After working on the Fred Lewis post some, I got to thinking about how the Giants ranked over the last 10 years as a team in BB%. BB% is simply BB/PA or how many times per plate appearance a batter draws a walk. League average for hitters has tended to be between 8-9% in recent times. I also subtracted Barry Bonds’ BB% contributions from the overall team just for fun and to see how much he was impacting the overall BB% line.
Quick thoughts:
- You can see that the league average for BB% was up between 1999-2000, posting rates of 9%+. But, I had forgotten of how well the Giants actually walked, as a team, at one point that wasn’t all that long ago. From 1998-2000, even if you subtracted Bonds’ BB% from the team, the Giants still walked at an above-average rate. In 1998 Bill Mueller posted a line of: .294/.383/.395 with a 12.7 BB%. Taking 1998 for example, the Giants also had players like Darryl Hamilton (13.5%) and Stan Javier (13.2%) putting up excellent BB%’s.
- Thinking of Bill Mueller, he was always one of my favorite Giants that was, I think, underrated to an extent. He was a average-ish defender (check out some of his TZ numbers) at third base that knew how to take a walk. We often hear that Conor Gillespie is compared to Mueller because they’re similar players in skill-set, and if Conor can turn into Bill Mueller, we’d all be very lucky.
- You can see that as Bonds really started to peak in his career and go crazy, he was the reason that the Giants had an above-average BB%. Check out the huge spike in the 2004 BB%. I’m guilty of this all the time, but as great as Bonds was, when I look at his numbers today sometimes I’m still in awe of what he did at the plate. For example: in ’04 he hit .362/.609/.812. That’s an OBP of six hundred and nine! Though, to be fair that includes the 120 times in ’04 that Bonds was intentionally walked. He was walked intentionally twice as much as any hitter on the 2008 Giants that walked the old fashioned way. The team high for walks in ’08 was 59 walks by Randy Winn. Anyways, back to his amazing ’04, that season Bonds had a BB% (which remember, doesn’t include his IBB’s) of 37.6%. By standard walk alone, Bonds walked in more than 1/3 of his plate appearances.
- When Bonds missed 99% of the 2005 season, the team BB% quickly came crashing down. It’s the second biggest difference between the league BB% and the team BB% on our plot. The Giants team in ’05 was -1.36% under the league average for BB%. The biggest difference between league and team BB% was for the ’08 season, the Giants were -1.46% under the league average for walks by plate appearance.
- I didn’t want to this to be a purely Barry Bonds post, but it’s kind of turned out that way. It’s hard not to include him in any discussion that deals with the Giants and the base on balls.
- The 2008 team just didn’t walk much. As previously mentioned, Randy Winn drew the most walks but the highest BB% of the ’08 team for full-time players goes to Fred Lewis with a 9.8 BB%. The lowest goes to Bengie Molina and his 3.5 BB%.
Comment Starter: Prediction time. True or False, in 2009 the Giants will post a league average team BB%.
False.
They just don’t have enough batters that are patient enough to draw that many walks. I can’t remember the number of times the Giants’ side was retired in 14 or 15 pitches in 2008. I know this is a stats based site yet I am still going to go with a super tanker butt load amount of times they gave up 3 outs in less then 16 pitches. Tell those 14 pitch sides become a lot fewer for even a chance at league average in BB% to happen.
Fales.
Really, really false.
Why?
Paitiently aggressive. That’s why.
Giants NL rank in runs scored each year:
1998: 2nd
1999: 3rd
2000: 3rd
2001: 5th
2002: 3rd
2003: 6th
2004: 2nd
2005: 15th
2006: 9th
2007: 15th
2008: 15th
It’s interesting that when their walk rate was above average, so was their offense. No, wait, interesting is the wrong word. Expected, that’s the word.
Great numbers, Marcello. But who needs runs when you can get all aggressive and stuff?
/brass knuckles
Kidding aside, the BB% graph is almost a time line of when the Giants were good. It was amazing to look back at the 1998-200 teams. I had forgotten that we once had high OBP (ie: non out-making) players.
And just looking at the transition between 2004-2005 when Bonds was hurt. The team got on base less and scored less runs. Going from 2nd to 15th in runs scored is just brutal.
And yet, for some reason, the Giants continue to undervalue the abilty to just get on base. That’s incredibly frustrating. Argh.
I have a problem with just throwing out walk rates, observing that they’re low, then concluding that the reason they’re low is because the Giants are impatient or have a flawed approach to hitting.
