more runs. Toronto PROVED THAT!
X it’s not an out until the Umpire calls it so again does the Umpire cause the player to catch it?
This is what YOU are claiming by the saying OB caused the run to score!
Nope. That’s wrong. Once he was mobbed by his teammates, it was over. He couldn’t have pushed through them. You have no defense for this. No one will coem to your aid, you’re in a boat without an oar and heading towards a big waterfall. Stop now.
And Tag how has the development thing worked out for the Pirates Marlins and Nats recently?
How many wins combined do those DEVELOP ONLY teams have?
I have showed my proof…
Time for you guys to start showing some numbers that make your point and if you don’t want to hear rediculous responses to your rediculous semantical attempts at making OBP a cause you wouldn’t get your logic non sensical logic thrown right back in your face!
Tag you say getting OB scores more runs but then you can’t explain why that isn’t true when Toronto is brought up.
X you cite RULES of sport and when similar situation that your used is thrown back at you you call it non sensical.
Well Thank you for admitting what you proposed was non sense!
No once he was mobbed by his teamates it was not over!
He could very well have made it through them. No Ump could stop him!
Still doesn’t matter it wasn’t him touching first that drove in the winning run. Thats the point that is lost on you!
And why you fail!
What ALLOWED ventura to touch the base?
THE HIT! Not 1B!
You know guys if you really need to rely on rediculous and abnormal situations to make your point it means the point itself is pretty rediculous as well!
HERE are some facts.
The teams with the MOST RBI are ALWAYS the team with the highest RS.
The teams with the highest OBP are NOT!
It’s not the base that causes something to happen in an At Bat it is the PLAYER who does something IN THE BATTER’S BOX! that makes it happen!
And OB is not always an RBI but an RBI is almost ALWAYS an OB! (Excl Sac Fly and FC)
These are UNDENIABLE facts!
HISTORY BEARS IT OUT!
Look at the last three years hell look at the last 20!
The guys who score the most runs will ALWAYS have the most RBI and the guys who have the best OBP will not ALWAYS have the most RS.
Now go do some homework and show me examples where the low RBI but high OBP ALWAYS beats high RBI!
If you can’t you have pretty much just been proven wrong for something like the 10th time since I started posting here!
Of course RBI correlates best to R/S. Their part and parcel of the same thing. 95% of the time you can’t have one without the other.
It’s cold in the winter.
It’s wet when it rains.
Grass grows in the summer.
Right, so whats all this obsession with OBP regarding RS about again?
Why spend so much time trying to make something that is not a direct cause of RS sound more important to RS than the ACTUAL CAUSES?
I know this all started because of a BIAS in thinking that says a leadoff guy should get on base more. And it’s a fine premise if you are SETTLING for a lesser player that can’t drive in runs or have a high enough BA to convince you so you then LOWER THE BAR and look at OBP becuase it makes a player sound better. Nick Johnson had High OBP .388 but hit .167
Looking at OBP he sounds like a real winner. A real winner that Tejada OUT BATS!
The truth of the matter is if you loaded up every position with guys who hit .300 then you wouldn’t need OBP to score those runs. Get a lineup full of .300 hitting, 100 RBI guys and your likely to get the same 800 RS the Yankees have!
And because they hit AND drive in runs at ANY number in the lineup they also get on base a lot more than every other team because a pitcher is FORCED to pick his poison!
This is what I tried to get accross and probably why this subject hasn’t really been brought up since the last time we had it!
The Yankees lead OBP because they are GOOD HITTERS not good OBP guys. OBP is a RESULT not a CAUSE!
To use your examples above puddles don’t make rain! Rain makes Puddles!
If you want to discover what happened and project it into future potential you need to look at what CAUSED the numbers not just what resulted without any sense of how those results came about.
I believe that you don’t need a high OBP leadoff batter to win. You simply need a GOOD .300 batter and the OBP will take care of itself.
It is incosequential since it doesn’t even tell you what the ACTUAL result was.
that OB could have been a single, double triple or Homerun and it could even be a product of the pitcher losing it and hitting you!
