This same logic could be applied to the calculation for pitcher’s ERA; would you say that pitchers as a group appear better than they are because fewer runs are assigned to a league’s pitchers than are credited to batters/baserunners? Insisting that they be balanced–along with the number of “outs” recorded by pitchers and batters–seems fastidious.
Most fans who favor the statistical approach abhor batting average as a measure of performance, but usually this is because it doesn’t account for walks, which in the modern game are considered something the batter earns in his turn at bat. On-base percentage and it’s Frankenstein cousin OPS are considered better batter-performance measures, and both of these count a reach-by-error as an 0-fer (charged time at bat, no hit).
I agree it would be interesting to see the percentage of times a player reaches base on an error (if only to see if there is any statistical trend favoring certain batters); if anyone knows of any numbers for this on-line, please point them out.
Thanks for the reply, but we have to disagree on this point. I think you’re confusing “outs” with “official at-bats”. When a player gets on base via an error, there is no out charged to anyone. The player gets charged an official AB with no hit credited. That’s correct. A hitter’s batting average is a measure of his ability to reach base by getting a basehit and not based on the number of outs his at-bat caused, although that might be an interesting stat for someone who hits into a lot of DPs.
Many sabermetricians and other analysts have concluded that the concept of an error is flawed:
[ul]
[li]Several different types of defensive mistakes are lumped together as errors. It’s not even necessary that a runner advance - a dropped foul fly ball can be an error, even if the batter strikes out on the next pitch. Seeing an error in a box score doesn’t tell you what happened.[/li][li]Not all defensive miscues are errors. A catchable fly ball that drops between two outfielders is usually not called an error, for example.[/li][li]A fielder who muffs a batted ball is charged with an error, but a fielder who doesn’t even get to a batted ball is not, even though the effect is usually the same (the batter gets on base).[/li][li]Errors are subjective - what constitutes “normal effort” is a matter of opinion. Some official scorers tend to favor the home team in their rulings.[/li][li]Earned run average sometimes doesn’t reflect the quality of a pitcher’s efforts. For example, if there’s an error on a play that would have been the third out in an inning, none of the runs the pitcher allows for the rest of the inning are counted as earned. A pitcher can allow six runs after the inning “should have been” over and they won’t count against his ERA.[/li][/ul]
Given all of this, I believe that the creation of errors as a statistical category in the nineteenth century was a mistake. Baseball stats would be more meaningful if errors were not counted.
Errors made sense in the 19th century. What doesn’t make sense is that they are still counted. In the 19th Century, lots of players kept their jobs because of their “glove” (although they weren’t wearing gloves).
WEll, first of all, ERA IS flawed in this regard; pitchers are not credited with as many runs as they really should be. Fortunately, though, not many runs are unearned.
But I’m not talking about the necessity of balance, I am talking about fact. If Ichiro Suzuki comes up four times and gets one hit and reaches base on errors three times, the box score now says he made an out three times. And he didn’t. It’s just stupid to count as outs at bats that were not outs. It’s every bit as stupid as counting home runs as singles or strikeouts as walks.
If a player goes 1-for-4, he is being recorded as having made three outs. That’s what calculates your batting average, sluggling percentage, etc.
Except, with errors being counted as outs, it’s possible to go 1-for-4 when in fact you made no outs at all.
I’m not; that’s the way it’s actually done.
But caught stealing and GIDPs are assigned to individual batters, so those can be factored in to your better batting metrics. And you’re not actually counting an out that never happened.
BobT and Jeff make the central point, which is that it made sense in the past to count errors separately, since there was once a time - and not just the 19th century, but just in the early 20th century - when players made immense numbers of errors by today’s standards. In 1955 the error rate was 50% higher than today; in 1930, it was twice as high; in 1905, almost three times higher, and it was not uncommon for players at some key positions to make fifty errors or more a year.
Today the difference between different fielders in fielding percentage is really not that great, with some weird outliers like Randy Johnson or Kevin Reimer.
True enough, but not all double plays are assigned to batters only force or reverse force double plays are recorded to batters. Double plays like runners caught off base after afly are not. And quite a few outs ar eactually recorded on hits. First batter doubles, second batter singles and first batter is throw out trying to score, runner advancing to second. Nex batter singles another runner is thrown out at the plate. Fourth batter strikes out. There we have an innig with four at bats three hits, no caught stealing, no double plays. Things still don’t add up the way you want.
So you tell me well they’re recorded as outfielder assists? No not really suppose the catcher drops the ball making a tag. We can have outfileder assists and no outs. It still won’t add up.
Trust me, you’re preaching to the converted. I realize things like baserunning errors are hard to divine from boxscores. I don’t think the key issue is being sufficiently emphasized here.
