A CITIZEN'S BLOG

In Moneyball Michael Lewis illustrated the differences between the 2002 Oakland A’s and the Minnesota Twins, two small-market teams that managed to make the playoffs by noting that the A’s had a more efficient offense because they bunted fewer times and had fewer base-stealers caught. (see, page 271 of Moneyball). Thus, Lewis stated, the A’s played offense better than the Twins, a team that followed the “create runs”, “small ball” philosophy (or followed it more than the A’s) that drives Moneyballers up a wall.

Small ball is all about moving the runner over, scrapping for runs. Gambling, getting aggressive on the base-paths … this is what small ball is all about. Moneyballers tend to stay on base and play the odds. The average team with a runner on first and none out will score 0.926 runs an inning, a Moneyballer will tell you. A team with nobody on and one out will score 0.287 …

I was curious about how the Phillies rank in terms of Moneyball & Small ball. First, I decided to see how often the Phillies bunted. ESPN.com has a category for “sacrifice hits” (unhelpfully undefined – I initially thought “sacrifice hits” included “sacrifice flies” until I saw that a team (I forget which) had more sac flies than sac hits.

Here is the formula I used:

(Sacrifice Hits / Plate Appearances) * 1,000 = Sac Hits per 1,000 Plate Appearances

1. Washington: 15.370
2. San Francisco: 14.276
3. Florida: 13.889
4. Colorado: 13.635
5. Atlanta: 12.797
6. Houston: 12.727
7. Chicago: 11.593
8. Arizona: 11.231
9. Milwaukee: 11.021
10. St. Louis: 10.989
11. New York Mets: 10.834
12. Los Angeles: 10.566
13. San Diego: 10.316
14. Philadelphia: 9.835
15. Pittsburgh: 8.376
16. Cincinnati: 6.623

The numbers didn’t yield any real surprises. For one, it didn’t surprise me to see the Nats are the prime small balling team in the NL: they play in a pitchers paradise and scrap for runs all of the time. Teams like the Marlins and Braves strike me as small ballers: teams that run conservative, vanilla outfits with conservative, vanilla strategies.

That the Phillies and Reds were so adverse to small ball-ism wasn’t much of a surprise.

What did catch me by surprise was the Rockies – what are they doing playing conservatively in the biggest hitters park in baseball? I was also surprised to see the Padres ranked so low: they play in an extreme pitchers park.

The team that most surprised me were the Cards. Tony LaRussa is, famously, a small-ball strategist fond of taking calculated risks and trying to advance runners. If any team would be a bunting team, it would be the Cards, right?

I moved on to a more complicated subject …

Base-stealing. Here is the formula I used: ((SB + CS) / (H – HR) + BB ) * 1,000 = Attempted Stolen Bases per 1,000 baserunners. Basically, I took hits and bases on balls, divided by steals and multiplied by 1,000. I subtracted home runs from the hits category for obvious reasons and briefly considered deleting the triples, but opted not to because the numbers are so negligible and it is possible to steal home.

Here is what I got:

1. New York: 105.178
2. Houston: 96.154
3. San Diego: 75.358
4. Philadelphia: 73.801
5. Florida: 70.310
6. Milwaukee: 66.986
7. Atlanta: 63.931
8. St. Louis: 61.879
9. San Francisco: 61.044
10. Chicago: 60.460
11. Colorado: 57.165
12. Pittsburgh: 55.377
13. Cincinnati: 53.001
14. Los Angeles: 51.345
15. Washington: 51.029
16. Arizona: 47.005

I actually found the numbers less surprising here: the Phillies run a lot because they have two terrific base-stealers, Bobby Abreu (24 steals, 31 attempts) and Jimmy Rollins (26 steals, 31 attempts). The Phillies succeed 78% of the time, so it is a strategy that works for them. The Mets run because they succeed 80% of the time. The Nats don’t because they succeed 50% of the time.

Again a surprise is the Cards. I expected many more steals from them, but they are about average, probably a function of their 67% success rate.

I think what is interesting is that only one team looks like a tried-and-true small ball team in the NL: the Fishstripes (aka, the Marlins). They bunt, they steal, they don’t hit for power … this is the NL’s small ball team.

Conclusions: it is difficult to discern a pattern to team’s strategies from numbers at times (beyond the obvious, e.g, the Rockies rely on the home run), but I think you get an idea about how teams approach the game.