Walk the Walk
Posted: June 6th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 43 Comments »
Everyone here who would care knows that I’m a big fan of the walk as an offensive weapon.* I think for all the walk talk of the last few years, the walk is STILL underrated. in fact, I’m fairly confident that right now some brilliant reader is already cracking his/her fingers and preparing to write an extensive response about how a walk is not as good as a hit and how you can’t drive a runner home from second base with a walk and how teams cannot walk their way to victory and so on.
*It is my appreciation for the walk, no doubt, that makes me DESPISE the intentional walk. Man, do I hate the intentional walk. And so, you can imagine how pleased I was this week to see (thanks to BR Nick) that my old friend Ozzie Guillen blew not one but TWO games against the Oakland A’s with intentional walks. To be fair, he didn’t actually BLOW either game since his team was shut out both days … the Sox weren’t going to win those games. But both ludicrous intentional walks did the exploding cigar in his face.
Tuesday night, with the score 2-0, fifth inning, the Oz made the miraculous decision to intentionally walk Jack Cust with runners on second and third and two outs. I’m a big Jack Cust fan … but this would almost never make sense. For one thing, the guy’s a lifetime .240 hitter. Yes, he will run into the occasional ball (he had hit a home run earlier in the game against Bartolo Colon, which probably influenced the decision) but he’s not really the guy you fear with runners on second and third and two outs.
Here was the real kicker … the next batter was MATT HOLLIDAY. As in, the guy with a lifetime .317 batting average. As in the guy with a 131 career OPS+. As in a MUCH BETTER HITTER than Jack Cust. It was as baffling a move as you could make … and Matt Holliday smacked the three-run double to prove it.
Move ahead two days. Now the White Sox were trailing 1-0 in the sixth inning. Repeat: The score was 1-0. Runner on second base, one out. And this time, the Oz decided to intentionally walk … right, Matt Holliday. At least this one made strategic sense — lefty Mark Buehrle on the mound and lefty Jason Giambi was coming up and it set up the double play.
But intentional walks in the sixth inning, down 1-0, are always wrong, always, no exceptions, and Giambi put the exclamation point on it with the three-run homer that served justice.
The thing is … everyone knows a walk (in some circumstances) is not as good as a hit. In other circumstances, it’s just as good as a hit. In rare circumstance, you could argue, a walk could be better than a hit. Joe Morgan always thought so. At least he did when he was a player … in a book I keep hearing about, Morgan talks about his perfect run, where he would draw a walk, steal second, steal third and score on a wild pitch or passed ball or short sac fly — he believed that scoring a run without a hit destroys a pitcher’s mental well-being in a way that even a 500-foot homer cannot. This does make sense to me, but obviously that’s just an opinion and anyway, I’m not here to say that a walk is ever better than a hit.
I’m here to say that a walk is NEVER an out. And, because a walk is never an out, it’s a powerful offensive weapon. It puts a runner on base, of course. But it also eats up a pitcher’s pitch-count. It makes the pitcher throw the from the stretch, opens up the left side of the infield, puts the middle infielders at double play depth. A walk changes the complexion of games … and even now, even with all the talk about walks the last few years, I STILL think people wildly underestimate the power of walks.
So, I decided to look at something: How do walks affect games? I decided to look at this because I noticed during the Kansas City Royals horrendous 25-game streak (5-20 now), they have had five games where they walked zero times. That’s awful, awful baseball. Last year the New York Yankees had only five games ALL YEAR where they walked zero times, and the New York Mets had only four games*.
*Not surprisingly, at least to me, last year the Royals were far and away the leader in games with zero walks.
1. Kansas City, 30 games with zero walks.
2. Seattle, 18
3. Anaheim, 17
4. Pittsburgh, 16
5. Toronto, 15
Anyway, it made me wonder — how often does a team win when they don’t walk. So, I ran a few numbers and came up with this chart that includes all games over the last five years:
Number of walks: Winning percentage
0 walks: .305
1 walk: .363
2 walks: .432
3 walks: .495
4 walks: .547
5 walks: .619
6 walks: .645
7+ walks: .715
I ran the numbers individually for each year … they stay pretty consistent. Each of the last five years, teams that walked zero times won anywhere from 28 to 32% of the time. Teams that walk one time won anywhere from 34 to 37% of the time. And so on. There were no wild swings at least not over the last five years. A little later on, I will run a few numbers from years past to see if the walk has gained or lost value over the years.
