MLB: 2013 Postseason

Normally, I would agree, but this is a guy that only played 63 games in the minors before being called up. In Cuba, he probably never even saw a major league game since they hadn’t broadcast one for four decades. His bad habits have been far more ingrained into him than if he had spent a couple of years working his way up in the minors and I don’t think they are going to be quite so easy to break.

Put this way, you can drill into his head every day that he needs to hit the cutoff man, but until that becomes second nature to him due to sheer repetition, more often than not, he will continue to revert back to his old ways during the heat of the moment when there is no time to think about it.

As it stands, he is a very exciting and talented player, but one that his team cannot count on to play smart. And, as we saw this year, that can cause a lot of friction in the clubhouse.

And yet he still ended the year with an OBP in the .380s (from memory posting from my phone). That’s not exactly terrible.

But there are people who have been in the majors for years and years who can’t hit the cutoff man or who make mistakes in throwing the ball in. This is nothing new. If Matt Holliday (I’m just picking a random dude) missed the cutoff man, no one would say, “Gosh, that must be because of the American style of baseball.”

I take it back, it was a .391 OBP. That’s pretty darn good for a guy who strikes out.

Oh, I agree. It’s not terrible, and it could improve.

I would absolutely play Puig over Crawford, but then I’d play a lot of people over Crawford. Crawford is a just-okay player with no further upside.

And drove in 100 runs or more four times, same as Gus Bell.

Sorry, I just find that to be an amazing stat, and not in a good way.*

*Gil Hodges drove in 100 or more runs seven times.

That just shows how bad a measure of baseball prowess RBIs are. If you hit .250 with no power, you can still drive in a bunch of runs if there are guys on base nearly every time you come to the plate.

In 1997, Joe Carter drove in 102 runs with a line of .234/.284/.399.

In 1990, he drove in 115 with a line of .232/.290./391. That’s what happens when Robby Alomar and Tony Gwynn are hitting in front of you.

So, what do you think? Send him down to Albuquerque for a couple months in 2014, or will there be enough of a skill gap that it won’t do any good?

Strangely enough given how good those teams were, they didn’t have many good top-of-the-order hitters.

In the 1956 World Series, the Yankees leadoff hitter in six of seven games was Hank Bauer. Why Bauer, a 33-year-old slugger with no speed and a .316 OBP, was leading off, God alone can say.

Casey Stengel was not much for ensuring Mantle had men to drive in.

While it’s true that complete broadcasts of MLB games are hard to come by (some fragments get through), Cubans do see non-Cuban baseball, including disciplined team play in Japan and Korea, Mexican AAA and Caribbean winter leagues (which include some MLB players), and the Cuban national team playing against MLB stars in the World Baseball Classics.

Yeah, but you have to remember that it’s also the land of thought crime. The story I heard (who knows how true it is) was that Puig was banned from Cuban baseball because they *thought *he was thinking about defecting. A reason given for why they might think this was that he could have been caught trying to watch non Cuban baseball.

His ban caused him to actually defect, but that’s neither here nor there. He likely didn’t have a chance to see much.

Also, if you send an MLB hitter who is hitting 318 and on pace for 30 homers to Albuquerque, he is just going to hit 600 with 70 homers. It’s that much of a launching pad. Almost as bad as Vegas.

Hey, I spent years watching games in the old stadium in Albuquerque. I know how the ball can travel. That’s why I was wondering if there was any way for Puig to learn without being on the Dodgers roster.

The Dodgers aren’t going to send Puig to the minors. There’s just no way they’ll be a better team that way. And even though I don’t see the Dodgers that much, I hate that he’s become a lightning rod for criticism already. He’s very good and he’s fun to watch, so naturally sports columnists and trolls put out a new pieces every 12 hours that says he needs to stop looking like he’s having fun because we all know baseball would be way better if all the players were Mark Teixeira. At least the criticisms of him missing the cutoff guy, for example, are legitimate- but those things are fixable.

It’s difficult to make the argument that the Yankees had such crummy hitters during Mantle’s career that there weren’t many runners on base for him to drive in.

Joe Carter is an interesting example to cite (with his ten years of 100 or more RBIs). In 1986 with the Indians, for example, he was on a team with a bunch of good hitters (or at least hitters having exceptional years). Yet none of them had more than 80 RBIs. Carter had 121.

Maybe Joe was really good at hitting in clutch situations.

*he did however strike out a lot, though not as much as Mantle.

Well, we can test this hypothesis pretty easily, with the right numbers.

