A homer is a hit too, you know that? Eventually everyone will believe that.”—Joe Girardi
As much as most of us enjoy home runs, many of us can’t quite bring ourselves to trust them.
The Yankees have the best offense in baseball. Their .279 True Average entering last night trumped any other team’s. They haven’t scored the most runs in the majors, but that’s because of bad sequencing—they’ve hit very poorly in the clutch. Fortunately for Yankees fans, there’s no reason to expect that trend to continue. From here on out, they’ll keep hitting, and their hits will come at more opportune times. There’s really no reason to worry about the Yankees’ production at the plate.
That hasn’t stopped some people from worrying about it anyway. The Yankees, you see, hit a lot of home runs. And because they hit a lot of home runs, they score a high percentage of their runs when they hit them. A few years ago, Joe Sheehan dubbed the percentage of team runs scored via the homer the “Guillen Number,” in honor of Ozzie Guillen’s slugging White Sox. The Yankees’ Guillen Number before last night was 52.3 percent, over seven percent above the next-closest team’s (the Orioles, at 44.9 percent). That hasn’t prevented the team from posting the second-best record in baseball. Nor has it prevented some pundits from predicting their downfall.
This phenomenon is nothing new. Jay Jaffe wrote about it at the Pinstriped Bible over a year ago, when the Yankees were scoring a similar percentage of their runs via the homer and generating a similar amount of hand-wringing:
Never mind the fact that balls in play are subject to luck and defense, or that the one-run strategies are so often self-defeating ("If you play for one run, that’s all you’ll get,” as the great Earl Weaver liked to say). To eschew either at the expense of the longball is somehow a moral failure and a predictor of future doom in the eyes of some wags.
According to the traditionalists, the best lineups manufacture runs. They don’t just have them handed to them with a single swing. They’re made up of a bunch of blue-collar batters who aren’t afraid to get their uniforms dirty. They steal and hit-and-run and sacrifice and squeeze and hit the ball to the right side to get the runner over.
Home runs aren’t hard-nosed. They make teams seem passive—people say that the Yankees “sit back and wait for a home run,” as if their offense were on welfare or about to go bankrupt if not for a bailout. As a species, we like to be in control, or at least to have the illusion of control. That’s why some travelers feel better about driving than they do about flying, even though planes are demonstrably safer. We like our teams to be in control, too, and teams that rely heavily on the homer are rarely a managerial move away from pushing a run across. They live and die by big swings, and when the big swing doesn’t come, they can’t do much to change their fate. So instead of praising their skill at scoring via the homer, people lament their struggles to score by other means.
Yesterday, the Yankees played the Mets, which meant that the game was on ESPN. ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team of Dan Shulman, Terry Francona, and Orel Hershiser (particularly Shulman and Francona) brought up the Yankees’ reliance on the home run early and often. It started in the top of the third, when Shulman and Francona had the following exchange:
Shulman: To grossly oversimplify the Yankees’ offense this year, when they hit home runs, they win. When they don’t, they lose. It’s not quite that simple, but they rely on the home run more than any team in baseball. Joe Girardi says ‘I don’t care how we score them, as long as we score more than the other team,’ but over 52 percent of their runs come on homers. That’s by far the highest percentage in baseball.
Francona: You know, if I was Joe Girardi, I’d say the same thing, but—the good news is, they hit a lot of home runs, the bad news is, as you get towards playoff time, it’s harder to win that way. And they know that.
One batter later, Nick Swisher hit a three-run homer to give the Yankees a 4-0 lead.
You’d think that would have been a sign. In the eighth, Robinson Cano added another home run to put the team ahead for good. Four of the Yankees’ six runs had come via the home run, and because of those six runs, they were winning the game. That didn’t stop the discussion from starting up again. Instead of portraying the homers in a positive light, the broadcasters chose to see them as an ominous sign:
Shulman: The Yankees lead the major leagues in home runs with 112. And they need them to score.
