Swing The Bat, Barry
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by user Lenora X
A Walk Is As Good As . . . What Your Teammates Do WIth It
The All-Star break is perhaps the worst three days of the sports year. But it does give me some time to think about certain topics I wouldn't normally have time or energy for.
Today's topic is Barry Bonds and how effective he is vs. how effective he might be. Barry's on-base percentage is a .512, a nutty 217 points higher than his .295 batting average, by virtue of his 91 walks.
Now, in this time of statistical revisionism, on-base percentage and OPS are king. And .512 plus a .589 slugging percentage gives Bonds a gaudy 1.011 OPS. But OPS, being the mere sum of two other stats, loses significant "oomph" if one of those components is discredited to some degree.
My pet peeve in this arena is exemplified by Bonds. On-base percentage for a slugger on a bad team is overvalued, because of the number of times his reaching base doesn't result in a run.
Consider 2007 Bonds. He's scored 46 runs. 17 of those were when he hit home runs, leaving 29 other runs he's scored. Between hits, walks and being hit by a pitch, Barry's been on base 153 times. Subtracting the 17 home runs leaves 136 times on base with 29 runs scored. So by that measure, Barry scores a run 21.3% of the time he gets on base other than by hitting a home run.
Comparing that to some middle of the lineup types on other teams: A Rod: 38.6% Magglio Ordonez: 38.3 Prince Fielder: 34.5 Manny Ramirez: 31.7 Justin Morneau: 30.6 David Ortiz: 29.1 Miguel Cabrera 27.2 David Wright: 26.4 Albert Pujols 24.6 Vlad Guerrero: 23 Barry Bonds 21.3 Ryan Howard 18.8 The names I picked for comparison weren't picked with any particular idea in mind, and certainly this is not a wholly scientific exercise. But the number do at least suggest that Barry, being pretty much the one and only big threat on his team, if better off looking a little bit outside his postage stamp-sized strike zone (aided and abetted by the umpires, of course). And that his walks turn the lineup over more often isn't much of a help, given the lineup.
But Barry was intentionally walked 30 times. Subtracting those out puts Barry in the middle of the pack, at 27.6% provisionally. [Provisionally because I cant find a number for how many runs Bonds scored after being walked intentionally, so I don't know many runs to subtract to make the % totally correct.]
But even 27% has Bonds well below the top. So to my way of thinking Bonds would actually benefit his team more by going out of his zone a little. There would be less walks. There would be be a lower OBP. But there would be more hits, more home runs, and more RBIs. I don't accept that Bonds is an all-time great within this tiny zone and can't hit at all outside of it. If Bonds were in a lineup like Detroit's or The Yankees or The Mets, he should get every walk he can. On a weaker offensive team, it's not a good strategy because the slugger will be stranded too often.
A slugger on a struggling team who's walking a lot needs to swing more.
