Kinda Like DiMaggio,** Only Bad
Posted: June 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball | 20 Comments »
Yes, it’s true, we probably spend an inordinate amount of baseball time here talking about walks. The reason is obvious: For about 100 years, walks were the most underrated weapon in the game. They are probably STILL the most underrated weapon in the game, but people are more aware than they used to be. For all those years, walks were ignored, scoffed at, mocked and utterly discounted when it came to baseball’s most celebrated statistic, batting average.*
*You walked? Great. I’m marking you down with no-at bat. No. It doesn’t count. No, I’m serious, it doesn’t count, the at-bat never happened, I have stricken your silly base on balls from the records.
Statistics, as you know, are more than numbers, more than simply ways to measure the game. In any ways, they ARE the game. Stats have played a huge role in the way baseball has been played. The “save” statistic doesn’t just measure how well a closer pitches, it very much determines the ROLE a manager will use him in. The “win” statistic doesn’t just tell you how effectively and dependably a pitcher throws, it also helps a manager decide when to take him out and when to leave him in. The “sacrifice fly” doesn’t just give a batter an RBI without charging him an at-bat, it gets into the mindset of batters who are hitting with a man on third and less than two outs.
And so, many, many years ago the walk was eliminated from the batting average equation, and for all this time this one move has colored the way everyone — fans, owners, managers, players themselves — viewed walks. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I’m writing this book about the 1975 Reds* … and in 1974, Pete Rose hit .284, the first time in a decade that he failed to hit .300. It’s also true that Rose walked a career-high 109 times, cracked a league-leading 45 doubles, led the league in times on base and perhaps most impressively led the NL in runs scored for only the second time in his career. Whatever. The Reds still tried to to cut his salary by $30,000. Because none of that other stuff meant squat in 1974. Rose hit .284. That’s all that mattered.
*OK, it’s Father’s Day week (so to you fathers out there, happy birthday!). I HAVE to mention that THIS BOOK makes an excellent father’s day gift. In fact, it seems to me I may have to squeeze in mentions of this book every chance I can between now and Sunday. Look out. It could be very tricky.
One of the reasons the book Moneyball was such a success, I think, is that it gave us a fascinating glimpse at how the magic trick worked. Yes, there was a lot of stuff in there about the draft, a lot of stuff about finding pitchers who throw funny, a lot of stuff about not selling jeans. But it seems to me the epiphany was that the Oakland A’s just walked a whole helluva lot. From 1999-2001, the Oakland A’s hit .259 (13th in AL), .270 (10th) and .264 (9th). And yet, they finished in the Top 4 in runs all the years. How? They didn’t steal any bases. They didn’t have overly impressive slugging percentages (although they did hit quite a lot of home runs — not to be discounted). A big thing: The walks. The A’s walked more than any other American League team over those three years. They walked and walked and freaking walked, And those walks turned a fat, limited, defensively challenged, John Jaha, Matt Stairs, Giambi Brothers bunch into a good enough offensive team to back up the Big 3 pitchers and win 87, 91 and 102 games.
with walks playing a starring role in Moneyball*, many people just then started to realize how valuable and under-appreciated walks have been through the years. Not only does the walker get to go to first base, but he he uses up some of the pitchers valuable pitch count, he creates frustration, he has a chilling effect on the stadium atmosphere. I’m not suggesting that an increase in walks is good for baseball … it is not, nothing in the game is more boring than a walk. But years ago, Pat Riley discovered that his New York Knicks could win basketball games by bullying and clawing and shoving and making basketball boring beyond pain. Sure, walks are boring. But they work.
*I wonder who will play walks in the movie … I hope it’s Robert Downey. What a comeback story!
All of this leads up to the Kansas City Royals … of course. The Royals have a streak going. They have now gone 18 consecutive games without walking more than three times in any individual game. This is not an especially interesting stat … nor is it especially close to a record — the 1980 Chicago White Sox and 1967 Cincinnati Reds went 26 consecutive games without walking four times in any game.
But here’s the impressive part: In those 18 games, the Royals have walked just 17 times. And while I cannot be sure, I do believe this is the longest streak (at least since 1956) that a team has gone averaging fewer than one walk per game.
