“Weak” protection certainly does exist: would Barry Bonds have gotten 120 intentional walks that one year if A-Rod was hitting behind him? Of course not, which would provide Barry with more RBI opportunities. But A-Rod likely wouldn’t have helped his actual rate stats to improve (so-called “strong” protection).
That study might have been worth something if it looked at some pairs where protection has actually been observed. A study of Ortiz/Manny Maris/Mantle Gehrig/Ruth or the Bash Brothers would have been more believable.
I’m sorry, if you think having a great hitter behind a power hitter does not help the power hitter, I have to wonder if you have been watching the same game I have been.
“Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics”, seems to be a quote that needs to be brought up for this thread. Next you will show me a study that says Ricky Henderson was not the best lead off hitting in my lifetime. Or maybe you will prove that Mariano Rivera is not a special post season performer, I recall someone claiming there was no such thing as post season performers too.
I humbly suggest you consider that, while we all watch the same game, it’s easy to fall prey to our assumptions. That is, we see “protected” guys performing well, and assume it must be because of the protection, and not because they’re great hitters anyway who perform equally well regardless of who hits after them. Baseball, like life, is full of phenomenon where what seems to be easily observed turns out to false when the actual data is collected and analyzed. I mean, hey, the Earth looks flat to me. Are we not looking at the same Earth if you tell me it’s round?
Now, it may be that at the extreme end of the bell curve, i.e the Ruth/Gehrig and Ortiz/Ramirez cases, protection really does exist. I’d love to see a study done on that, assuming that the sample sizes are meaningful. And I have no axe to grind here – if there were statistical evidence that protection matters, I’d buy it. (Just like I would with “clutch hitters.”) But prr’s linked study does see to show that, in a majority of cases at least, protection is a myth.
Regarding post-season performance: I think that in most cases, individual players don’t play enough post-season games for this to decided one way or another. But Mariano Rivera, playing for the perennially-playoff-bound Yankees, has piled up 117 post-season innings, during which he has a 0.77 ERA – even better than his already-awesome regular season performace. I don’t know how one could prove he’s not a particularly good playoff pitcher. (And I say that as a frothing Red Sox fan.)
Oh, and I believe that Ricky Henderson is the greatest leadoff hitter of all time. In this case, the data correlates strongly with my personal observations. 
I agree with much of what you say and I understand about falling prey to our assumptions, however that study did not show me a single pair that I would have considered as an example of protection working. The Manny & Big Papi one should be easy to do as it was recent and one of the more blatant examples.
If a study shows it did not exist in this case, I would be far more convinced than that basically worthless study that was statistical study for the sake of statistical study.
Well, I’ve been watching the game just as long as you and have never seen this “protection” I hear so much about. I’ve never even heard a logical explanation for why it should happen.
If someone had real, honest-to-God convincing evidence that Rickey Henderson wasn’t a great leadoff hitter, I’d be happy to consider it on its merits. I doubt such evidence exists, but the facts are the facts and I’m always open to new facts.
I’d have though that the Baerga/Belle example would have met your criteria.
But, you actually bring up an interesting take – it sounds like you believe in the phenomenon of protection, but only in the extreme cases where both players in question are superstars. I’d personally expect that, if protection were real, you could measure it with any pair of players, and note a steady increase in production for the “protected” as the “protector” (the second of two batters) increased in proven ability. Something like:
Batter after you has a SLG less than league average: no effect
Batter after you has a SLG between 1% and 10% better than league average: your stats go up 5%
Batter after you has a SLG between 11% and 20% better than league average: your stats go up 10%
…etc.
A related question: do you think a merely-league-average hitter would benefit from suddenly having a superstar hit after him? It’s clear you think that David Ortiz has benefited from hitting in front of Manny Ramirez. Would you expect the same benefit if it were Mike Lowell instead of Ortiz? Or Alex Cora?
No snark intended, by the way. I’m interested in your (and others’) opinions. It’s a fascinating topic!
