Batting for Wins (Part II)

This is a part II to a piece I did at the All-Star break when the Jays were also in the HR lead and still trailing in the divisional standings, it can be be found here.

We've finally made it. Another long and grueling baseball season has come and gone. We have seen a division lead dwindle down to nothing (but hey wasn't it awesome to see those sweet military Padre unis everyday?). A promising triple crown race evaporated before our eyes. And of course, we got to see another mediocre finish by Toronto Blue Jays. At least we've been able to witness an outstanding playoffs which will feature two great franchises in the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers. But enough about them let's talk about up north.

Unlike previous seasons where the month of September was merely trying to find any excuse to watch an NHL preseason. There was just as much reason to watch the Blue Jays finish out their once promising season. That reason of course, was the long ball. 15 years ago, the long ball was considered the reason why the MLB was a success again in the eyes of spectators. To only to be told 10 years after, that maybe our eyes should have been on doctors prescriptions and "vitamin" labels. This 2010 version of the Blue Jay long ball has been thoroughly examined by the Canadian sports media and has been heralded as something spectacular (and void of any major steroid accusations).  The problem as illustrated in my column at the all-star break explained that amidst the resurgence of the long ball very little was happening with the Jays in terms of winning performance.

 Jays Third Baseman Jose Bautista ended the season with 54 HRs to lead the Majors.

(Picture courtesy of bronxbombersbeat.com)

While I'd love to break down most of these stats for you, I suggest you look back to my previous post or pop up a new tab to look at some of these final Jays' tallies at year's end. For the sake of comparison, I'll be using the AL representative to this year's edition of the World Series, Texas Rangers to see how the Jays truly fared.

Let's look at those home runs. After all 162 games had finished Toronto stood on top of the AL in HRs with a whopping 257. Boston coming in a distant 2nd at 211. How about those Texas Rangers who are still playing well into October/November? They managed to just barely clear the league average of 158 by hitting 162. That equates to 95 less homers than the Blue Jays.

Assumptions

Do you hear that? No, it's not the sound of snow beginning to fall throughout Canada. It's actually the adoring Blue Jay fans who feel the only reason our bats didn't equate to the same success that the Rangers are experiencing is because of the deadly AL east competition. The fat stacks of money the Red Sox($148 million). At least we lead in Home Runs. And how about those pesky (Devil) Rays? Well it's fair to say all those years of being bottom dwellers has turned out to be a blessing of disguise. Case in point, David Price their 1st pick in the 2007 draft racked up 19 wins while collecting a meager 1.8 million. That can clearly be best described as efficient use of prospects. I guess I'll never truly be able to shake the argument about the AL east competition being so dreadful. That debating something internal maybe amiss is meaningless and without any real merit. Fair enough, but I'll leave you with one last tidbit for those Blue Jay sympathizers who believe it's only about the dollar bills you hand to the players will get wins. The Rangers have spent $54 million on their batters this season in payroll, while the Blue Jays spent $59 million. So in comparison, while not a huge difference there can be something said about money can't always buy you happiness.

The other two assumptions that I suppose should be addressed is the teams respective fielding and pitching. In terms of fielding, Texas and Toronto shared very similar percentages. In DefEff, Toronto(.687) and Texas (.701). In Fielding Percentage it's even closer at Toronto (.985) and Texas (.982). Upon further evaluation the range between all of the AL teams in fielding percentage is .008. Remind me to not use that stat next year..

The comparison between the two teams in pitching is up for debate as the ERAs for the respective team differs by about .30 points so roughly 1/3 of a run per game. However considering the 95 HR difference between the two clubs I consider the ERA differential a non-factor.

With Salaries and discussions about the Blue Jays clipped wings in the AL East set aside, returning  back to those batting stats once again will showcase some more interesting tidbits when compared to those lucky Rangers. Examining the same 3 stats that I examined in my last post might help out. Those categories being BA(Batting Average), OBP (On-Base Percentage),  and RBIs(Runs Batted In)

Geeky Baseball Math(but not too geeky)

In BA, Texas ended up leading the AL altogether with (.276), while Toronto ended below the league average of (.260), instead the Jays shared the same BA as the Angels, and Indians with (.248). "Aaron, you're making the same mistakes from your last post about the Jays, I'm starting to think you don't even like the Jays." True to the first part, and definitely not true to the second. Again as we all know BA is a terrible indicator of how well a teams batting is doing. This is made very clear considering that below the Jays in BA was the AL East Division winners, the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays (.247). Clearly, BA is flawed and so is my post right? Maybe but, let's now jump to .OBP.