It’s hard, hard work to walk only 17 times in 18 games (one of those was an intentional walk — it was Mike Aviles too). And when you consider that over those same 18 games, Royals pitchers have walked 72 … you begin to get an idea about what the Royals are up against these days. Opponents have walked 55 more times than the Royals over those 18 games, and and they have scored 32 more runs, and I would suspect that those two numbers are not unrelated.
Here are just a few examples …
June 10, 2008: Royals up on Texas 5-1 with two outs in the eighth inning. Then, reliever Ron Mahay walks Michael Young. This is followed by a lovely error on the part of “first baseman” Mark Teahen.* This is followed by the entrance of Brett Tomko and the inevitable double and single that come with him. Two more singles and a walk later, the score is tied, the Royals lose it in the ninth after a rather bizarre sequence that involved another entirely illogical intentional walk … it’s too depressing to even go into.
*Since Mark Teahen had a second-half to remember in 2006 — after a minor league stint ended on June 3, he hit .313/.384/.557 with 16 homers in 356 PA — the Royals have moved him from third base to right field, moved him from right field to left field, moved him back from left field to right field, moved him up and down the lineup, toyed with his batting stance, and then in the middle of this year they suddenly decided he’s a first baseman. I’m not suggesting that Mark’s struggles are anyone else’s fault — you have to be tough to be a big leaguer, in baseball you overcome or you die in Peoria — but I cannot for the life of me understand why the Royals would want to make it HARDER on a player who seemed to be emerging into stardom.
June 7, 2008: Royals up 5-1 on Yankees in the fourth — give up four runs, a walk involved was in the middle of that disaster. Royals up 11-10 in the 9th, allow a homer to tie it, then a walk to Wilson Betemit who comes around to score the game-winner on Johnny Damon’s single.
June 4, 2008: Royals up 2-0 on White Sox, a walk to Paul Konerko is followed by a 789-foot home run by Jim Thome ties the score. Royals manage to send the game into extra innings, it is tied going into the 15th inning, where Jimmy Gobble walks Carlos Quentin to lead off the inning and then groves a pitch to Paul Konerko whose homer ends the ame. Quentin’s walk is not all that relevant here (although it’s officially “the game winning run”) but I do think in this case it had some emotional effect.
May 27, 2008: Royals losing 3-0 going into the ninth and tie the score on an amazing, ridiculous inside-the-park home run by Mark Teahen. The loyalists at Kauffman Stadium were very much alive. In the 12th inning, with one out, Joe Mauer walked and came around to score on Michael Cuddyer’s single — that was the game winner.
There’s plenty more, of course. It seems simple enough … you might struggle when you are walking three more batters every game. Overall, though, I would say: The Royals problem is not exactly that they don’t walk … it is that they can’t hit. And they have no power (other than the suddenly white hot Jose Guillen). And they have no speed. And when you can’t hit, you can’t swat, you can’t run, you need to find ways to survive, ways to score runs, ways to get starting pitchers out of games, ways to get runners on base, ways to compete.
This Royals team — and it’s the most frustrating part of this depressing season, if you ask me — go the other way. They don’t have the ability to work into the count, they don’t have the confidence to hit with two strikes, they don’t have the patience or bat skills to foul off good pitches, they just don’t walk. I don’t know how much longer they can keep this fewer-than-one-walk-per-game streak going, but I can tell you right now I don’t think I could write a bestselling book about it.
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I was playing around with the stats the other day and one thing I found was that the Royals are hitting .221 with an OPS of .713 so far this season AFTER A 2-0 COUNT. The lowest OPS after a 2-0 count by any team in any season since 1988 was .780 by the 1988 Brewers.
Keep in mind that MLB’s OPS after a 2-0 count has been over 1.000 in every season starting in 1996 (it’s 1.007 so far this season).
Yeah, the Royals are having some trouble.
Nice post Gary. How were you able to dig up the historical info? Are you a Stats Inc. subscriber?