If Jim steps up to the plate and hits the ball and gets on base, it is stupid to pretend that he went 0-for-1 just because Tom muffed the ball. This isn’t like missing baserunner errors. It’s literally counting hits as outs. It’s stupid. There is NO other scoring convention anything like this.
Imagine if the official scorer had the discretion to take hits away from batters if he thought the pitch was really, really bad. Most hits he credits, sure, but if the pitcher throws a really awful meatball, a hanging curveball right down the pipe, he calls it a “Pitching Miscue” and the player is treated as if he had actually hit into an out. Wouldn’t that be stupid? Well, that’s what we do with fielding.
So you tell me well they’re recorded as outfielder assists? No not really suppose the catcher drops the ball making a tag. We can have outfileder assists and no outs. It still won’t add up.
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We’re verging into GD territory, but certainly the percentage of runs that are unearned is comparable to the percentage of batters who reach base on error (since at least one error is required to produce an unearned run). Why is it fortunately low enough that that stat can be used to compute ERA, but batting average is “quite literally wrong” and the discrepancy is “stupid”
What if Ichiro drives a ball to the gap with a runner on first, nets a double, but the runner is thrown out at the plate? Ichiro is credited with a hit (as he should be), but an out was made as part of his turn at bat. Would you argue this should instead be scored as a fielder’s choice? That would seem to be the flip side of your argument that “outs not be recorded to batters who reach on an error”; should outs be recorded on hits where an out is caused by another player’s bad baserunning?
Suppose a batter hits a single but the fielder’s inept play (e.g. throwing his glove at the ball, a three-base error) leads to the batter scoring. The consequence of your argument seems to support crediting the batter with a HR in this case.
When the catcher drops a 3rd strike, the batter can run to first and will be safe if he reaches first before he can be thrown out. The catcher is credited with an error in this case, and the batter gets a time at bat (strikeout). If, as you state, reaching on an error (ROE) should be counted as a hit to the batter, one would think in this case the batter should be credited with either a hit or a walk.
In these examples, it is the counting of a ROE as a hit that makes a single a HR and a strikeout a walk. It would be tactless for me to ask again which method is really the stupid one, so I wont:).
I agree; counting errors with regard to evaluating a fielder made sense in the age when errors were more common, and that is an age which is long past. But that’s not what we’re talking about here; we’re talking about considering the effect of fielding on batting average. Errors may indeed be “low enough” that counting them as hits won’t change the stats that much, but I’d like (1) proof that that’s ture, and, (2) a more compelling reason than “it creates an out that doesn’t really exist”.
This is absolutely incorrect. If a player goes 1-for-4, it means that he got one hit in 4 official at-bats. It is recorded in the box score as 4 ABs and 1 hit. An at-bat represents the number of opportunities for the player to get a hit. He was successful 1 out of 4 attempts, and his BA is .250. Like I said before, you’re confusing outs with ABs. In the course of a game, there is no reason why the number of ABs have to match the number of outs in a game. As CJJ* has pointed out, if you are going to consider the number of outs that occurs as a consequence of a player’s at-bat, then you’re going to be really screwed by double plays or runners getting thrown out on the bases. Outs are outs, and at-bats are at-bats.
The methodology for computing ERA is wrong, too. I never said it wasn’t; it’s just fortunate that the breaks tend to even out across pitchers (except, in some cases, for relief pitchers.) Nonetheless, I’d prefer to see it fixed.
For that matter, the manner in which wins and losses are assigned is dumb, too. The way they came up with scoring ball games in the 19th century is not the way we have to keep on doing it.
It’s not a fielder’s choice, though; an FC is assigned when a fielder chooses to retire a runner instead of the batter. In this case the runner is out on a subsequent play, not because the fielder chose to retire Runner A instead of Suzuki. In any event, the boxscore is still correct insofar as it credit Suzuki with a double. He really did hit a double, and the runner safely advanced two bases. The runner then chose to advance an extra base and got nailed, but that is correctly judged as being an extension of the play on which Suzuki doubled, not a result of the double. I’d be happy if they started counting baserunning errors, by the way.
Now, consider what you’ve said here, and how you phrased it.
Here’s what the REAL equivalent play to the error rule would be. Suppose Aaron Hill hits a ground ball into the hole, and the shortstop has to leave his feet to get it. Hill is safe at first by a mile, but the runner at first, Bengie Molina, the slowest man in baseball - you really have to see him run to believe it - is so slow getting to second that the shortstop has time to recover and force him out at second, whereas any other man in pro baseball would have been safe. Or suppose he just falls down or something. The scorer THEN says, “Well, that’s just bad baserunning, so Hill gets a hit anyway.”