In 1986 Joe Carter had 475 baserunners on when he batted. The next highest Indian (Julio Franco) had 394. 20% of Joe Carters baserunners scored (18% of Franco’s did). Mel Hall on that same team also had 20% of his 311 baserunners score. We could also note that Carter got a more plate appearances that anybody on that team (~30 more than Butler, and over 60 more than anybody else). So opportunity does have a lot to do with it.

I never made that argument, and i’m not sure that RickJay was arguing that either. He did note that they didn’t always have good top-of-the-order hitters.

But the numbers of runners on base Mantle had isn’t something we need to guess about. We can actually find the numbers. Here’s a list of the number of RBIs and men on base Mickey Mantle had over the course of his career, alongside a list of RBIs and the average number of men on base a typical player, with the same number of plate appearances, would have had:



Year	MM-RBI		MM-RoB		AVG-RBI		AVG-RoB

1951	65		240		42		251
1952	87		364		63		395
1953	92		350		60		348
1954	102		419		69		418
1955	99		406		69		407
1956	130		398		70		412
1957	94		397		65		384
1958	97		414		69		402
1959	75		368		68		396
1960	94		384		67		398
1961	128		398		71		403
1962	89		349		54		311
1963	35		133		20		125
1964	111		384		56		338
1965	46		237		42		256
1966	56		236		38		229
1967	55		332		51		323
1968	54		300		46		314

Total	1509		6109		1020		6110


All figures taken from Baseball Reference’s Mickey Mantle game log pages.

It’s actually quite amazing. Over an 18-year career, Mantle had almost exactly the same number of men on base as a typical major leaguer with the same number of plate appearances would have had - 6109 versus 6110. It’s incredible that it’s so close, especially given how dominant the Yankees were for much of Mantle’s career.

And yet, with a similar number of opportunities to the average player, Mantle drove in almost 500 more runs (about 48% more) than the average ballplayer.

I think that what this tells us that is that, in terms of getting runners on base in front of Mantle, the Yankees were basically an average team. That’s probably a bit surprising to some people, and sort of bears out the point suggested by RickJay. It also tells us that, in terms of taking advantage of his opportunities to drive in runs, Mickey Mantle was far above the average ballplayer. That probably doesn’t surprise anyone.

Maybe, but “clutch hitting,” at least over the course of a whole career, is pretty much a non-existent thing. On the whole, players who are good “clutch” hitters are basically the same people who are good hitters in other situations.

In 1990, when he batted in 115 with a .232 average, Joe Carter had 697 plate appearances.

The average hitter with that many plate appearances, over the course of the season, would have come to the plate with 429 runners on base. Joe Carter came to the plate with 542 runners on base.

The average hitter would have come to the plate with a runner on third base 75 times. Joe Carter had a runner on third 114 times.

That’s a staggering number of extra opportunities to drive in runs. Carter drove in Roberto Alomar 32 times, and Tony Gwynn 30 times. When you have guys in front of you with career .300+ batting averages, and career .370+ OBP, you get to drive in a lot of runs, even if you’re having a pretty shitty year.

It’s also worth noting that Carter, with the second-worst OBP among Padres position players in 1990, got 50 more plate appearances than any other player on the team.

Cite

My calculations show that Carter’s RBI/baserunners percentage in 1986 was about 24.5%, and that Hall’s was about the same. Like you, i got about 18% for Franco, but i think your numbers for Carter and Hall are low.

Anyway, in response to Jackmannii’s point about Carter, it’s worth noting that Joe Carter had a genuinely excellent year in 1986. It’s not a year we can hold up as typical for him. He had a line of .302/.335/.514, and an OPS+ of 130. It was the best year of his career; certainly far above his career average, and nothing like his really-crappy-but-lots-of-RBIs 1990 season.

A player having a really good year will nearly always get a lot of RBIs, even on a pretty crappy team. My main point has been that a player having a really mediocre year can also get plenty if he has the right guys in front of him.

And Leyland bows out.

He’ll stay with the club in some capacity, which is good.

What I quoted was %BSR scored, not RBI/baserunner. Basically my numbers didn’t include HRs (where you get an RBI for yourself), but included runners scoring where no RBI is awarded (double-plays and runs scored on errors basically).

I think the point is pretty clear - good hitters get lots of RBIs because they are good hitters. Good hitters on bad teams get fewer RBIs than good hitters on good teams. But bad hitters on good teams, and even bad hitters on bad teams that play behind a few good hitters, can get a lot of RBIs too.

Here’s a debate on if Leyland is worthy of the Hall of Fame

I say no, but I have very high Hall standards for non players. Admittedly, the Marlins 1997 World Series win seems cheapened and I think a toddler could have managed that team to the World Series.