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June 8, 2005

Lies, Damned Lies

A Tribe Called Mess

by Nate Silver

This column was originally supposed to be entitled "Is Bad Hitting Contagious?", and its subject was supposed to be the Cleveland Indians. The Indians, indeed, are managing just a .244/.308/.400 collective batting line. The 220 runs they've scored on the season is the lowest total in the American League, and the second worst in baseball behind only the anemic Astros. The Tribe are on pace to score just 648 times on the season, nearly 25% fewer than the 841 that PECOTA projected for them.

The popular point of view on the Indians, at least the one expressed by the sports bar denizens that I caught portions of the Indians-White Sox series with this past weekend, is that nobody on the team can hit at all, as though some undetected toxic swamp gas had arisen off of Lake Erie, preventing each and every Indians hitter from achieving his destiny. There are some possible sabermetric spins on this theory too. Perhaps there is some effect in which the underachieving of one hitter tends to lead to underachieving among other hitters? Perhaps the team isn't getting the opposing starter's pitch counts high enough? Perhaps the lack of runners on base triggers other hitters to swing for the fences and try to be a hero, thereby compounding the problem?

While these are questions that deserve further study, they aren't really on target in the case of the Indians. The problem in Cleveland isn't that nobody is hitting, but rather, that a few players are hitting especially poorly. Moreover, the players who are performing poorly are guys you'd expect to have greater-than-usual risks of such poor performances to begin with. There are some perfectly rational explanations for the Indians' problems, and there are also some perfectly rational solutions. Let's run through the lineup:

C Victor Martinez
Projected (BA/OBP/SLG/EqA): .287/.362/.464/.290
Actual (BA/OBP/SLG/EqA): .208/.281/.348/.222

I discussed Martinez's struggles a couple of weeks ago, and won't go into too much detail here. Slow-footed catchers are risky propositions, no matter how much they might impress in their debut seasons. PECOTA projected a 31% collapse rate for Martinez, a very high figure for an established player at this age. I am not suggesting that the Indians bench Martinez; that batting average will come up some, and he should at least be a significant contributor, if not a perennial All-Star. But the team does need to consider a position change in the longer term, and more off-days in the near term--Martinez has accumulated more PA on the season than any catcher except for Jason Kendall and Ivan Rodriguez.

1B Ben Broussard
Projected: .263/.351/.460/.285
Actual: .272/.327/.489/.281