Friday, November 16, 2007

Batting Average Dependent Tigers

Earlier in the week, I discussed team run production using batting average (BA), isolated power (ISO) and extra on base percentage (EOBP). Today, I’ll look at the individual Tiger hitters. Table1 below presents these statistics for Tiger players in 2007. Table 2 table shows how the Tigers ranked in each category among 133 American League players with 300 or more plate appearances (PA) plus recently acquired Edgar Renteria and Jacque Jones.

We can see from the tables that Magglio Ordonez was not only the best hitter on the team in 2007 but also the most well rounded. He was the only player on the team to finish in the top third in the league all 3 categories (1st in BA in BA, 37th in EOBP and 11th in ISO).

My rule of thumb is that a player should rank above average in 2 of the 3 categories to be considered a really solid hitter. Several Tiger regulars did reasonably well in only one category while falling below average in the other two categories in 2007. The one trick ponies included Ivan Rodriguez (61st in BA), Brandon Inge (56th in EOBP), Sean Casey (32nd in BA) and new Tiger Jacque Jones (58th in BA). Not surprisingly, none of these players finished in the top half of the league in runs created per game (RC/G).

Two players who were productive hitters without meeting the rule of thumb were Placido Polanco (3rd in BA) and Edgar Renteria (5th in BA if placed in the AL). Both finished in the top 20 in RC/G primarily because of very high batting averages. They were among only 7 major league players who finished in the top third in the league in RC/G despite despite finishing below average in the EOBP and ISO. All batted .315 or higher. No player in the majors who excelled in only EOBP or only ISO had a very productive season.

Dependency on batting average is not particularly desirable because batting average is by far the least repeatable of the three statistics. It will be difficult for Polanco and Renteria to repeat their career high batting averages of 2007 in 2008. Jones is not usually as dependent on batting average as he was last year. He usually hits for more power and will need to get it back if he's going to be more productive than 4.3 RC/G. And then Pudge needs to walk more but that's an old story.


Table 1: Detroit Tigers Run Production in 2007


Player

PA

BA

EOBP

ISO

RC/G

Ordonez

679

.363

.115

.232

9.47

Granderson

676

.302

.084

.250

7.78

Polanco

641

.341

.075

.118

6.98

Renteria

543

.332

.087

.138

6.82

Sheffield

593

.265

.157

.196

6.54

Guillen

630

.296

.092

.206

6.23

Raburn

148

.304

.054

.203

5.65

Casey

496

.296

.083

.097

5.11

Thames

284

.242

.049

.257

4.67

Jones

495

.285

.073

.115

4.32

Inge

577

.236

.101

.140

4.12

Rodriguez

515

.281

.019

.139

4.02

Infante

178

.271

.051

.084

3.77

Rabelo

185

.256

.059

.101

3.53

Monroe

372

.222

.059

.152

2.90



Table 2: Detroit Tigers Run Production Ranks in 2007

Player

BA Rank

EOBP Rank

ISO Rank

RC/G Rank

Ordonez

1

37

11

3

Granderson

22

83

6

7

Polanco

3

101

103

13

Renteria

5

78

86

16

Sheffield

85

10

33

19

Guillen

30

67

24

31

Casey

32

85

118

72

Jones

58

103

107

103

Inge

122

56

83

108

Rodriguez

61

135

84

111

Monroe

133

119

72

133

1 comment:

  1. Good stuff, I have to check this out more than I do.

    ReplyDelete

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