But for the moment, let’s focus on these numbers. Look: There are hundreds of ways you can break down baseball games. For instance, you can break down games by the number of hits a team gets, the number of times they strike out, the number of doubles they hit and so on. You can break down a team by the number of homers a team gets per game … generally, teams that do not hit a home run in a game win at about a .350 clip, and you can add about 150 points of winning percentage for every homer they hit. Here are the numbers since 2004:
Homers per game: Winning Percentage
0 homers: .342
1 homer: .512
2 homers: ..647
3 homers+: .764
That’s interesting enough … those numbers stay consistent too. But home runs are not easily controllable events. A team cannot really PLAN to come into a game and hit two or more home runs in a game. I mean they can TRY to plan it, but home runs are a combination of many factors. A lot depends on the ballpark (the Chicago White Sox led baseball with 69 games of 2+ homers, and the Philadelphia Phillies led the NL with 62 and both play in bandboxes), the weather, the wind direction, the opposing pitcher, the closeness of the game (will they bring in the closer? Is the pitcher nibbling?), the size of your payroll (sluggers are expensive), the liveliness of the ball and numerous other difficult to measure variables such as which hitters get the mistake pitches.
But walks … sure, there are variables with walks too. But in large part, a team can have a plan to walk a lot. A team can be be built to walk a lot. There have been countless stories written about the Tampa Bay Rays last year and why they were so successful. Well, the Rays had a lousy batting average, and they were middle of the pack as sluggers. True, they were second in the league in ERA, but, Toronto was No. 1 by a lot, and the Rays finished 11 games ahead of the Blue Jays.
Walks? Could be. The Rays went 44-15 in games they walked five times or more … those 44 wins were the most in baseball. Meanwhile, they only had six games all year where they walked 0 times, among the lowest totals in baseball.
The 2008 Rays by the walk numbers:
Walks: Record
0 walks: 1-5
1 walk: 8-8
2 walks: 16-12
3 walks: 16-16
4 walks: 12-9
5 walks: 14-8
6 walks: 11-4
7 walks+: 19-3
There’s something to this, I think. Compare those numbers to the Kansas City Royals of 2008:
Walks: Record
0 walks: 13-17
1 walk: 8-23
2 walks: 13-19
3 walks: 16-10
4 walks: 7-7
5 walks: 7-8
6 walks: 10-2
7 walks+: 1-1
The Royals had a preposterous 61 games when they walked once or fewer — far and away the most in baseball. They went 21-40 in those games. When they walked even TWO TIMES OR MORE, they actually had a winning record last year. But it didn’t happen nearly enough.
The Rays, on the other hand, had only 22 games where they walked fewer than two times.
That was why I was excited to hear Royals general manager Dayton Moore talk about the importance of on-base percentage during the off-season. I know it’s too simplistic, but I’m convinced that for the Royals offense to go, they need to walk. They’re not going to slug with teams … and anyway, Kauffman Stadium is a tough home run park. They are a million miles away from building a speed-based team. I figured they HAD to go out, get some scrappy offensive players, guys who foul off pitches, walk a ton, can wear down pitchers. Those aren’t easy guys to find but, hey, nobody said the job is easy.
Anyway, the Royals went entirely the other way. They spent the last two off-seasons acquiring and signing guys like Jose Guillen, Miguel Olivo, Coco Crisp and Mike Jacobs, who don’t walk. They have given 789 plate appearances to Tony Pena since the beginning of the 2007 season, and he has walked 17 times. Their own players — David DeJesus, Billy Butler, Mark Teahen — don’t walk much either, even though all three had at one point shown promise.
Now, there’s only so much any general manager and manager and hitting coach can do. Maybe the Royals DO have walking as a high priority and they’ve simply been unable to execute their plan. Maybe they can’t find players with plate discipline. Maybe they are trying to teach it, but it just isn’t taking.
