I’ve been offline for a bit, but I managed to compose this all-purpose (if a bit tardy) response to points raised in this thread.
But Bonds’ OBP would have gone down markedly if he hadn’t been walked intentionally so much.
Your point here, and John DiFool’s above seem to cite contrary phenomena: you’re claiming that the number-three hitter (let’s call him Barry) gets more fat pitches to hit because a good number four hitter (let’s call him Jeff) is batting behind him. But John’s claim is that Barry gets fewer fat pitches, in the form of intentional (and I’m sure some unintentional) walks. How does Barry getting walked a lot result from pitchers being forced to pitch to him? Seems to me his IBB rate would drop to zero if having Jeff bat behind him “forced” pitchers to throw balls over the plate to him.
I’m not sure what “no power” means to you, but in 1992, 1993, and 1994, years he batted in front of Albert Belle, Carlos Baerga averaged 20 Hrs and 100 RBIs per year, and batted well over .300. (Mind you, in 1994 the Indians played only 111 games, so those power numbers are particularly impressive—in the missing 51 games, figure Baerga was on pace to hit another 10 HRs and 40 RBIs.) He was 23, 24, and 25 years old so you’d probably expect him to get better (he didn’t) and for there to be a residual effect in at least one subsequent season. In 1992 and 1993, he finished 10th and 11th in the MVP voting and made the All-Star team—I don’t know how much better he would have to be to qualify as “a great hitter” to you.
But I’m confused by your terminology -–since Carlos batted third, and Albert/Joey fourth, why does it even matter whether Carlos was a great hitter, or even a good one? According to you, it’s the protection of having a strong hitter batting BEHIND him that helps Carlos out. Pitchers terrified of Albert/Joey’s awesome power should be forced to throw pitches over the plate to Carlos, so as to avoid at all costs walking him. In 1995, with Belle batting directly behind him (and hitting 50 HRs and driving 113 runs) and Thome, Ramirez and Eddie Murray batting behind Belle, Baerga’s numbers didn’t improve (he dropped to 15 HR, 90 RBI in ’95)—according to you, with his BEST protection batting behind him, shouldn’t the 26 year old Baerga’s numbers have improved in 1995, or at least stayed where it was?
As the larger issue of argumentation here, it seems to me that What Exit is making a case for validating only examples of extremely great sluggers (Ruth/Gehrig, Mantle/Maris, Manny/Papi) and invalidating examples of lesser sluggers. This creates small samples in which there are very few games where one hitter is OUT of the lineup, again reducing the number of games to a very small sample, in which anything could happen. If he would allow a widening of the sample size, as in the Grabiner report, he’d be overwhelmed by the tiny effect that “protection” has on players.
He’s also being very selective in choosing his examples. As Grabiner references, Bill James did a study of the effect of protection with Bob Horner and Dale Murphy (in the mid-1980s when they were among the most feared power hitters in MLB). The effect there was actually negative: “Murphy hit .265 with Horner in the lineup, and .281 with the same power with Horner out,” as Grabiner summarizes. Rather than dealing with this sort of study, that does serious (albeit selective) damage to the theory **What Exit? ** is propounding, he just skips over it and says-- what? That Horner and Murphy weren’t good hitters after all? That he’s only talking about certain Yankees in certain seasons, not MLB sluggers generally? I don’t know what argument he’d make to discount this study, but I’d have to think that as we widen the scope of studies and find that some of them actually have a (statistically insignificant) negative effect to counteract the (statistically insignificant) positive effect on certain other carefully selected examples, that protection doesn’t add up to much. As I said, and as What Exit? seemed to find insulting 9sorry 'bout that): it’s Sasquatch. People claim to have seen it but are utterly unable to provide any evidence for it. If you want to argue that protection (or Sasquatch) exists, you have to show why you think so. It really isn’t our responsibility to disprove your assertion.
And I also would be happy to be proven wrong, which is where you misjudge sabrmetrics types in general. James poses questions, often starting with long-accepted truisms about baseball: is pitching really 75% of the game? How important is home-field? Does Rizzuto deserve to be elected to the Hall? Things we care about, because we’re interested in baseball, in things that happen on and off the field, and bless him, he’s willing to do the work that we need to find out some of the answers. (Also, more important, able to do the work, and often ingenious enough to do it.) I think, btw, that he’s done more than any other person not wearing the number 7 for the Yankees to enhance Mantle’s reputation: when he started his writing in the mid-1970s, the common baseball wisdom was that walks don’t matter very much, and Mantle got very little credit for walking as much as he did. James took a lot of not-so-good-natured mocking for his radical notion that walks are a very important contribution, and now that his notion is universally accepted, Mantle’s reputation is has gotten a well-deserved boost. Please consider this when you next claim that sabrmetricians are interested in numbers, stats, and lies. We’re interested in the truth, wherever it leads.
Finally, between baseball, Star Wars and computer savvy, Jim is the geekiest guy I know. His credentials as an all around geek are untouchable.