But I have seen no facts that disprove protection and the basic theory is that if a good power hitter has a much weaker hitter behind them, the pitcher can pitch around them, but if the power hitter has a batter like Manny, Mantle or Gehrig behind them, the pitcher is forced* to pitch to the power hitter. It is no more complicated than that.
- *Forced * is not in this case meant to be nitpicked as in 100% of the time, but meant to mean a fairly vague, most of the time and dependent of the situation in the game. Do I need to use a more exact terminology or can forced be accepted?
But Baerga/Belle does not fit at all. Baerga had no power and was not a great hitter. See if my prior post answered your question on where it comes into play and recall that I specifically was talking about Ortiz & Manny when I brought up the subject of protection.
I do believe that A-Rod benefits from the time periods when the Yankee 5 hitter is hot, that has usually been Giambi, Posada or Matsui in his time with the Yanks. When the 5 hitter is cold, it is much easier to not give A-Rod anything good to hit and chance walking him to get to the easier out.
ETA: I feel like this is the old school guy vs. the geeks and yet I am reasonably sure I am more of a geek than any of you. **PRR ** has met me, maybe he could verify this part.
I don’t think protection is relevant. Do you think if you are on a team that has great offense and allows you to get a bunch of ribbies it should be discounted. Then you have to determine how much. I do not think you can get any where with that line of thinking.
If you get traded to a crappy team how much bonus do you get?
Please reread my previous post. “Weak protection” (for lack of a better term) most certainly exists, as those 120 IBBs to Barry Bonds demonstrates. I have seen much better studies on protection than the admittedly meandering one linked above, and really the guy coming up behind you really doesn’t have any measurable effect on your own rate stats.
Are we talking about the same thing? I feel like we are arguing in circles. Maris got a chance to hit more Homers because Mantle batted behind him than when he did not have Mantle behind him. When Mantle was injured near the end of the year (1961), Maris was pitched around more often and his home run rate dropped during that time.
Baseball-Reference is nice enough to supply home run logs. Look at 1961 and recall Mantle was not himself in September of 1961 and missed part of it.
This is the verbal example I always remember, but then I am a Yankee fanatic and have read/heard 30-50 different takes on that season.
Now the other part of this is in 1960 Mantle batted third and Maris fourth. Houk is said to have reversed them on purpose to get Maris, the lesser hitter better pitches to hit.
Facts have been presented in this thread that appear to demonstrate “protection” doesn’t happen. You’re more than welcome to present contrary evidence.
As to the “you’re forced to pitch to the first guy” argument, and no I’m not taking “Forced” to be an absolute, it just doesn’t hold water if you think it through. Why would you pitch to the first batter in a way that benefits him if a better hitter’s coming up next? Presumably you don’t want to walk someone and then face a good hitter, but you similarly don’t want to groove pitches to him, either, right? If it is true that this helps Batter A, why would pitchers do it? Giving Manny Ramirez fat pitches isn’t going to benefit you no matter who’s hitting next.
I’m actually reading a book right now, The Baseball Economist, that delves in to this very topic. It made an interesting point about how it might actually be detrimental to have a better hitter on deck. If the on deck better is really good, then the pitcher will want to bear down and make sure he gets the current hitter out. If the on deck hitter is less good, then the pitcher can relax a bit and perhaps the hitter can get a better pitch to hit. At any rate he ran the numbers and found having a better on base hitter was a slight negative. A definite effect, but not really worth worrying about. I’ve not seen any evidence in this study or any other that say if the hitter is really good the effect is difference.
I likewise grew up believing that protection was important. But the numbers say it isn’t, so I have to now believe otherwise.
In theory it is easier to get Ortiz out than Manny and so the pitcher takes his chances with Ortiz and hopes he does not have a runner on for the RBI machine known as Manny (works for Mantle & Gehrig too). The Maris example I gave was probably while you were writing this post, so please let me know the flaws in the old theory of protection.
Well for starters, Maris hit 10 home-runs that September/October, far more then he ever hit in a Sept/Oct with the protection of Mantle.