Francona: You know, they’ve become a little bit one dimensional, especially with [Brett] Gardner not in the lineup.
Shulman: They’re just 1-13 this year when they don’t hit a home run… There are those who feel, ‘Hey, it’s great, they’ve got this weapon, it’s all good.’ And there are those who feel once October comes, assuming the Yankees are playing in October, and you’re dealing with the better pitching teams, and the ball is not going to fly out of the ballpark as much—and then, Terry, can the Yankees manufacture a run here and there if they need to?
Francona: I know Joe Girardi gets tired of talking about it, because he gets asked about it and asked about it, but I think it’s a pertinent question, and one we’re not going to know. Because we know they’re most likely going to make the playoffs, but can they survive like this? It’s hard.
This is what’s known as a narrative. Narratives require no evidence. They just have to sound convincing, and this one does, if you don’t think about it too hard. After all, home runs are harder to come by in October. If you can’t score without them, how are you going to score?
Let’s see whether the numbers fit the narrative. Since the advent of the wild card in 1995, 132 teams have made the playoffs. Those 132 teams scored an average of 5.1 runs per game during the regular season, and they scored 36.5 percent of their runs on home runs.
Over the same period, 372 teams failed to make the playoffs. Those teams scored an average of 4.6 runs per game—about half a run less than the playoff teams. They scored 34.7 percent of those runs on home runs. So there’s our first factoid: from 1995-2011, playoff teams scored a higher percentage of their runs on home runs than non-playoff teams.
Okay, but Francona didn’t say that scoring a lot of runs on homers could keep a team out of the playoffs. He suggested that it might hurt a team that’s already made it to October. So what if we compare playoff teams to playoff teams?
Remember those 132 playoff teams I mentioned, the ones that scored 5.1 runs per game during the regular season? In the playoffs, they scored only 3.9, a decrease of about 23 percent. That’s not surprising: they were facing better pitchers, better defenders, and colder temperatures than they had during most of the regular season, so we’d expect them to score less often. What we want to know is whether the ones that were more reliant on home runs took a bigger hit.
So let’s split those 132 teams into the 66 that were most reliant on homers and the 66 that were least reliant on homers. When we do that, this is what we find:
Teams |
Avg. Guillen # |
Reg. Season R/G |
Playoff R/G |
Decrease |
More Reliant on HR |
40.0% |
5.20 |
4.25 |
18.3% |
Less Reliant on HR |
33.1% |
5.00 |
3.63 |
27.4% |
The teams that were more reliant on home runs saw their scoring decrease by about 50 percent less than the others. Relying on the home run hasn’t made teams more vulnerable in October. If anything, it’s made them more October proof.
When you think about it, it makes sense that having a homer-hitting team would help. A home run is the only kind of hit that isn’t playable. A better defensive team converts more balls in play into outs, but home runs aren’t in play. In the playoffs, a team faces better fielders, and those fielders allow fewer balls to fall for singles, doubles, and triples. But almost all home runs are out of the reach of even the best outfieldes, so the opposing defense doesn’t matter. And while playoff pitchers are less prone to coughing up homers than the average arm, they’re also less likely to allow every other kind of hit. As hard as it might be to take them deep compared to the difficulty of doing that against an average pitcher, it’s even harder to string together enough hits of other kinds to score on them without going yard.
It’s true that the Yankees have a higher Guillen Number than any team that’s ever made the playoffs— the 2008 White Sox, at 47.5 percent, had the highest to date—but I can’t come up with a good reason why that would be worrisome. For one thing, their percentage is bound to come down. Only one team—the 2010 Blue Jays—has ever finished a season with a Guillen Number that high, and odds are New York’s Number is about to regress. The Yankees have the AL’s lowest batting average with runners in scoring position, which isn’t going to last. Once their luck in the clutch turns, they’ll score more of their runs on non-homer hits.
