Category: Statistics

A-Rod and 400

A-Rod became the first player to reach the 400 mark in homeruns before the age of thirty. These tidbits from Jayson Stark at ESPN help put that in perspective: • That’s two years and three months younger than Aaron was when he hit No. 400. • It’s almost two and a half years younger than … Continue reading “A-Rod and 400”

A-Rod became the first player to reach the 400 mark in homeruns before the age of thirty. These tidbits from Jayson Stark at ESPN help put that in perspective:

• That’s two years and three months younger than Aaron was when he hit No. 400.

• It’s almost two and a half years younger than Willie Mays was when he hit No. 400.

• It’s four years and two months younger than Bonds was when he hit No. 400.

• It’s four years and seven months younger than Mark McGwire was when he hit No. 400.

Rodriguez was helped by the fact that he came up at the age of 18 and began playing full time by the age of 20. That and he didn’t have an aversion to the long ball. In roughly 10 full seasons, he hit 40 dingers. It’s not hard to do the math.

Ironically, Stark throws doubt on whether A-Rod can reach Aaron giving examples such as Ken Griffey Jr and Jimmie Foxx who both petered out as age crept up on them.

Secondary Average… Second to None or Second Class Stat??

I just pulled The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract off my bookshelf and began reading again it lately. For those who enjoy baseball history, I highly recommend it. You don’t have to be a stathead to enjoy this book. In fact, James spends a lot of time discussing the human element of the game … Continue reading “Secondary Average… Second to None or Second Class Stat??”

I just pulled The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract off my bookshelf and began reading again it lately. For those who enjoy baseball history, I highly recommend it.

You don’t have to be a stathead to enjoy this book. In fact, James spends a lot of time discussing the human element of the game in this book.

In the process of reading this book, I came across a term I was not familiar with. Secondary Average. James uses it as a gauge to quantify offensive production. I was intrigued by this new stat but couldn’t find the exact formula in the book (it could be in there, it’s a big book).

So I searched for it on the Internet. Google didn’t let me down. Here is the formula courtesy of the people that brought us Baseball Oracle:

SecAvg = (2B + 2*3B + 3*HR + BB + SB – CS) / AB

So essentially, it’s kinda like Slugging average not counting singles but including walks and stolen bases (minus caught stealing).

According to this website, the secondary average is useful because:

* secondary average correlates very well to runs scored on a team level,
* therefore, it is a good indicator of the relative value a player brings to a team.
* it incorporates hitting, patience and running the bases,
* it is easy to calculate,
* its baseline is the same as batting average.

To give it some perspective, here are career leaders in SEC (as of 2001:

1 Babe Ruth .594
2 Barry Bonds .554
3 Ted Williams .552
4 Mark McGwire .539
5 Mickey Mantle .487
6 Jim Thome .481
7 Lou Gehrig .481
8 Frank Thomas .475
9 Ralph Kiner .467
10 Jimmie Foxx .464

Single Season Leaders (again as of 2001):

1 Barry Bonds 2001 .929
2 Babe Ruth 1920 .799
3 Mark McGwire 1998 .774
4 Babe Ruth 1921 .744
5 Mark McGwire 1996 .693
6 Babe Ruth 1923 .690
7 Mark McGwire 1999 .674
8 Babe Ruth 1927 .672
9 Barry Bonds 1996 .663
10 Babe Ruth 1926 .661

Obviously, SEC tends to favor power and OBP but not so much batting average. For kicks, I calculated Ichiro’s record breaking 2004 season SEC. Ichiro had 320 total bases, 262 hits, 49 BB, 36 SB and 11 CS.

That works out to a .202 secondary average for Ichiro.

Something tells me that some Ichiro fans may have their doubts about the secondary average.

Thoughts?

Progressive Leaders

If you’re reading baseball blogs and baseball web sites in general, you most likely have visited Baseball Reference. It’s one of the best resources out there for baseball stats. There are stats for every player and every team since stats were kept. What some may know about is their Progressive Leaders feature in their Leaders … Continue reading “Progressive Leaders”

If you’re reading baseball blogs and baseball web sites in general, you most likely have visited Baseball Reference. It’s one of the best resources out there for baseball stats. There are stats for every player and every team since stats were kept.

What some may know about is their Progressive Leaders feature in their Leaders section. It’s quite cool.

For any given stat, Progressive Leaders displays for each year, the career leader, the single season leader, the active career leader, and the leader for that particular year.

Let’s take Homeruns, for example:

It shows (as we all know) that Roger Connor held the career HR record with 138 when he retired in 1897. Ned Williamson held the single season mark with 27. A quick look shows that when Ruth began hitting dingers, he quickly vanquished Williamson’s mark in 1919 with 29 and it wasn’t long before he broke the all-time career record. What’s great about the Progressive Leaders feature is we can quickly find out that it was 1921, when he hit 59, that Ruth passed Connor HR mark.

By the same token, we can tell that when Ruth retired, Lou Gehrig became the active career record.
On a side note, it’s interesting to note the progression of players who held the active career HR title. They include:

Foxx
Ott
DiMaggio
Mize
Williams
Musial
Mantle
Mays
Aaron
McCovey
Stargell
Jackson
Schmidt
Dw Evans
Murray
McGwire
Bonds

And that’s just a start… take a look at runs scored and hits and doubles an so on and so on… :-)

Followup: I read somewhere that Roger Connor died not knowing he was the all-time leader in homeruns for 25 years.