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From: dday@gymble.UUCP (Dennis Doubleday)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Lineup dependency
Message-ID: <389@gymble.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Oct-85 14:49:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: gymble.389
Posted: Tue Oct 15 14:49:53 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Oct-85 06:43:41 EDT
References: <453@philabs.UUCP> <694@mmintl.UUCP> <769@fisher.UUCP> <472@philabs.UUCP>
Reply-To: dday@gymble.UUCP (Dennis Doubleday)
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Maryland, Laboratory for Parallel Computation, C.P., MD
Lines: 35

In article <472@philabs.UUCP> dpb@philabs.UUCP (Paul Benjamin) writes:
>> he never had a runner on.  Applying this to my rough guess that the
>> best teams have runners on about half the time, and the worst about a
>> quarter of the time, the advantage to be gained is no more than
>> 20*(.5-.25) = 5 BA points.  Exactly what I mean when I suggest that
>> the difference is not something we ought to lose sleep over...
>> 
>> 						David Rubin
>
>Another case of bad reasoning. This may be the average over all players,
>but certain players bat much more than 20 points better with men on
>base. For examples, Boggs batted .418 this year with runners in scoring
>position. This is about 45 points above his overall average, and about
>55-60 points above his average with the bases empty. I certainly don't
>lose sleep over this, but it is significant.
 
I hesitate to stick my nose into this (and I am not taking sides) but 
let me make one point about men on base.  If Wade Boggs did the above
(I don't question it), couldn't this say at least at much about the 
pitchers he faced in those situations as it does about him?  Boggs
is much more likely to come to the plate with men on base against, say,
Dennis Martinez than he is against, say, Ron Guidry.  The simple reason
is that *everybody* on the Red Sox is likely to get more hits (and thus
be on base more) against the inferior pitchers. And so Wade Boggs is
more likely to bat with men on against Dennis Martinez and with the 
bases empty against Ron Guidry.  This might go a long way toward
explaining the differential.


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