Or suppose It’s Tampa Bay and Aubrey Huff hits the ground ball into the hole. The shortstop WOULD have gotten the runner at second easy, except the runner was Joey Gathright, and he beats the throw because he runs like the wind. The scorer says “Well, everyone’s safe, but Huff wouldn’t have gotten the hit if Gathright was or normal speed. So I’m going to call that an out anyway.”
Those would be the equivalent of the error scoring rule.
Do you get three bases after the single? Jeez, I need to remember that, I would have sent the batter to third.
No, I don’t think you need to call this a home run. The problem with the error scoring rule is not that the batter’s not getting enough credit, it’s that it creates outs in the batter’s record where none exist.
No, he shouldn’t, because he did not hit the ball safely, nor did he walk. It should be a separate scoring category.
Wins and losses for pitchers are a holdover from the 19th century too. When pitchers threw complete games almost all the time, it wasn’t in dispute much.
In the first part of the 20th century, pitchers having winning streaks became really big deals. Smokey Joe Wood met Walter Johnson in a game in 1912 (IIRC) in a game where Wood had the chance to break the record then held by Johnson. The Red Sox won the game and Wood got the record (which has since been broken a few times). Johnson’s win streak was broken earlier in the year when he came into relieve with runners on base and let them score and his team (Washington) lost. Under today’s rules, Johnson wouldn’t have received a loss.
The number of at bats has nothing to do with the number of outs recorded. For example if a player walks, that’s not an at bat. If the next batter hits into a double play, there are two outs. Should the batter be seen as being 0 for 2 for that at bat because he was responsible for two outs? If you walked five times in a game and were erased by a double play or caught stealing every time, you have zero at bats, you’re not 0 for 5. Unless you believe you should count a walk as a hit, then Barry Bonds could have hit .500 when he was intentionally walked all those times.
Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me a quarterback who went 10 out of 20 with five interceptions should be 15 out of 20 because those five passes were caught.
Just two minor points. Throwing your glove at a batted ball and hitting it gives an award of three bases – not a single plus three bases. The ball is alive and the batter can try to score. If a fielder throws his glove at a ball that would have gone into the stands for a home run, then it’s a four base award.
If a catcher misses a third strike and the batter reaches first base, it is not an error, but a passed ball. Or it could be a wild pitch.
If a fielder throws his glove at a batted ball and hits it, it is scored as a triple. Unless the batter makes it all the away around, in which case it’s a home run.
I finally saw that play happen in a Dodgers-DBacks game last year. Duaner Sanchez, the Dodgers reliever, did it on a ball hit back through the box by Luis Terrero.
I too interpret this to mean that, even on a stand-up double to the gap, if a fielder throws his glove at and hits the ball, the hitter can only go to 3rd base unmolested. If, for example, the ball is deflected such that another fielder quickly retrieves the ball, the batter can be thrown out at the plate if he attempts to score.
Later in Rule 7.05, there is this note about how bases are awarded on wild throws: “(g)…If all runners, including the batter runner, have advanced at least one base when an infielder makes a wild throw on the first play after the pitch, the award (two bases) shall be governed by the position of the runners when the wild throw was made.” A later example shows that this includes the batter; if he’s reached 1st base, he can advance unmolested to 3rd (provided this does not force a preceding runner to advance more than two bases). I have no idea why this same scenario shouldn’t apply to illegal fielding plays (i.e. thrown gloves) made after the batter passes 1st base, but it doesn’t, so I happily stand corrected.
Regarding passed ball vs. error on catcher for dropped third strike, a passed ball is charged to the catcher (not an error), but that is a distinction without a difference for the purposes of determining batting average. From the batter’s perspective, it is the same as reaching on an error.
Perhaps I’ve been misinterpreting the argument as “because the batter reaches bases, even on an error, this should be considered a hit.” I think what is really being contended is whether or not reached-on-error should count as an AB. Calling it a hit doesn’t make much sense to me, but I’m beginning to see some value in dropping it as an AB.
If we take as a given that a batter cannot influence fielding mistakes (an arguable fact), laying aside these ABs gives a poorer measure of the batter’s ability. BA and OBP are compared between batters as individuals, and they lose some comparative power if a batter can benefit from hitting against more fielding-poor teams, (again, assuming there is no effort on the batter’s part to cause the error).
This clearly was much more of a concern in the age where fielding errors were more common (meaning the difference in the number of reached-on-errors between batters was much higher). But with the number of errors so much lower in the modern game, perhaps the previously-miniscule influence of the batter-runner on fielding (i.e. Juan Pierre’s speed to first causes errors because fielder rushes a throw) has some measurable significance (propensity for error does seem to matter in justifying use of the sac. bunt). I’d be interested in some analysis which proved the point that it could be a better measure of batting ability.