Therefore attributing a player PLUS based on a result that may or may not be an actual accomplishment of the player is folly and OVER VALUING him based on situations not of his own making!
And that is my BIGGEST problem with OBP other than the non chalant use of it in every discussion on players despite the fact it really doesn’t say anything about the player’s ability to do what REALLY is important in the game of baseball….DRIVING IN RUNS!
Those runs are driven in at the plate not at the first base bag and the OBP crowd would like to say to get out of the conflicts with their OBP theory!
I get it you guys LIKE OBP and you WANT it to be the most important stat just as you LIKE the Mets and want them to be the most important team in baseball!
But what you want and what is real are two different things!
and settling for lesser over effective is the short path to failure!
I’ve never said OB was the most important thing. I’ve always said that a high OB is a byproduct of being a good hitter. A good hitter has an OB% .75 points above their BA. If they don’t it’s because their not being selective enough. Their not getting enough good pitches to hit because their swinging at bad ones. If their able to hit a lot of HR’s without striking out a lot (like Vlad) that’s one thing but if their not hitting 35-50 HR’s then their lack of patience is leaving hits on the table.
A select few hitters in the history of the game might be able to get away with that but most of them cannot.
Hitters are not getting OB (by hit or walk) as much as they could if they were less gullible.
The difference in BA on a 2-1 count vs. a 1-2 count is enormous. All it takes is one “ball” swung at and fouled off or missed to shift the advantage away from yourself and in favor of the pitcher.
If instead of getting a 2-1 fastball over the plate you get a 1-2 curve in the dirt or a slider off the plate and miss it again who’s going to be driving you in? No one.
By taking the free pass, when offered, you are A) getting on which beats the alternative and B) going to see better pitches. Seeing better pitches will increase your BA, OB AND SLG. I don’t see how this is a revelation.
If you have a player like Jose who goes outside the zone as often as he does, he’s leaving hits on the table because he is not a great “bad ball hitter.”
Reyes could have 40 bunt hits, 100 singles, 30 doubles, 15, triples and 15 HR’s. That would give him a .300 BA and a .300 OB.
Forget OB if you will. If he added 100 walks to that his BA would go up to .350 and it would climb even higher because pitchers would no longer be able to get him out on all the stuff he’s reaching for.
He reaches and fouls off a lot of pitches, many times, after taking a fastball over the plate he then fouls a dribbler off the plate and finds himself 1-2. Many other times he pops up off his front foot the pitch he’s reaching for. If he would just let the pitch come to him he’d be swinging at better pitches and he’d be getting more of them.
If he were also to get on for free quite a bit more what’s wrong with that?
If his OB was .400 instead of .320 that’s an extra 50 runs he could score. That’s an extra 50 times he opens holes in the infield for the next hitter. That’s an extra 50 times the next guy is more likely to get a FB to hit. That’s an extra 50 times the MI has to keep an eye on him. Being that both his BA and OB are being dragged down by his going outside the strike zone so much I just don’t see why anyone wouldn’t want him to be more selective.
Tag one thing you should remember about me and my posts…
If the shoe REALLY doesn’t fit…DON’T WEAR IT! LOL
Ok?
now onto what you DID say…
“A good hitter has an OB% .75 points above their BA. If they don’t it’s because their not being selective enough.”
Does it really mean that? Couldn’t he just get REAL hits instead?
You see this is one of the problem with OBP in general. It supposes that the OBP is only a property of the batter but it is not! Not when it included HBP, and K’s to the backstop. Those are not something that the BATTER causes directly, maybe indirectly but he can’t force a pitcher to do those things.
What you saying in essence is he didn’t walk or get hit by a pitch enough but that doesn’t mean he made an out!
You presume that a pitcher will ALWAYS present the WALK as an option to a batter. And your assuming that because his OBP isn’t higher than his BA that he is not mtaking those opportunities. But that is a very WRONG assumption. A GUESS at best!
What if the pitcher never threw those 4 balls and the guy hit it instead. There would be no EXTRA OB and the batter would have showed just as much selectivie skill as a guy who walks more!