I’ll be honest though: It just doesn’t look that way. I think that while the Royals have had a pointed and lucid plan for building the pitching staff, they’ve been drifting in the wind offensively. They brought in Crisp and Jacobs and Guillen and hoped. They tried to find a middle infielder, could not, and went into the season with Mike Aviles, who was overmatched. They have left first baseman Kila Ka’aihue in Class AAA — the guy walked more than 100 times in the minors last year, and he has a .431 on-base percentage down in Omaha this year.
They talked about walking more, they hired a hitting coach in Kevin Seitzer who preaches discipline and hitting the ball up the middle, and for a while the Royals were getting on base at a surprising rate. But as they say, water finds its own level — or as running back Priest Holmes always used to say: “A cornerback can PRETEND to be a safety. But sooner or later, he’ll go back to being a cornerback.”
Meaning: The Royals are not built to walk. The last 25 games, the Royals are averaging barely more than two walks per … that’s a good way to go on a 5-20 run.
I promised earlier than I would do a quick look back to see if the walk has become more valuable over time. Well, I’ll try this chart. Not sure how it will line up.
| Walks |
2009 |
1995 |
1985 |
1975 |
1965 |
1955 |
| 0 BBs |
0.280 |
0.297 |
0.260 |
0.299 |
0.276 |
0.223 |
| 1-4 BBs |
0.462 |
0.449 |
0.467 |
0.460 |
0.474 |
0.468 |
| 5+ BBs |
0.623 |
0.655 |
0.644 |
0.635 |
0.653 |
0.607 |
As you can see (I hope), the winning percentages have stayed somewhat consistent, at least since 1965.
* * *
Reader update: BR 3rd Period Points makes this point — that Coco Crisp should not be lumped in with the other Royals non-walkers. And it’s true: Crisp has 28 walks this year in 46 games (against only 21 Ks) and, as such, has been a bit of a revelation despite his low-low batting average. It’s a fair point, but I want to highlight it because Crisp is PRECISELY the guy I was thinking of when I wrote that Priest Holmes quote about a cornerback can pretend to be a safety for a while.
Crisp has never walked much in his career. But he came to Kansas City with an entirely new role and he was driven to prove himself … and the first month or so he really was a fabulous player, an outstanding leadoff man. He was hitting only .235, but he he walked 21 times in 27 games, and on May 5 he walked four times, stole two bases, drove in a run, played his usual excellent defense and the Royals won.
Since then? Crisp has walked seven times in 19 games and put up a .289 on-base percentage. He’s been hurt, so that could be a part of it. But it’s also possible — likely? — that he’s simply reverting to form. I think Coco Crisp is a good player, and used right he can be a key part of a contending team. But I don’t think he’s a leadoff hitter, and I don’t think he’s an answer to the Royals walking problems.
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I hate to say this, but the Mike Jacobs trade goes into my top Totally Inexplicable Baseball Moves – actually, the real title of the list should be the Sadly, Totally Explicable Baseball Moves – but anyways it’s on there with such other moves as:
- the Pirates’ trade for Matt Morris
- Luis Castillo’s 4 year deal with the Mets
- Carlos Silva’s 4 year deal with the Twins
- The Zambrano/Kazmir deal
- Most management decisions made by the Red Sox between 2000-2002
Just to be clear, the Jacobs deal wasn’t a bad deal in a vacuum – it’s not like the Royals gave up a lot, but the decision to trade for a guy who plays a position you have a couple of young, relatively untried options at AND the guy you trade for is the express opposite of what you claim your team needs most…managing to hamstring young player development while simultaneously accentuating your biggest team weakness. That is quite a move.
Mircle be, Cert!
Fascinating article, Joe. I love statistical analyses as it’s what I do for a living.