But even if the Yankees spent the whole season finding ways to kill time between three-run homers, it wouldn’t be a cause for concern. Playoff teams have higher Guillen Numbers than non-playoff teams, and playoff teams that have high Guillen Numbers keep more of their clout in October than those that don’t. If the Yankees weren’t good at hitting home runs, their reliance on hitting home runs would be a big problem. But the Yankees are the best team in baseball at hitting home runs. And even if it’s not what the narrative says, they’re better off for it.
Thanks to Dan Turkenkopf for research assistance.
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the narrative being that, against elite defenses in the playoffs, they may not be able to do that, and thus will have trouble scoring on long marches down the field.
The Pats' run of success should have quickly dismissed this idea as much as the Yanks' run of success.
They don't trust that home runs are a repeatable stat, even for a heavy hitting team. They also believe that trying to hit home runs make a player a worse hitter. The large numbers of home runs of the 90s and 2000's they explain with steroids.
I suspect that this bias will always be there. Everybody likes to believe that they could bunt, move the runners over and steal bases if they somehow ended up playing ball today. Most people know they could not hit homers.
These same comments were being made by the media when the Moneyball A's were playing; it won't stop anytime soon.
I'm not sure if there's been a recent study on the correlation between OBP and HR, but I suspect that relationship also plays a role in HR-happy teams' tendency to score more runs.
"I think walks are overrated unless you can run... If you get a walk and put the pitcher in a stretch, that helps. But the guy who walks and can't run, most of the time they're clogging up the bases for somebody who can run."
--Dusty Baker, Cubs manager (Chicago Daily Herald)Week of March 8, 2004
And Syd is mostly right, it comes from when many announcers where in their formative years either playing or learning their craft. But I think it's also that they are afraid of the newer advanced stats. It's something they don't understand so they dimish its importance by deriding those that use them as geeks or people that have never played. What the don't see, however, is that the younger generation is using those stats more than ever and it's becoming more common to see.
This is one of the reason I love watching Cubs broadcasts, Len Kasper works advanced stats into his commentary whenever he can, and goes out of his way to explain many of the ones he uses.
You win games with runs, a homerun guarantees runs. I like them.
If you've got a guy that can steal a base 80% of the time, send him. If you've got a guy that can steal 50% of the time, don't.
If you have got a great bunter at the plate facing a shaky defense, sure, lay down a squeeze bunt attempt.
If you've got a team of good home run hitters, don't criticize them for not being the '85 Cardinals.
If you're sacrifice bunting in the second inning with someone who is not the pitcher at the plate, you're decreasing your odds of scoring, period. (See http://www.tangotiger.net/re24.html)
The goal isn't to never take a risk. It's to take smart risks where the odds are on your side. Over the long term, playing smart odds and using the talent on your team in the best way possible will add up over time to more wins.
In your base-stealing argument, you're right, but what about the situation where you've got a 65% base-stealer, but the pitcher is particularly stingy and you've got a singles hitter at the plate. I like those types of situations.
I think that Lindbergh made a good argument here about the Yankees situation. My point is that I don't enjoy that style of baseball as much; I'd rather see the ball put in play. I find the 3 true outcomes to be less exciting.
With their good BA and OBP but poor SLG lineup, for the Mets to score, they need multiple hits in the same inning. For the Yanks to score, it takes one swing. Give me the one swing offense anyday.
AL EAST
New York 2.88
Toronto 2.82
Baltimore 2.69
Boston 2.36
Tampa Bay 1.81
AL WEST
Texas 2.43
Oakland 1.64
Anahiem(not calling them LA) 1.62
Seattle 1.26
Doesn't this ultimately lead people to believe that pitching performances in the AL West are less impressive just as similarly batting performances in the AL East are less impressive? Is a .275/.350/.500 slash line from a Yankee like a .250/.325/.425 slash line in Seattle? Is a 2.80 E.R.A. from an Oakland pitcher like a 3.80 E.R.A. from a Redsox's arm?
Similarly is the yankee's 'great offense' merely very good considering their park?