In essence by saying OBP is better than BA your saying walking is better than hitting! Do YOU believe that?
Again backwards thinking in my opinion!
Selectivity at the plate isn’t about taking balls it’s about NOT TAKING strikes!
It is that BA that encourages a Pitcher to throw all those balls that you are presuming appear in every at bat!
If a guy hits .300 and has an OBP of .300 does that mean he isn’t selective at the plate?
Or does it mean that the pitcher didn’t offer the walk and he had to hit the ball to get on base?
OBP is a bad evaluator because it attributes Pitching failure to the batter when the Batter had little to nothing to do with that other than what his normal BA and HITTING numbers might suggest to the pitcher regarding dangerous or not.
This is why the yankees lead the league in OBP not because they are all the most selective guys in the league and NEVER swing at a ball when presented.
They swing based on their ability to hit is hard, somewhere that can get them on base and as a result Pitchers tend to not give them those pitches as much and as a result they walk more often than most other mortal batters do.
Selectivity can not be judged by OBP since Selectivity at the plate is dependent on the Pitcher throwing balls not the batter having a good eye!
If no balls are thrown then all the selectivity in the universe will not allow a batter to be selective at the plate and take a ball that never arrives!
And if he tries what will happen instead is he will strike out trying to make a strike into a ball because his EYE tricked him!
This is why I say fighting with two strikes and the skill to foul off pitches that are close enough to be called a strike is more important than taking a pitch that MAY or MAY NOT be a ball in the eyes of the Umpire!
Becuase by fouling it off you force the pitcher to make more throws which increases the liklihood the pitcher WILL miss on the next pitch badly or give you a pitch you CAN drive for a hit!
It is all about your preference, Passive or Aggressive!
OBP centric is rewarding Passive batting approach.
Don’t try to hit try to walk.
Don’t protect the plate try and get 4 balls.
Where as you can do ALL of that in an aggressive approach by protecting the plate and trying to get a hit and if you can’t string the pitcher along until he does something stupid!
You can’t force that pitcher to walk you but with a good BA you can scare him into thinking about it.
QAnd by protecting the plate with 2 Strikes and fouling off pitches that are close enough to call a strike you not only tire out the pitcher so he is less effective, You also get the reputation with the Umpires that says this guy never takes balls close enough to hit so when you DO they usually give you the benefit of the doubt!
And while your doing that your still trying to get the HIT which is much better than the walk any day of the week and 10 times on Sunday!
Metsie, I have never said that I think walks are better than hits. I know hits are better than walks. But I also know that by taking your walks you get more pitches to hit in other AB’s. Pitchers don’t want to walk people. They also don’t want to miss their spots but they do. Often.
When you show the pitcher that he has to throw you strikes he will. The more strikes you get, the better all your numbers will be. BA, OB SLG.
The more often your in a good hitters count, the less often your behind in the count. That does make a huge difference even if you don’t realize it.
I can tell that your not of the belief that walks have any merit either on their own or because taking them helps you later. I’m cool with that.
Pay attention some day on a 1-1 count and see the AB shift toward whoever gets the next pitch their way. 1-2 is hard to recover from. 2-1 puts you in the drivers seat.
Swing away Metsie.
I never really meant to imply that you did say that but sort of suggest that if you judge a batter on OBP which has as much to do with the failure of the Pitcher as the goodness of the batter!
The pitcher will throw you strikes mostly because thats his job. Walking will not make him throw you more strikes but HITTING might make him throw fewer!
You can’t assume the reason the guy walked was because they guy was trying to throw a ball. It could just as easily be because he missed!
As far as the counts are concerned where you are in the count doesn’t matter. the only thing that changes is the margin for error!
With two strikes on you (and that includes 3-2) your margin of error as a batter is slimmer! You can’t AFFORD to take a borderline pitch there! You either have to be able to hit the snot out of it or foul it off on a borderline pitch. If you don’t then you know who decides? The Umpire and he doesn’t really care what your OBP is or what you did in the last at bat!
You can NOT let ANYONE the pitcher or the umpire take the bat OUT of your hands!