Gate, you can add Bill Bavasi’s deals with Jose Vidro and Kenji Johjima to your list.
spot on, Joe – it kills me how this team fails over and over and over again to make opposing pitchers WORK for a living (ie, draw some walks, extend pitch counts, etc) – Meche has lost FAR more of his games than he should (and/or no decision in games he should be winning) because of an inept (nonexistant) offense
Gate, I’ve thought that same thing from the day the trade was announced: give up a proven setup guy for someone who’s a proven liability in the field AND strikes out more often than Snuggies ads appear on late night TV? lunacy!
this isn’t rocket science, it’s a VERY simple concept here: get on base (ok, to all you Royals who might be reading this, the idea is not at all complicated, see, you score runs to win games, and you have to get on base in order to score runs, see? and if you can’t hit your way out of a wet paper bag, that’s ok, really, because the rules say you can get on base with what’s called a W-A-L-K, get it? that’s when the pitcher throws you four [4] pitches that are not in the strike zone, ok? and best of all, they don’t even have to be consecutive pitches! cool, huh? so get out there and walk, walk, walk for your team, boys!)
If there’s anything worse than the idiotic firsts and circle mes, it’s when someone yutz does it and isn’t even actually first.
[...] This post was Twitted by RoyalsFeed – Real-url.org [...]
Could it be that the Royals don’t walk simply because opposing pitchers are not afraid to throw strikes?
I realize that we swing at bad pitches all the time (e.g. Olivo hacking at balls two feet outside or even two feet short of the plate), but I wonder how often our hitters actually SEE four bad pitches in an AB. My hypothesis is that we simply are not dangerous enough for opposing pitchers to nibble themselves into a free pass.
Let’s not be too quick to lump all these players into one big useless pile of walk-lessness. Coco Crisp has shown remarkable patience this year. The numbers show an astounding improvement: 14.1 BB% as compared to his previous career highs of 8.7% in ‘07 and 8.8% in ‘08. His K% is down from 16% the last three years, to 12.4% thus far in ‘09. He’s never had a BB/K ratio above 0.6, and he’s at 1.33 this year! If it wasn’t for a BABIP 69 points below his career average, he’d be sporting an OBP north of .400. A lead-off hitter, with Coco’s speed, that walks 14% of the time is invaluable. From where I sit at the K, he’s the only evidence that, if a player will listen and learn, Seitzer might be able to teach the plate discipline he practiced as a Royal.
Thanks for the post, Joe. It’s a classic.
-stats courtesy of Fangraphs: http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1572&position=OF
Your Matt Holliday example reminded me of the Yankees vs. Indians game on June 1. Tied at 1-1 in the seventh inning, relief pitcher Greg Aquino walked Hideki Matsui, Brett Gardner, and Derek Jeter to load the bases with one out. Nick Swisher followed with a double to plate two runs, setting the stage for one of the most asinine intentional walks I have ever seen. In stepped Mark Teixeira with men on second and third, with Alex Rodriguez on deck. What did Eric Wedge do? He INTENTIONALLY WALKED Teixeira to face Rodriguez with the bases loaded and one out. Yes, you read that right; Wedge would rather face A-Rod than Teixeira. (If I was a betting person, I would bet that this was the first time anyone had ever been intentionally walked so that the pitcher could face A-Rod. Anyone want to look this up for me?) Luis Vizcaino then came in to face A-Rod, who lined a ball off of Asdrubal Cabrera’s glove to drive in two more runs and increase the Yankees lead to 5-1.
I remember being incredulous at the time, and I still can’t think of any reasonable explanation for such an insane decision.
@ Gate: I think the Carlos Silva deal you are referring to was actually with the Mariners.
Joe, as a Twins fan, this is exactly the kind of statistic that our manager (and probably, front office) needs to see. What drives me completely insane is that the Twins organization is extremely proud of teaching it’s pitchers to throw strikes – since they became competitive again in 2001, they have consistently been near the top of the leaderboard for walks issued:
2008: 1st in MLB
2007: 2nd in MLB
2006: 1st…
2005: 1st…
2004: 2nd…
2003: 2nd…
2002: 4th…
2001: 3rd…
They (manager, coaches, etc) clearly understand that allowing free baserunners is bad. Make the opposition get a hit – you have eight fielders our there that will help you out.