When I was a kid, I thought walks were part of average. Of course, I also though that reaching on a fielder’s choice or an error were hits, too. Sac flies would be at-bats. Being an AL fan, I guess I never contemplated sac bunts, but I guess they would have been at-bats. Basically, I thought average was (number of times you get on base) / (number of times you bat).
Joe,
Your last paragraph says it all. Most of the Royals simply don’t have the skill to take balls and swing at quality strikes (Teahen, who has probably the best eye on the team, takes a third strike clearly on the outside corner, for the final strike of the game last night … it wasn’t like he was fooled by a breaking ball … it was a 93-MPH fastball on the outside corner … Teahen was trying to wait for a strike to hit, but he just isn’t good at it).
And then the other thing you said that is right on point: The Royals don’t have the confidence to hit with two-strikes. Remember how Wade Boggs used to say his favorite count to hit was 1-2? Yeah, I don’t think many of the Royals would subscribe to that statement.
Mikey, I use baseball-reference (especially for current season stuff and 1999) and have the retrosheet pbp in an access database for the older stuff. I was looking at some other things yesterday and that Royals tidbit was something that I just stumbled upon.
And yet – Barnett continues to keep his job.
Yes, plate discipline is one skill that may be tough to teach, but come on – this guy has to be accountable for at least SOME of the problem, doesn’t he?????
By the way – Kevin Seitzer is my suggestion for a replacement for Barnett.
GMDM can take some blame for this as well. Gload, Grud, Pena – all guys who don’t draw many walks at all. The only one who deserves to start is Grud, and the only other worthy of serving a reserve role is Gload.
Meanwhile, two guys with very good plate discipline barely get off the bench at all – Callaspo and German. That one’s on Hillman.
How does any of this jive with the constant rhetoric every spring about valuing OBP?
Royals management talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk, so to speak.
By the way – there’s an easy way to break the string of low walk games.
Sign Bonds.
Sign him now.
I remember reading in Tom Seaver’s The Art of Pitching book that walks are the bane of a pitcher’s existence. This article is a perfect example of it.
And I remember the Konerko home run. It was one of the first games I watched after getting MLB.TV.
Walks.
I don’t remember a time in my life of not knowing or knowing about baseball. I grew up believing that “a walk is just as good as a hit” because “we need baserunners.” I still believe that 20+ years later.
I say all of that to say, I don’t know how people could have undervalued walking for so long. In my mind, getting on base was getting on base; regardless of the method.
“The Firebird Story.”
My little league team was called The Firebirds. My father loves to tell “The Firebird Story.” There’s a lot to it (including an 0-6 start in a 12 game season.) The short story is this: we made it to the playoffs. But with our 6-6 record we had to play the 1st place team to make it to the championship game.
By the bottom of the 5th inning, they were up 13-0. We got a couple of hits, scored a couple of runs and most importantly, knocked their franchise pitcher out of the game.
In the bottom of the 6th, they ran out of pitching. They walked in 12 runs. We won 14-13. We went to the championship game, because we knew they would walk us all night long.
I learned at a young age the value of drawing walks. I still believe it 20+ years later.
Talking about how the Royals have messed with Mark Teahen over the past couple of years reminds me that the Twins did something very similar with Michael Cuddyer when he was first coming up. Cuddyer had been a first-round pick of the Twins and showed some nice development as a hitter in the minors (in 2001, repeating a year in New Britain as a 22-year old, Cuddyer hit .301/950 with 30 homers, then promoted to AAA the next season, followed up with a .309/971 season with 20 homers).
The Twins, meanwhile:
- Brought Cuddyer up in 2001 for a handful of games to fill in for Doug Mientkiewicz at first base.
- Brought him up in September of 2002 and again in September of 2003 to compete with Dustan Mohr, Bobby Kielty, and Mike Restovich for the right-field job and occasionally fill in at third base, a competition that eventually was won by left-fielder Jacque Jones after the Twins traded Kielty to the Blue Jays to acquire Shannon Stewart.
- In 2004, the Twins tried to convert Cuddyer into a second baseman, hoping to get better offense out of him than out of Luis Rivas — Cuddyer committed just three errors at second in 40 starts for a league-average fielding percentage, but was significantly below average in both range factor (4.59 vs a league average of 4.95) and ability to turn the double play (Cuddyer turned 17 DPs in his 327 defensive innings, while Rivas, whose ability on the double play was probably his greatest defensive strength, turned 75 in 860 innings).
