The Hardball Times:Putting pressure on the defense

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The Hardball Times:Putting pressure on the defense
The Hardball Times The Hardball Times found this 5/5/2008 on www.hardballtimes.com [flag]
Using the Three True Outcomes, a look at five players who specialized in making the defense work. [link]

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Comments (8)

  • earthdyedred earthdyedred
    +1
    Great stuff.  Does the list of players change if you reduce the outcomes to just walks and strikeouts?  It seems from the list of slap-happy punchers that setting the list to a minimum of home runs (10?  15?) would be equally as revealing about a different type of hitter...but maybe not.
    Posted 5/5/2008 [reply] [flag]
    • C Brown C Brown
      +1
      Interesting thoughts... I'll have to run the numbers again and look at overall contact. Maybe there's another article in this... :)
      Posted 5/5/2008 [reply] [flag]
  • kanka kanka
    +1
    I'm surprised to see Duane Kuiper (famous for hitting one career home run) and Placido Polanco (notorious for always putting the ball in play) not on the list.  But a quick look at the numbers shows that they're both around 14% for their career.
    Posted 5/5/2008 [reply] [flag]
  • jmac66 jmac66
    +1

    I'll plagiarize from myself over on primer:

    had you pushed back his analysis by 2 years, you would have picked up 2 guys who beat Alou: Don Mueller at 6.5% and Harvey Kuenn at 6.75%, both in 1954

    this type of player seems to have disappeared from MLB: if you look for seasons with a "three-true-outcome" percentage of less than 10% (while qualifiying for the batting title), there have been none since 1997 when both DiSarcina and Ozzie Guillen did it (Ozzie also had a 7.8% season in 96)

    Posted 5/5/2008 [reply] [flag]
  • jmac66 jmac66
    +1

    and to continue the thought of "tto evolution" in baseball, while the super-low tto players have disappeared, the number of super-high tto players has exploded


    if you look at all seasons where a player had a tto of >45%, (while qualifiying for the batting title) you find:

    1950s--0

    1960s--3

    1970s--1

    1980s--7

    1990s--14

    2000s--24 (so far) 

    Posted 5/5/2008 [reply] [flag]
    • C Brown C Brown
      +1

      Jmac- That's great info. I closed off my data at '56 because that just seemed like a natural spot since we have most of the game logs beginning with that season. And I wanted coverage just in case I had to go back and find something from a log at Retrosheet.

      Conversely, here's the number of players who had <10% by decade:

      1960s- 19

      1970s- 31

      1980s- 6

      1990s- 5

      2000s- 3 (which included Polanco in '06 per Kanka's comment)

      Kind of interesting.

      Posted 5/5/2008 [reply] [flag]
  • ger8ry ger8ry
    +1

    To get the NTO (No True Outcomes) champions, you have to go back, way before the Retrosheet era. I commend to you the career of Stuffy McInnis. I can't do html (until recently, I thought it was an abbreviation for hate mail) so I don't know what this table is going to look like, but here goes:

    Year HR BB SO PA TTO%

    1915 0 14 17 483 6.42

    1918 0 19 10 476 6.09

    1921 0 21 9 644 4.66

    1922 1 15 5 580 3.62

    1924 1 15 6 611 3.60

    Posted 5/7/2008 [reply] [flag]
    • C Brown C Brown
      +1
      Good ole Stuffy... A 3.6% is extremely impressive. I'm thinking I'll continue to play with this for a little bit and jump further back in history. Maybe the next article will be from '01 - '53.
      Posted 5/7/2008 [reply] [flag]

Links (1)

THT: Brown: Putting pressure on the defense
Published 5/5/2008 at BBTF's Baseball Primer Newsblog
THT: Brown: Putting pressure on the defense “Using the Three True Outcomes, a look at five players who specialized in making the defense work”...or why my Bobby Richardson “Challenge the Yankees” card had more rips in it than a Richard Hell pus-enhanced t-shirt. He finds himself here because for the 1963 season, he cut his walk to 3.6 percent and strikeout rate to 3.5 percent, but remained in line with his average output as a hitter. Over his 12 year career, Richardson hit .266/.299/.335 with 34 home runs. While Richardson was a revered member of those World Champion Yankee ...

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