The irritating problem is that they don’t use the same logic when they hit! They teach players to ‘be aggressive’, which is fine so long as you are aggressively swinging at hittable pitches, and Gardenhire insists on playing a Nick Punto, Alexi Casilla, or Matt Tolbert type in the second spot of the batting order (at least until recently!). Here are some beautiful numbers and words from Aaron Gleeman’s site yesterday:
“For posterity’s sake and because looking at the numbers makes me smile, the first four hitters in the Twins’ lineup have the following season totals after collectively going 10-for-15 with four homers, two doubles, four walks, 10 RBIs, and 11 runs scored in [Thursday's] blowout win against the Indians:
1. Denard Span .307 AVG .395 OBP .410 SLG
2. Joe Mauer .436 AVG .519 OBP .845 SLG
3. Justin Morneau .348 AVG .426 OBP .657 SLG
4. Jason Kubel .322 AVG .374 OBP .532 SLG
Here’s hoping that Ron Gardenhire can resist the urge to fix what isn’t broken by jamming Alexi Casilla or Matt Tolbert in there.”
Amen. You are 100% correct, Joe. A walk is NEVER an out. I simply wish the Twins organization used common sense in both their pitching and hitting coaching strategies.
Joe, did you mix up the numbers for 2 walks in 2008 for the Royals? Or did you mean to say THREE TIMES?
Gate @#1
Thankfully, as a Twins fan, I can point out that it was the Mariners who made that mistake, not the Twins (despite the call by some MN columnists who wanted them to). The Twins’ recent list of at least short-term blunders is comprised of Tony Batista, Juan Castro, Livan Hernandez, Sidney Ponson, Mike Lamb, Luis Ayala…
Brilliant baseball mind and Baseball Tonight Analyst John Kruk said something to this effect (when praising the Blue Jays a few weeks ago for swinging on the first pitch and not taking walks in general):
“I don’t understand people who think taking walks is good baseball. I mean, why walk if you aren’t going to steal?”
ESPN PAYS this guy.
Dear George Brett,
Before you post something about how John Kruk actually played MLB games and how he knows baseball and I don’t, I’d like to tell you this: F**K OFF, you imbecile.
Thanks.
I’m with RichMcKc. How can the Royals walk, when pitchers are not afraid of a single player in this lineup? If a pitcher gets to 3-2, all you have to is throw a fastball down the middle. They’ll either whiff or roll over on it. Or in the case of certain players like Miggy Olivo, just throw his favorite pitch and he’ll swing through it. Being able to walk is a skill, but when you present ZERO power threat, the pitcher will let you swing away. The only time that the Royals actually get walks is when they forget to swing at bad pitches, or the pitcher has command problems.
Also, I think lately the walking has regressed even more because when you are in a slump, you don’t walk your way out of it. You hit out of it, and they are all obviously hacking.
Do you think that pitchers are afraid of Coco?!?!?
Fantastic post and great numbers to back up the point.
My only other comment: If you go back to your own post a couple of days ago, if you write that walks are underrated, then they’re not underrated anymore.
I concur with 3rd Period’s post above that it is inaccurate to characterize Coco Crisp as a hitter who rarely walks. Despite his struggles swinging the bat this year, he has maintained an OBP that is actually above his career average, and leads the Royals in runs scored (30, with the next closest being Butler at 25). Crisp’s 2009 actually serves to drive home the importance of walks, and how a player can retain much of their offensive value through patience even when they aren’t stroking the ball well. As a Twins fan, can I trade you Gomez for Crisp? Pretty please?
Don’t give up on Go-Go yet, Wade. He’s still 24.
On the other hand, his career arc is starting to resemble Billy Beane’s, and that’s never good (unless you have front office aspirations). His raw talent is undeniable, but you have to ask yourself: Should he have been allowed to develop a bit before handing him the CF job?
I agree that that walk of Cust was dumb, but I have to point this out: Matt Holliday career OPS+ 131. Jack Cust career OPS+ 128. MUCH better hitter? Really?
Cust is one of my favorite players. I own him on both of my fantasy teams* as a form of baseball-inspired social protest against the establishment (and because no one ever drafts him and he’s available on the waiver wire).
