Flu-Like Symptoms: The Boring Index

One of the concerns about contemporary baseball is that it’s becoming boring. The Three True Outcomes[1]—walks, strikeouts, and home runs—have accounted for more than a third of all plate appearances so far this season, an all-time high.

That means less action on the field. We’re not just talking about, for example, fewer hit-and-runs; we’re talking less running altogether. Byron Buxton sprinting first-to-third, Jarrod Dyson chasing down a liner to the gap, Yasiel Puig throwing out a runner—that’s exciting. Players walking to and from the dugout, trotting around the bases, or taking first base on a walk—not so much. On a related note, 42 percent of runs so far this year have scored on homers, the highest percentage ever.

That being said, if you’re a fan, the Three True Outcomes aren’t necessarily boring. A Red Sox fan doesn’t think Chris Sale strikeouts are boring. A Reds fan knows the mayhem that can follow a walk to Billy Hamilton. Yankee fans watch Aaron Judge at-bats hoping for a home run. The Three True Outcomes are boring only if your team is the victim, not if it’s the perpetrator.

So let’s try to quantify boredom from the perspective of the batter, or of the fan watching the batter. A strikeout, if not fascist, is boring. Watching your team’s batters carry their bats back to the dugout isn’t exciting. And you know what’s an underrated play for being boring? Pop ups. Pop ups are pretty much like strikeouts: Automatic outs, no chance of advancing baserunners. (Well, like dropped third strikes, hardly ever.)

We’ll start our Boring Index by adding a batter’s strikeouts and pop ups. At the All-Star break, the strikeout leader was Miguel Sano with 120, and the pop up leader was Mookie Betts with 48, believe it or not. But nobody’s going to call Sano or Betts boring. We need to adjust boring strikeouts and pop ups with excitement.

Total bases are exciting! That way we give Sano and Betts credit for what they do when not striking out or hitting pop ups. I’m proposing this formula: SO + POP – 0.55 x TB.

Why that factor of 0.55? Because accumulating every plate appearance since 1950 (the first year for which we have pop-up data), that formula gives us a value close to zero. If a player’s SO + POP – 0.55 x TB is greater than zero, he leans boring. If it’s less than zero, he leans non-boring. And rather than go with raw numbers, let’s make this a rate stat by dividing it by plate appearances.

For example, this year Sano has 120 strikeouts, 11 pop ups, 162 total bases, and 345 plate appearances. (120 + 11 – 0.55 x 162) / 345 = .121. For Betts, it’s (33 + 48 – 0.55 x 173) / 399 = -.035. He’s been wholly non-boring. Let’s call this the Boring Index. The Boring Index, expressed like a batting average, is strikeouts plus pop ups minus 0.55 times total bases, all divided by plate appearances.

Here is the all-time leaderboard among batters with 250 or more plate appearances in a season:

Or, if you prefer, batting title qualifiers:

Basically Rob Deer and some other guys.

As a reality check, I looked at the least-boring players since 1950. I think this passes the sniff test:

No, I don’t entirely trust those pop-up numbers from years past, either. But that’s a good list, isn’t it? George Brett in 1980 played only 117 games due to injuries, but hit .390/.454/.664. His TAv was .392. He had 10.3 WARP and was an easy choice for MVP. And he struck out in only four percent of his plate appearances. You know who’s struck out that infrequently this season? Nobody.

So who’s The Most Boring Man in the World this year? Is anyone challenging Dunn’s single-season record, or Deer’s as a batting title qualifier? Here’s where we stood at the break, minimum 125 plate appearances:

Espinosa and his .162/.237/.276 slash line is in rarefied territory, but he seems likely to fall short of Dunn’s all-time record, and after being cut by the Angels over the weekend he’s not on pace to accumulate enough plate appearances to challenge Deer’s record for batting title qualifiers. Story and Buxton are on track to finish in the top 10 all time among batting title qualifiers, but not at the top of the list. So for all of the legitimate complaints about the way baseball is being played in 2017, nobody’s as boring as some of the players in the recent past.

But how about teams? Are there clubs that are threatening to set a new standard for being boring? Here are the all-time top 10:

It probably won’t surprise you that, rebuild project done, this year’s Astros are the only team in the majors with a negative Boring Index. Might anyone challenge the 2013 version of the club?

Why, yes, someone might. The Padres, who appear to be running some sort of weird personnel experiment this year, are on pace to shatter the team Boring Index record. So far they’re fourth in strikeouts, third in pop ups, and last in total bases. They’re slashing .243/.303/.374, which, among the 30 teams, equates to last/last/last. There may be no player on pace to take over as the all-time Most Boring Man in the World, but the Padres may be The Most Boring Team in the World, Ever.