Want another shocking statistic?
Runs per game on the road:
New York Yankees 4.94
Seattle Mariners(!) 4.91
Q1: Which team leads MLB in home runs?
A: The Yankees with 112.
Q2: Which team leads MLB in home runs at home?
A: The Yankees with 58.
Q3: Which teams leads MLB in home runs on the road?
A: The Yankees with 54.
==================================================
Runs allowed on the roard, per game:
New York Yankees: 4.00
Seattle Mariners: 5.09
Point being, the high-HR characteristic of the new Yankee Stadium hurts the team's pitchers just as it helps their hitters.
==================================================
OPS+ and ERA+ may not be your cup of team, but:
OPS+: Yankees 109, Mariners 92
ERA+: Yankees 114, Mariners 86
The Mariners have had 4 or 5 extreme offensive performances on the road, including back to back games of 21 and 10 in Arlington, and back to back games of 12 and 10 in Arizona, two other hitter's parks. When the Mariners played their series in Yankee Stadium, they scored 10 runs in 3 games.
Go figure.
Sites like BP have created stats to compare pitchers and hitters as if they were in a neutral environment. Allowing someone to give or take away credit due to different offensive environments.
There are several parks that inflate offense, and several that do the opposite.
My reply was meant for the post above yours, not yours.
The Yankees home park is a JOKE. Not debatable when it comes to cheap HRs. It's been talked about, heck beating a dead horse about it. Two HRs tonight(Canos and Swisher) are both outs at most parks in MLB.
Then you can save your reply, you have no counter so don't make yourself look dumb by arguing.
ESPN reports it went 452 feet:
"Robinson Cano’s 452-foot go-ahead home run versus Miguel Batista in Sunday’s series finale..."
http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/49547/the-series-in-metrics-mets-vs-yankees-2
SInce Houston has the deepest center field in MLB at 436 feet, Cano's home run would not have been an out anywhere, let alone in most parks.
You only detract from your point and diminish your credibility through exageration. It is hard to convince people not to believe their lying eyes.
And to order anyone to refrain from diagreement with you, even calling them dumb in advance, is bush league and out of line. You don't get to dictate the conversation here.
But I guess since there is "no counter" to your post, it makes me "look dumb" to point out that you completely messed up.
Subscruber - qwik - was asking if players stats on different teams (or teams' offenses as a whole) whom play in different offensive environments are worth the same. I was simply stating that their are all-in-one offensive stats are already created that compare players (or teams) using a neutral environment so we can determine whose offensive output is more valuable.
In this, my necessary reply, I use actual data, so that I don't look dumb by making an assertion that's full of it.
You know, like stating Yankee Stadium is a joke without any evidence beyond my own anecdotal observation to back it up.
Plus, these past 3 games were at Citifield, not Yankee stadium!
I think part of this is the bias towards small ball and the logical idea that home runs often happen on mistakes where as you can always go to speed and manufacturing runs (it's easier to move a runner over than hit a homer; "speed never slumps").
I think part of it may be errant analogies to other sports. In basketball or football, defenses can change how they play to stop certain aspects of your offense. A one dimensional offense, when game planned against, can be shut down pretty easily.
In baseball, there's little game-planning difference between the regular season and the playoffs. Oh, sure, you might bring in more situational relievers or run more on a weak catcher or employ a shift, but relative to what happens in the NFL? It's nothing.
Percentage of runs scored on home runs, 2011 Regular season: 34.4%
Percentage of runs scored on home runs, 2011 Post-season: 41.5%
It's extreme in little league, and still pretty true in high school. Once you get to professional baseball, the fielders, even the bad ones, are pretty good, and these strategies don't work so well. But 10 years of "education" in small ball is tough to unlearn.
That's true for everybody (I will make this bet without even knowing the result - has ANY team ever had a better record when they DON'T hit a home run??).
Good thing these guys don't work for the Federal Reserve Bank. OK, wait. Maybe both ends would be better off if they did.