More importantly your sample size of 1 player in a month doesn’t mean anything. It liking saying that a class grade average can’t be C because 1 person got an A. Particularly a player who was on pace to break a home-run record. I’m sure if you take a look at the complete group of players on pace to hit 60+ home-runs, the vast majority finished weaker then they started regardless of teammate injuries. This is simply regression to the mean.
If you want an individual player example, Jeff Kent took off right after they moved him down in the order to hit behind Bonds. He won his MVP batting behind Bonds. Any guess on who protected Jeff Kent that year?
Look it was one small example for a year. Someone should run the number on the Ortiz & Manny combo or the Ruth/Gehrig one. You would have much larger collection of data to use. The Maris/Mantle one is the one I have read the most about and the one where the manager making the flip had immediate and great dividends.
It seems strange, at least to me, to base your theory of “protection” one one fluke season in the entire history of baseball when people are going to the trouble of doing fairly detailed studies, citing mounds of evidence, that say it doesn’t happen. Roger Maris having one big year doesn’t prove “protection” works; for one thing, how is it Mickey Mantle had a better year overall without protection behind HIM?
Citing Maris as proof “protection” works is every bit as logical as me citing Mantle’s 1961 as proof it doesn’t; moved behind Maris, Mantle’s home run total went up by 14, his batting average rose 42 points, and he had one of the best seasons of his career. (He really should have won the MVP Award, actually, instead of Maris.) Why did his numbers get better when he LOST the protection of Maris?
My guess is just that they had really good years. Mike Schmidt in 1980 had about as little protection as a great player has ever had, losing big Greg Luzinski behind him for most of the year, and he had his best season and was a unanimous MVP. Does that prove protection doesn’t exist?
Manny Ramirez missed most of the months of September in both 2006 and 2007. You know what? David Ortiz hit better with Manny out of the lineup than he did when Manny was healthy and behind him, with around a .700 slugging percentage in both years. See here for game-by-game data
WhatExit, you mentioned “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics” on a post on the first page. The kinds of cherry-picking you are doing here are primo examples of how you lie with statistics. [And yes my Ortiz/Manny observation in paragraph one is just a 2-data-point example, and not intended as proof of anything other than to refute your claim that Ortiz suffers offensively when Manny is not in the lineup] Ortiz did get walked intentionally at a higher rate when Manny was gone, so that is not in dispute, so yes there’s two different types of protection, as I’ve outlined in previous posts.
Look I was not cherry picking, I am not trying to use stats to prove my point, I was using one of the most famous cases of a manager trying to use it and I sabotaged my own argument by citing any stats at all. :smack:
If you come back with complete number on the Ortiz/Manny years and the M/M years and Ruth/Gehrig years and it shows I am wrong I will surrender. The study cited is a terrible example as it has nothing to do with protection as I know it. It appears to me to have been nothing but a fun little mental exericse for the man who did it.
Finally “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics” applies to my arguments and yours. I think the Bill James followers spend too much time on stats and miss the rhythm and flow of the old ball game for all the numbers.
Saying that there is no such thing as protection doesn’t mean that a hitter doesn’t ever do better when hitting in front of a star. What it means is roughly half the time he does and roughly half the time he doesn’t, and that this is due to sheer randomness. So even if let’s say Manny hit a bit better in front of Ortiz, it doesn’t prove your theory valid.
I watch a lot of baseball (just ask my girlfriend… eh maybe you’d better not) By watching, listening, reading, and talking about the game I’ve developed many theories about the game. Hitters do better with better hitters behind them sounded like a legimate theory to me. Then I take those theories and test them. Some hold up and some don’t.
What Bill James was most about was asking questions. Assuming something is true doesn’t make it true, you need to test it. Statistics don’t lie. They are what they are. It is just a question of how you use them. Bill James isn’t an expert statistian. What he was really good was asking questions and not letting his opinions bias his research. It seems to me that you just want to use the numbers to prove something you already believe, rather then use them objectively to see what they say.