- In 2005, the Twins moved Cuddyer to third, handing him the job after Corey Koskie departed as a free agent; Cuddyer had a horrendous first two months of the season both offensively and defensively and though he was showing improvement in both areas during the summer months, he was eventually pulled off third for his own sanity’s sake.
Cuddyer had raked as a minor leaguer, and continued to do so when demoted to the minors during this time period, yet in none of these seasons did Cuddyer manage to reach an OPS+ of even 100 in the major leagues.
In 2006, with the departure of Jacque Jones as a free agent, the Twins put Cuddyer in right and left him there: he finished with an OPS+ of 124, the best offensive season of his major-league career, and though his 2007 was a bit off that pace, he still finished with a servicable .276/789 mark which translates to an OPS+ of 111. (Cuddyer has struggled to start 2008, but then so have some other Twins players, and Cuddy is again, as in 2005, slowly improving.)
Years ago, a friend of mine told me a rule of thumb about running a major league ballclub (he got it from either Bill James or Whitey Herzog): you don’t move your good players around, changing their routine and expectations, to accomodate your marginal players. While this isn’t strictly true for some of Teahen’s moves, since he’s been moved to accomodate potential stars, I still think it would be better for the Royals to settle on a role for Teahen and let him stick with it.
Failing that, for entirely selfish reasons, I’d love to see them trade Teahen to the Twins for a high level pitching prospect (say an Anthony Swarzak or Tyler Robertson), so Ron Gardenhire can then say to Teahen, “Welcome to the ballclub. You’re my third baseman. Get after it.”
The Royals simply refuse to work pitchers or let them hang themselves. The other night, Royals down by 1 in the 9th (or maybe extras), to leadoff John Buck walks on 4 straight pitches that mostly miss the strike zone badly. Joey Gaithright up.
DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT TAKING A FREAKING PITCH TO SEE IF THE PITCHER CAN FIND THE ZONE?
No of course not. You bunt on the first pitch, a bunt that should have resulted in an out at 2nd if the pitcher didn’t have a brainfart. All so TPJ could come up and try to knock in Buck from 2nd with one out.
That was my last vestige of hope that Hillman isn’t a bad manager.
Where does that Peoiria line come from? I’ve seen it before but don’t get the reference.
Funny. The title of Joe’s last column in The Star is “This Loss Defies Explanation.” It was written on May 30th, and you can still see it online.
After last night, how many games can you apply that title to, now?
Not that I disagree or anything, but as a counterpoint I would point you to the pull-my-hair-out frustration that is the Toronto Blue Jays: 2nd in the entire AL in walks (1 behind, naturally, the A’s), 3rd in OBP…
And mired in mediocrity (34-34) because they are worse than every team in the AL except Seattle and KC at scoring runs.
To me, the thing that’s most interesting about the Moneyball revolution is that the information was there for the public to see the whole time.
Any undergrad with statistical software — which is to say, millions of social science majors — could have correlated team runs scored to team batting average, then correlated it to team on base percentage, and seen the R^2 is higher for OBP than BA. It’s not even close. It would take about 2 minutes.
And yet, the people whose jobs it is to creating winning baseball teams, who could have done the same thing with a slide rule and a couple hours of pencil-and-paper. And, since Branch Rickey apparently knew this, why didn’t people believe him?
“I was playing around with the stats the other day and one thing I found was that the Royals are hitting .221 with an OPS of .713 so far this season AFTER A 2-0 COUNT. The lowest OPS after a 2-0 count by any team in any season since 1988 was .780 by the 1988 Brewers.
Keep in mind that MLB’s OPS after a 2-0 count has been over 1.000 in every season starting in 1996 (it’s 1.007 so far this season).”
That’s absolutely brilliant research. Bravo, good Sir!
“nothing in the game is more boring than a walk”
Apart from the pitcher throwing to first. Or the second pitching change of the inning. Come to think of it, the gap between half-innings drags a little…
But still, I love baseball.