Numbers Don't Lie, Vol. 1: The Best Hitters in Baseball

The season has officially begun and I would like to introduce a weekly column that I will devote to ranking the top ten players based on their batting statistics. I have written a few stories about statistics before, and have gotten some mixed feedback. One person was not thrilled with my assessment of Ichiro Suzuki, and advised me to go back to fellating men for a living; I was not charmed. I understand that there is a kind of inborn resistance to new kinds of baseball quantification, for some reason batting average, an old tried and true quantification of production, is OK, but other more meaningful statistics are too esoteric and engender a firm backlash.

(Reprinted from an earlier post). I rank players on five offensive criteria. Out Average (outs/plate appearances), Runs Created (I use the equation from Baseball-Reference: (hits + walks) x (totalbases)/ (at bats + walks), OPS (OBP+ Slugging Average), Run Production Average (a stat I developed to measure outcomes over potential ((runs + runs batted in)/plate appearances)/team OPS), and Run Scoring Average which is the same as RPA minus the runs batted in. I factor this in to give added weight to run scorers because I believe scoring runs is more difficult than driving them in. I rank each player in those five realms, and then average the ranking, thus giving equal weight to each statistic.

These are the rankings from last season. The number is the average ranking in each category; the closer to 1 obviously the better.

AL

1. Alex Rodriguez, NYY, 3B, 2.2

2. Magglio Ordonez, DET, RF, 3.2

3. David Ortiz, BOS, DH, 3.2

4. Carlos Pena, TBR, 1B, 4.8

5. Jim Thome, CHW, DH, 10.2

6. Curtis Granderson, DET, CF, 14

7. Jorge Posada, NYY, C, 14

8. Vladimir Guerrero, LAA, RF, 14.8

9. Alex Rios, TOR, RF, 18.6

10. Grady Sizemore, CLE, CF, 18.6

-There is one caveat, If Mark Texieira played all of 2008 with the Rangers he would have ranked sixth.

-The biggest surprise I think is that Rodriguez who had such a bang up year was nearly overtaken by Ordonez and Ortiz. Interestingly, Rodriguez had 299 runs produced (runs + RBI), the most since Babe Ruth produced 303 in 1930. There are also no left fielders, which is kind of strange—the best left fielder was Hideki Matsui, who ranked 12th.

-Granderson, Posada, Rios, and Sizemore do not have what I would call max power (one home run every 21 at bats), but they all hit home runs around every 25 at bats or so. I would say Rios was probably the most underrated player in the AL last year. There was talk about the Giants trading Tim Lincecum for him over the off-season. It probably would not have been the best move for the Giants; his numbers would suffer in that wide-open park and in that line up.

NL

1. Chipper Jones, ATL, 3B, 3.4

2. Matt Holliday, COL, LF, 5

3. Prince Fielder, MIL, 1B, 6.6

4. Chase Utley, PHI, 2B, 8.4

5. David Wright, NYM, 3B, 8.6

6. Albert Pujols, STL, 1B, 9.2

7. Adam Dunn, CIN, LF, 11.2

8. Hanley Ramirez, FLA, SS, 12

9. Ryan Braun, MIL, 3B, 12.4

10. Ryan Howard, PHI, 1B, 13.2

-These numbers are definitely weirder than the AL where MVP voters seemed to have a better handle on the numbers. Jimmy Rollins was probably the worst MVP selection since Ichiro in 2001. Rollins led all of baseball in outs made. I do not understand this Philadelphia bias, last year, to me, it should have been Holliday, and the year before, it should have been Albert Pujols, but it matters not a bit what I think. Given the numbers above, not only was Rollins not the best hitting shortstop in the NL, he was the third best hitter in his own infield; his ranking, by the way was 14th.

-If Barry Bonds had enough plate appearances he would have been sixth, and again, Mark Teixiera would have been on the list also if he played the full season in Atlanta.

-Speaking of Atlanta, I was absolutely shocked by Chipper Jones’ year. If you look at the numbers, the gulf between him and Holliday was actually larger than that between Alex Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez and David Ortiz.

-I think the reason he snuck up on everyone the way he did is obvious, he only had 600 plate appearances, so his raw numbers don’t really jump out at you. I wonder what his numbers would have been like if Andruw Jones did not have an absolute crap year, which reverberates throughout the line up.

-In a very peculiar way I think Chipper Jones is one of the most underrated players in the game. He will probably end up being the best hitting third baseman—dare I say it—of all time. Mike Schmidt is the golden goose, and Jones is I think a more complete hitter than Schmidt. The test is of course, eras. Schmidt played in an obviously more constricted offensive era, Jones, played through a livelier era—though not the liveliest, look at the thirties. Offense is settling down though, if Jones can keep doing what he did last year, or some semblance thereof, I think he will be considered the best.

-Next Sunday I will post the inaugural rankings for the 2008 season.