Most Powerful Tigers

Who are the best sluggers in the American League? On the Detroit Tigers? The statistic "homeruns" (or even at bats per homerun) is limited because it does not take doubles and triples into account. Slugging average (SLG) adds doubles and triples into the equation but also includes singles. Another statistic, isolated power (ISO), was developed by Branch Rickey and Allan Roth (perhaps the first sabermetrician) in the 1950s. It was re-introduced by Bill James in the 1980s in his Baseball Abstracts.

ISO describes a hitter’s ability to get extra base hits by separating doubles, triples and homeruns from singles. It is calculated by subtracting batting average (BA) from slugging average and is a purer measure of slugging ability than slugging average. Note that isolated power is not a good measure of overall batting performance. It doesn’t say anything about how often a batter makes contact or how often he gets on base. It just measures one aspect of hitting – power.

The table below shows how the Tiger players ranked among American League hitters in isolated power. All players with at least 295 at bats are included. I used 295 as a cut off because I wanted Carlos Pena to be on the list.

Rnk	Player	BA	SLG	ISO
13	Pena	.235	.477	.242
22	Shelton	.299	.510	.211
29	Young	.271	.471	.200
50	White	.313	.489	.176
54	Monroe	.277	.446	.169
61	Rodriguez	.276	.444	.168
72	Inge	.261	.419	.158
85	Infante	.222	.367	.145
97	Ordonez	.302	.436	.134
104	Polanco	.338	.461	.123
111	Guillen	.320	.434	.114
128	Logan	.258	.335	.077

The table shows that the Tiger who slugged the most this year was Carlos Pena. Pena ranked 13^th amongst American League hitters. Of course, most of that slugging occurred in the last two months of the year. Other Tigers in the top 50 were Chris Shelton (22^nd), Dmitri Young (29^th) and Rondell White (50^th).

Later in the week, I will take a position by position look at ISO in the American League.