*Bold Violation of Joe’s Rule #1.
the Phils have scored 13 runs on bases loaded walks this year. i dont know if that’s a lot, but i did hear it on last night’s telecast and it sounds like a lot.
also, im vaguely sick of hearing about how the smallness of the Phillies stadium effects things. Am i wrong or was their park 11th in the league last year in home runs (with howard utley and burrell). Espn ranked it statistically the 18th easiest or something this year (I looked at the other day and can’t find it now)…again this is with howard and ibanez. Howard currently has 6 HRs at home and 10 on the road. Ibanez: 8 home, 11 away. Utley: 8 home 4 away. burrell’s 2008: 12 home, 21 away.
3 Walks and a Win for the Royals!
Nice job as always Joe. A walk is never an out is exactly the simple little statement that nobody ever seems to get. Teams that walk alot, I would suspect see lots of 2-0 and 3-1 hitters counts, get lots of baserunners, score more, and win more. Seems logical. No clue why the Royals can’t figure that out.
Now as for Joe Morgan’s thought that a walk is sometimes better than a hit, well that one I don’t get. A walk is not an out, but it ain’t a hit either. A walk itself never goes for extra bases, a walk itself never allows other base runners to take an extra base and a walk itself puts no pressure on the defense to field the ball cleanly and throw the ball back to the right base in the infield. (Could be overstating that last point, but as a Royals fan I’ve been conditioned not to take throwing the ball to the right base for granted.
A walk gives you a base runner and a chance to do some things offensively. And that makes it very valuable.
Shelby at #13. Wow! Get overself already.
Dear Mr. Posnanski,
Is this a discrepancy out of your comparison between the 2008 Rays and the same-year Royals?:
3 walks: 16-10 Royals
3 walks: 16-16 Rays
Up until 3 walks, and so after 2 walks, the trend seems to favor the walking team. But for some strange reason, the Rays is barely 500 with 3 walks, while the Royals has a much better record.
Maybe it’s small sample size, or maybe it’s just how the Kansas lineup is built (experts in generating BABIP, and more focused with less “walk opportunities”), but I don’t know.
When you mentioned what GM Moore needs, I was thinking Jayson Werth. He shows great plate discipline, being the leader of MOST PITCHES per appearance, really working the opposing pitcher. But is still vastly UNDERRATED, even after his three-plus-one steal from first to home earlier last month.
Great point Joe, and yet I think it *still* undersells the value of the walk. Getting walks is obviously not a zero-sum exercise, in that just because your team gets a lot of walks doesn’t mean your opponent doesn’t also (so that some of those losses despite high walk games may be because the other team out-walked you).
So it might be valuable to run a similar exercise but showing the Winning% based on the difference in walks between the two teams. I would bet, for instance, that the Winning % for a team that gets 5 walks *more* than the opponent will be higher than for a team that simply gets 5 walks.
Great post, joe – and as always, a great site.
Only thing I have to add is that the precursor to a walk (can be) working the count. This presumably persuades the pitcher to throw strikes, which by definition are the ones you can hit.
Far beyond my capabilities, and I know it would have a lot of caveats, but it would also be interesting to compare pitches per at-bat to wins. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a similar correlation.
Joe
Interesting post but I do have to take exception with it a little bit. You don’t want hitters going up trying to walk. You want hitters going up there refusing to swing at pitches they can’t drive until they have two strikes on them. The end result of this approach is often a walk but having an approach where you are thinking about walking is simply not an approach good hitters take.
Excellently clear analysis, thank you. The Royals probably aren’t trying to “make him throw strikes” enough, or maybe they can’t, but. . . .
A small factor may be the opposing pitching coach, who says, “These guys can’t beat you if you don’t beat yourself. Just throw it down the middle.”
[...] you’re not on base. Yes, it’s that simple. In Joe Posnanski’s recent blog entry Walk the Walk, he sums up exactly what I wish the Red Wings hitting coach would drill into his batters [...]
Rich (#9): To be fair, Teixeira was on a big hot streak (outhitting Alex) and I assume they wanted to set up a double play. I can see the reasoning, even if I think the reasoning is poor and that it’s a bad move to make.
