The Inquirer's Andy Martino writes a great column this morning. The lede:
Your frustration is understandable. The team that you root for has runners in scoring position with fewer than two outs. You crave runs, but pop-ups, fly-outs, groundouts and strikeouts spoil the inning. You want to shout, throw beer at the television, go one step further than Job and just curse God and die.
But what if the universe were not as cruel as it seemed? That is the reality of the Phillies' much-publicized, much worried-about struggles with runners in scoring position. Yes, the Phillies would like to be a more consistent offensive team. But a look at the relevant statistics shows that their funk is not as troublesome as it appears.
Martino goes on to describe how batting average with runners in scoring postion doesn't tell the whole story, and then, he actually tells the whole story. You really need to go read the whole thing, but here's the money quote:
Another surprising number: While the Phils' .256 batting average with RISP is 11th in the National League, their OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) with RISP of .811 is first. What would you rather be good at, hitting singles with runners on second and third or hitting singles, walking, and knocking doubles, triples and home runs more than anyone else? Any educated baseball thinker knows that OPS, while itself flawed, is a better stat than batting average.
So let me get this straight... In a major newspaper, a beat writer is given the latitude to talk about OPS, aknowledge its flaws, but then point out it is way better than batting average? Good for you Andy, good for you.
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Martino also spends some time discussing the concept of productive outs, which if I'm not mistaken, Buster Olney of ESPN developed a few years ago. It occured to me that a better way of looking at a team's performance would be to calculate "productive at-bats". In othe words, in what percentage of at-bats when runners are in scoring position [or just on base in general] is there a positive outcome, i.e. the runner advances or scores. And, if you want to take it a step further, if the batter hits into a double play, you can perhaps subtract a productive at-bat, rather than in the case of a strikeout or pop-up where nothing would be added to the batter's tally.
Anybody with some spreadsheet/database chops want to help me out with that?
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Notice how I didn't bring up Brad Lidge at all? That's because no amount of statistical digging can make his 2009 look good.
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