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June 18, 2009 Checking the NumbersWho Spiked the OBP?
Last week, we profiled Pedro Feliz of the Phillies, noting his abnormally high on-base percentage and calculating the probability that a player so historically poor at reaching base safely would exceed his 90th-percentile PECOTA in this specific area. The odds were low, to say the least, with Feliz having just a 2.4 percent chance of hovering around .360 over a 52-game stretch while having a paltry .292 career rate. Though past performance is not always a concrete indicator of what will happen in the future, the number of people in the the camp optimistic that Feliz's rate can remain as high for the remainder of the season has to be fewer in population than the number of fans inspired by Nickelback lyrics. But what if it does remain in the same vicinity, and Feliz finishes the season with an on-base percentage higher than .340? How often do rate shifts in this department occur? Have those with similarly large OBP spikes been able to maintain the rates as new skills? Or can they be chalked up as extreme outliers? Before the season began, I placed Cliff Lee under the rate-shift microscope, investigating how frequently pitchers have managed to reverse their ground-ball and fly-ball percentages, as well as whether or not those shifts stuck. The research concluded that shifts as vast as the one experienced by Lee last season, after a few seasons at an established lower level, were few and far between; however, those capable of altering their balls-in-play results to such an extent were increasingly more likely to sustain the new rates as the years progressed. A similar methodology could be employed with regards to Feliz and the OBP-spike gang. To begin, I queried for all batters with at least 200 plate appearances in five straight seasons from 1954 onward. The resulting set, comprised of 5,688 player seasons, was not grouped by hitter, because there were several spans present for some players, for instance: Bobby Abreu from 2000-04, 2001-05, 2002-06, and so forth. When grouped, 1,107 distinct players emerged. With the players pooled, the next step involved extracting only those with on-base percentages equal to, or below, .330 in each of the first four qualifying seasons. Of the 653 player seasons with a .330 OBP or below in four straight seasons, only 250 players were unique. The weighted average of those four seasons was calculated and subtracted from the on-base percentage posted in the fifth season. These steps essentially offered up players with consistently poor rates over a predetermined span, and their deltas in the fifth season. Only those players with deltas in excess of 30 points were granted further admission, allowing just 97 seasons belonging to 87 unique players to move on in our contest. For those keeping score, relative to unique players, 23 percent were consistently poor in the OBP front, and 35 percent of that group jumped by 30 or more points following four low-rate seasons. How did those 87 hitters with substantial spikes fare in the next campaign? The cutoff was set at 15 points, so that a player who jumped up to, say, .350, could drop no lower than .335 in the sixth year. Only 16 of the 87 players, or 18.4 percent, were able to sustain their new rates. Unlike the earlier research on Lee and ground-ball rates, no real trend emerges here. There are few players capable of lasting in the big leagues with such poor on-base percentages, so a jump is somewhat expected, or else they might find themselves seeking other forms of employment. That such a low percentage of these jumps are sustained speaks to the ingredients that make up on-base percentages, but before digging deeper, here are the 16 players and some of their data: Player Year1-4 Avg OBP Yr5 OBP Delta Luis Aparicio 1965-68 .293 .352 .059 Barry Bonnell 1978-81 .302 .342 .040 Bob Boone 1984-87 .285 .352 .067 Ed Brinkman 1965-68 .257 .328 .071 Enos Cabell 1979-82 .293 .335 .042 Bert Campaneris 1970-73 .299 .347 .048 Roberto Clemente 1956-59 .318 .357 .039 Dave Concepcion 1970-73 .290 .335 .045 Wes Covington 1959-62 .318 .354 .036 Gary Gaetti 1991-94 .294 .329 .035 Charlie Hayes 1989-92 .283 .355 .072 Don Kessinger 1965-68 .282 .332 .050 Dave Kingman 1974-77 .286 .336 .050 Tommy McCraw 1968-71 .293 .333 .040 John Shelby 1984-88 .281 .320 .039 Robin Yount 1978-81 .316 .379 .063
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I think it might be useful to look at BB% (or UBB%), rather than pure OBP, since a large factor in OBP is batting average, which we all know is highly variable on BABIP. If you look at Pedro Feliz, you will see a player who, from 2001-2007 walked 4.9% of the time. Since coming to the Phillies, he's walked 7.2% of the time - last year was a career high at 7.1%, and this year he's at 7.5%. Only last year, his BABIP was .251, considerably worse than his career hitherto BABIP of .269 (which is still atrocious). This year it's .339 - hopefully, if he's swinging at fewer bad balls, his BABIP will climb a bit higher than .269 (with the new hitFX, I would be interested to see, once we have the data, if players who have upticks in their BB% also hit the ball harder afterwards, and can therefore raise their BABIP).
His OBP will likely drop lower than it has been now, but his OBP-BA should remain a bit higher than it has been career.
Which, if I finish the article (I started jumping around to the players you listed and Feliz's BB% numbers), you looked at that and noted last year's improvement. Whoops.
No worries, but I do like when people read everything before commenting, as you essentially just re-wrote my final paragraphs, haha.