Expected Batting Average

Your baseball client’s contract is about to expire and you and your interns are crunching numbers to make sure that he is properly valued in the upcoming negotiations with various organizations.  This client is a position player, so your standard statistics of batting average, home runs, RBIS, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage will be computated and compared to others in the league.  Will you bring something unique to the table if you use more creative, new-types of statistics to show your client’s value, or will an organization’s GM laugh you right out the door?

Rick Karcher of Sports Law Blog found an interesting piece in USA Today that discusses a brand new statistic, that if held to be reputable, would be an interesting tool for an agent to bring into an arbitration hearing or contract negotiation.  It is called Expected Bating Average, or xBA.  A team is interested in a position player not for what he has done in the past (although his past performance may still sell future tickets before he even steps up to the plate), but mostly for the runs he will generate in the future.  If there were a solid statistic to predict such success, then it may be useful for an agent to at least try to convince a GM of its effectiveness.

Karcher ripped the important part out of the USA Today article:

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It does start with a batter’s ability to distinguish between balls and strikes, which we can measure using his walk/strikeout rate. Once he’s determined a hittable pitch, we can measure his contact rate: (at-bats — strikeouts) / at-bats. But once contact is made, we enter a gray area.  The odds of a batted ball falling for a hit are only partially within the batter’s control. The stronger his power and speed skills — along with his propensity to hit the ball on the ground, in the air or on a line — the more control he may have over the outcome. But even the hardest-hit ball can become an out.

“Expected batting average,” or xBA, calculates what a player’s batting average should be based upon these component events along with a normalization for aberrant batting average on balls-in-play (BABIP) levels.

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I would not expect any sports agent to be able to compute the statistics him/herself, but the more ammo that you have with you, the better of your client may be.