In coaching youth baseball, I have always advocated the walk because, well, it is not an out. I am jealous of my outs, and don’t want to give one away. I do not endorse my guys going up to the plate looking for a walk, but try to teach them to be disciplined, and to take good cuts only on pitches that they can drive.
I had no idea, though, that a team walking between one a four times per game has nearly twice the odds of winning the game. That is one startling statistic that every coach should know by heart.
If I recall correctly the only game the Royals won in St. Louis was partially the result of intentionally walking Albert Pujols in the 9th, with two outs and, I believe, a runner at second.
Now there is at least two ways of looking at this. One, it was the correct, albeit conservative thing to do, given Albert’s ability, the game situation, and the fact we got the next batter out and won the game.
But, in some ways the walk proved Joe P.’s ultimate point in this argument. The walk deprived everyone involved, both teams, a sold out crowd, and the viewers in KC, of a potentially very dramatic and memorable finish to a great game. And who knows, if the Royals had gotten Albert out it might have given them more confidence in these types of situations, maybe helped them handle their current problems in the late innings a little better.
The beauty of baseball presented that batter at that moment.
And it was wasted because of the existence of the intentional walk.
[...] Posnanksi just posted an interesting breakdown of the value of walks- teams with 7+ walks have posted a .715 winning percentage in the last 5 [...]
What we need to see isn’t so much how many walks cause you ti win games, but your walks versus the opponents. If one team walks once, and the other walks 3 times, who ends up winning? How much difference does one extra base runer via the walk make against your opponents? Someone look this up. Just not me.
One thing that struck me when I was at the Rays/Royals game recently was that Guillen and Jacobs seemed to be walking more this year than I thought they usually did.
In fact, Guillen has walked 17 times in 171 PAs, nearly 10% of the time which is really not bad. (OBP=.351.) Prior to this year he walked in only 4.8% of his plate appearances.
The Jacobs case is not so stark, but there too with 18 BBs in 195 PAs he is walking in about 9% of his times to the plate as opposed to his pre-2009 frequency of 7.6%.
I do not know whether, as with Crisp, these figures represent an early surge followed by a return to their norms. Nor do I know whether they represent an effort to implement the supposed intentions of the coaches to teach patience or that these are the two most established power hitters in the lineup so pitchers are unwilling to give in to them.
I DO believe that the Royals are trying to go deep into counts and draw walks-but as you said, in a different way, a leopard does not change his spots. When you ask a bunch of hackers to be patient, you have an entire team going against their nature and uncomfortable.
The result of the attempted change is that the Royals walk up to the plate in an anti aggressive manner. They are not looking to hit the ball at all on the first pitch, and at this point other teams and pitchers know it. Joe, you yourself said in an EXCELLENT statistical breakdown that hitters have a good OPS on the 1st pitch, but if they go 0-1 it is much worse(I would reference the piece but I cannot remember what it was called) Even the Royal’s aggressive hitters seem to be passive at the beginning of an at bat- and opposing team’s pitcher’s are aggressive.
Then, being the natural born hackers that they are, when the pressure mounts, they revert to their nature, but are already behind in the count, so the pitcher expands the zone and they swing- at pitchers pitches. I do not have the computer skills or time to do this, but I would bet that the Royals face a higher percentage of “pitchers counts” than any other team, (especially during the slump-when scouting caught up to them) When you take mundane to marginal hitters, and put them at a disadvantage, you have to expect them not to hit.
Dayton Moore did one good thing by bringing in Seitzer: He took the first step to change a decades old Royals “walks are bad” philosophy. (Yes even the old good teams-who were good enough to overcome it.) Now Seitzer needs to bring some aggression into the mix. Swing at the first pitch down the middle! Dayton needs to get Seitzer (and the manager) guys who walk and field well. These are the cheapest, most available skill sets for a small market team.