By supporting OBP and saying you need to take more walks you are encouraging or selecting guys who are PASSIVE and let someone else decide what happens!
But if you foul it off YOU control the at bat. Not the Pitcher, not the Umpire but YOU!
Thats the key to being a good hitter. Not letting the Pitcher or the Umpire determine what happens. Decide those things and control them by yourself!
OBP rewards the passive behavior.
Look at how many called third strikes Ike took last year looking at the ump!
HE was going for OBP!
And he failed by doing that!
He should have fouled off those pitches and not given the Ump the opportunity to end the at bat on a borderline call!
If he had he might not have had that long slump where he was caught looking 3 at bats per game!
Thios is why I hate it when people think the OBP is important because all they REALLY mean is more walks when Hits are a much better result.
They should be focused only smacking the hell out of the baseball and if the pitch isn’t fat but close enough to call then foul it off until you can!
When an OBVIOUS ball comes along ok take the walk.
But thats only possible if the pitcher fails it has nothing to do with the EYE of the batter!
Metsie, You are giving ML pitchers too much credit. Who in their right mind would want to walk Castillo? Yet they do. He doesn’t scare anyone. If Tejada and Thole didn’t draw walks they’d be hitting .180 and .240 and getting on at the same rate. Pitchers aren’t afraid to pitch to those guys. They are the last one’s they want to walk, yet they do.
Putting Castillo on in front of Wright, Beltran, Davis and Bay? Please.
Pitching around Tejada and Thole to “get to the pitcher?” yeah maybe 3 times a year. Other than that they want to record outs from them all.
Castillo, Tejada and Thole don’t scare anyone with their bats and yet combined to walk 10% of the time.
Your giving pitchers waaaaayyyy too much credit. Very few can paint it like Lee.
The whole idea is not to let the hitter get the best part of the bat on the ball. Throw strikes but on the edges, change speed, vary your pitches, move it up, down, in and out. Throw strikes but don’t get hurt. Swim without getting wet. It’s a lot harder than your making it out to be.
Before each game everyone knows who can keep you off balance while throwing strikes, but even those guys have off innings, don’t get a call, even off games and there aren’t too many of them to begin with.
If you swing at what the pitcher wants you to swing at all the time your never going to get to swing at what you want to.
I think you have it backwards. Good hitters get themselves into good counts, see good pitches and hit good pitches
“You are giving ML pitchers too much credit. Who in their right mind would want to walk Castillo? Yet they do.”
No I think your giving the Batter too much credit.
Can he force the pitcher to throw a ball?
NO!
So how does a batter go about walking more if the pitcher never throws him a ball?
Scare may not work for Castillo but it does work for guys like Jeter and A-Rod and Pujols
They won’t throw fat pitches to those guys!
Why?
Because they are more worried about them hitting it than they are walking him. A Walk is better in the eyes of a pitcher than a double or HR. Even better than a single in many cases! Because a single can advance any runners that happen to be on at the time.
So if you get a batter who hits he will generate those balls the pitcher throws and draw more walks.
I know you think if you walk your going to get better pitches to hit next at bat but that isn’t the case.
That only works if the guy actually CAN hit and OBP doesn’t address that little skill set!
And what will happen instead is the PASSIVE act of trying to draw a walk will cause the guy to get punched out looking at a called strike unless he protects the plate on those borderline pitches and gets a pitch that even a weak BA guy can hit!
25 years and STILL no RFer. 40 Years and STILL no LFer. One SS in 50 years. One 2b in 50 years. We have to go and import every player and STILL not get anything out of them.
We’ve drafted thousands of players in the last 45 years and thats the best we can do? Whew. Man. Only in Government would this level of incompetence tolerated.
Hey t agee, maybe we found one that will actually stick in Lucas Duda.
How many players in how many years did Boston draft before they won a World Series?
Probably somewhere in the tens of thousands!
And how many were All Stars, MVPs Hall of Famers or otherwise notable?
World Series rings says nothing of the individual performance. Unless you want to tell me Ted Willaims wasn’t that good.
Or, we can go back and look at past World Series winners and see how many of them were anchored by their own highly rated farm hands.