Sunday, November 27, 2005

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 13th 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 (22nd), Dmitri Young (29th) and Rondell White (50th).


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

2 comments:

  1. Ordonez at the bottom of that list should set off alarm bells...

    ReplyDelete
  2. When I compared him to other right fielders, he looked even worse. I'll try to post the positional comparisons tonight. Hopefully he'll be stronger and healthier next year and get some of his power back. It's definitely a concern though.

    ReplyDelete

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