More on the subject of intentionally taking pitches early in the count, rather than outright looking to draw a walk (though he does draw plenty), I found these stats from a May 18th SI feature about Joe Mauer to be amazing:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/joe_lemire/05/18/mauer.morneau/index.html
“Mauer has seen 4.31 pitches per plate appearance this season and has swung at the first pitch only twice in the 68 times he’s dug into the batter’s box. That’s a taking rate of 97.1 percent, easily the highest among all players with at least 15 plate appearances. Heck, Mauer doesn’t swing at the next offering much either, having taken cuts on only 12 of 67 second pitches.”
Of course, when you have the talent of Mauer, a hitter can afford to stand there like a statue for the first few pitches, knowing that he can make contact with pretty much anything in or around the strike zone on subsequent offerings, even if the count is in the pitcher’s favor.
#7 and #14. I disagree. Pitchers being “afraid” of hitters sometimes has a little to do with walks (Barry Bonds extremely high number of walks had something to do with the refusal to pitch to him), but you can be a hitter who no one is afraid of and still walk a ton, if you want to be.
I give you Max Bishop, 2nd baseman and leadoff hitter for the Philadelphia A’s 3 straight pennante winning teams from 1929-1931. Maxie was small (165 pounds), had no power (41 HRs in 12 ML seasons) and pitchers certainly didn’t want him on base with Cochrane, Simmons, Foxx and Haas coming up.
Here is his line from 1929: 1929 29 PHA AL 129 616 475 102 110 19 6 3 36 1 4 128 44 .232 .398 .316 .713
To interpret. He hit .232, but scored 102 runs because he walked 128 times. He only had 28 extra base hits, so I doubt the opposition was shaking in its boots when he came up. (BTW, that was a bad year for him, his lifetime OBP was .423)
Excellent article Joe.
I think the basic problems with walks is that for years walks were seen as “something that just happens” or “a Pitcher making a mistake” rather than an important and positive offensive action.
It still amazes me that with all of the attention walks and on base percentage got from the “Moneyball” book people still don’t credit players enough for taking walks.
Take a look at a list of underrated players in baseball history and I guarantee that most of them had decent to great walk totals.
I think the biggest problem with baseball people and fans accepting walks is that it is seen as a passive event rather than an aggressive one. As if aggresive behavior is the best play under any circumstance during any moment of a game.
It seems like players are constantly encouraged to “be aggresive” even if that aggresive behavior results in a caught stealing or a strike-out or an out running the bases. I hear it all the time during broadcasts, “Well he made an out at third base during a tie game, but it was an aggresive out” “Well he was caught stealing, but it was an aggresive out” “Well he struck out with the bases loaded but it was an aggresive swing.”
As far as John Kruk goes, it’s bizarre that a man with a .397 lifetime on base percetage would criticize “walks”??
It’s hard to remember what a good player John Kruk was because he’s such a goofy guy on ESPN. I mean this is a guy with a lifetime line of .300/.397/.446 and remember he was stuck in Jack Murphy stadium during the late 80’s. His lifetime ops+ is 133.
Again it’s strange that a guy who built his career around walks and on base-percentage would make that statement.
I think this article has plenty of merit, but it’s worth recognizing that there’s some sample bias in the winning percentages by walk. Very good pitchers tend to have low walk totals, while lesser pitchers tend to have higher walk totals. This of course contributes to them being very good or very bad pitchers, but the point is, if you look at games where teams have low walk totals, you’re going to see a higher proportion of games where they face elite pitchers, whereas if you look at games where teams have high walk totals, you’ll see a higher proportion of weaker pitchers. This is directly going to contribute to the winning percentage differences. I think if you could somehow control for pitcher quality, you’d see similar results, but let’s not assume that this is 100% a function of the offense.
I think Joe is really on to something here.
I was watching the Mets-Phillies game on Tuesday. Both teams had 10 hits and the Phillies out-homered the Mets 4-3. But the Mets won 6-5.
Basically it came down to the walks. The Mets’ pitchers only gave up 1 walk and the Phillies’pitchers gave up 5.
[...] then you can’t score. Yes, it’s that simple. In Joe Posnanski’s recent blog entry Walk the Walk, he says exactly what I wish the Red Wings batting coach would drill into his hitters heads— [...]