While I have already suggested throwing BA considering the division leaders were worse than the Jays in that category. I do find a restoration of sanity when I jump to the OBP stats and find out the Rays bettered the Jays in this category by about 20 points: TBR (.333) and TOR (.316). Back to comparing the Jays to the Rangers though, again the November bound Rangers posted a (.338). So combined with their semi-impressive BA, they were able to couple it with an ability to get on base without smacking the ball.

Ok, so what the Rangers were able to get on base a mere 22 points more than the Jays that means nothing. We'll look at one more stat I used in my last post. That is RBIs, here the Rangers and Blue Jays shared extremely similar numbers TEX (740) and TOR (732). Considering the range between the AL clubs in terms of team RBIs is almost 350, the fact you have two clubs only 8 RBIs away from each other is downright spooky. Even more spooky is the fact one of those clubs is playing today...

What do 8 more RBIs really mean though? Well you could say not alot, and I may even agree with you. However I've been up way too late scouring these stat tables to simply agree with you. So hear me out, the Blue Jays this season lost 24 games by a single run. Imagine 8 more RBIs sprinkled throughout each of those games, if not more. Those games would then go to extra innings or something crazy along those lines. At that point, the chances of winning those 24 games they had previously lost by 1 run are greatly diminished. Even if they can only manage 50% (close to their actual winning percentage of .525) they win, 12 more games. Now go check how many games the Blue Jays were off the divisional lead at the end of the season. 11.

Far fetched? Probably but interesting nonetheless considering I can't fathom seeing another Sportsnet Jays commercial showing me nothing but home runs. The other thing is you have to be in the position to hit RBIs, and for the Jays for the most part were in good position to be knocked in for some RBIs considering they were 2nd in the league in doubles. How else can you get to 2nd base? Clearly this question wasn't asked enough as the Jays found themselves in last place when it came to Stolen Bases (SB). Out of the 78 attempts during the 162 game season, the Jays were only able to steal 58 bases as a team. The league leaders were not surprisingly the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays (172) and those pesky Texans put up (123). With the league average hovering at (108), Toronto clearly wanted to distance themselves more than they already are.

Now imagine, if the Jays were able to put themselves in a position to be in scoring position at least 8 more times to possibly be batted in. Thus increasing the amount of times you attempt to steal. Maintaining the same Stolen Base Percentage (SB/SB+Caught Stealing, 58/58+20=74% ), the Jays would have to attempt 10 more steals. Considering the Jays the Jays may not score with every opportunity in that instance, you have to factor the Jays ability to score with runners in scoring position and the Jays managed about the league average of 15%. So for every 10 steals, only about 1-2 runs would come of it. So to be more precise, the Jays would have to attempt more in the likes of 50 more steals to try to claim those pesky 8 RBIs. In further evaluation that help bring the Jays SB record to about the league average.

Conclusion

To sum up, the math and logic that I have provided can only be considered amateur at best. Trying to illustrate the difference between the Rangers and Jays really wasn't that big, aside from the fact that the Blue Jays would prefer to hit ball out of the park. Though at the very least I can point out two main questions of Blue Jays batting which I am at least puzzled by

1. Why go for the long ball when it obviously didn't help in terms of winning games?

2. Why not pursue a more situational based strategy to hitting the ball?

Question 1, is fairly supported by the Jays record for the season which ended up being again only 4th in the AL East. Question 2, looks at the stats of the more successful teams that ended up having a playoff run and begs the question to the effect of why can't the Jays adapt it.

The next logical step is to pursue which areas of the organization were responsible for an adaption to the philosophy of "home runs, home runs and more home runs". I really didn't want to write this article during farewell to Cito took hold of Canadian sports during the last week of the season but the truth is during the last 2 years and prior to his managerial post, Cito has had a very large influence on batters in the organization. Not to say I'm happy Cito is gone. He'll always be my favourite Toronto manager but for the Jays of now to properly position themselves as contenders in the AL east it will require playing baseball with a much broader scope in terms of strategy of situations. It'll be an interesting off-season ahead as the Jays prepare their next moves on what can be considered a positive season and building on that success and striving for higher goals.

SOTD - Runaway by Kanye feat. Pusha T, off his upcoming album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

            - If you have the time please check out his 34 min long-form video for the single, it's doing the round on your online media service of choice.