The correlation suggested by this post goes something like this:
over aggressiveness -> low BB% -> low run totals = bad offensive approach = bad offense
This assumes that the Giants are intentionally NOT walking, which assumption is at least implied throughout the post and in the comments section, if not directly stated.
The reality is, the Giants don’t walk NOT because of impatience (minus Molina) and NOT because of a team philosophy that encourages impatience, but because they can’t hit! Specifically, THEY CAN’T HIT HOMERUNS!
They don’t walk because pitchers throw them strikes with impunity.
The real correlation is more like this:
lack of power -> higher % of strikes thrown -> fewer pitches seen -> low BB% -> low run totals = bad offense
(wherein approach/philosophy is irrelevant)
On a related note, this is why I have a hard time seeing how encouraging Lewis to adjust his swing to try and hit homeruns will have any effect on his BB%. Homerun hitters walk more than anyone.
This, of course, assumes that Lewis CAN be a homerun hitter, which proposition is still unknown.
@MrLomez,
>> I have a problem with just throwing out walk rates, observing that they’re low, then concluding that the reason they’re low is because the Giants are impatient or have a flawed approach to hitting.
I never really made this correlation, the graph was historical — to show the BB% trend over the last 10 years.
Again, the intro paragraph:
After working on the Fred Lewis post some, I got to thinking about how the Giants ranked over the last 10 years as a team in BB%. BB% is simply BB/PA or how many times per plate appearance a batter draws a walk
Marcello does make a good point. But, I feel that you’re using a strawman here, no one ever said that the Giants are 100% lousy because they don’t walk. But, it is a part of the problem.
>> The reality is, the Giants don’t walk NOT because of impatience (minus Molina) and NOT because of a team philosophy that encourages impatience, but because they can’t hit! Specifically, THEY CAN’T HIT HOMERUNS!
Or, even more generally, we don’t have good hitters.
>> On a related note, this is why I have a hard time seeing how encouraging Lewis to adjust his swing to try and hit homeruns will have any effect on his BB%. Homerun hitters walk more than anyone.
But, is he a homerun hitter? Which takes us back to the Fred Lewis post. He’s got the skills to hit 20 HR’s, but it’s not outlandish to think that he’ll alter his plate approach in order to hit 20 HR’s (if he can reach that number at all).
Put it like this, what’s the point if Fred slugs .475 if his OBP is .310?
And, don’t discount the value of walks — ie: not making outs.
wOBA value’s batted ball events in the following manner:
(0.72xNIBB + 0.75xHBP + 0.90x1B + 0.92xRBOE + 1.24x2B + 1.56x3B + 1.95xHR) / PA
You’ll notice that walks are valued less than anything else, but they do add up. Especially over the course of a season.
The post itself less so (or not at all), but the comments very blatantly accuse the Giants of being impatient.
My point is, that is completely the wrong way to interpret this data.
BTW, I happen to agree with you 100% about the value of walks.
< qualification of comment that is also a kind of apology > It occurs to me that you may feel like the only reason I come on here and comment is to pick fights (argue) with your points.
Not entirely true.
Sabermetrics, when used carelessly, is one of my pet peeves. I don’t think you use them carelessly.
< /qualification of comment that is also a kind of apology >
Somehow the end tag got left off of that last post.
Comment 10 is an incomplete thought.
It should go on to say that I think the people here are generally open-minded about reasonable debate, so it’s a good place to argue the merit of when and how it’s appropriate to use Sabermetrics. Etc.
But that got left off too.
And now I’ve just posted 4 comments in a row.
And additionally feel like something of an ass.
/going to hide under rock for a minute
COMMENT SPREE!
>> Sabermetrics, when used carelessly, is one of my pet peeves. I don’t think you use them carelessly.
Thanks, I try not to. I’d hope you call me out if you felt I was, this leads to (usually) good dialogue and it makes me better in the end.
I’m glad you post here, the more the merrier in my opinion. We don’t always see eye-to-eye but your arguments are usually well thought out and intelligible. That’s good enough for me.
>> It should go on to say that I think the people here are generally open-minded about reasonable debate, so it’s a good place to argue the merit of when and how it’s appropriate to use Sabermetrics. Etc.
Thanks again, I think so too. I think we’ve got some great commenters on this site and I hope to continue to grow that base.
I honestly don’t care what people post, the guidelines aren’t strict here. Just as long as you aren’t a flaming ass about it, it’s going to be fine 99% of the time.
Post on Mr. Lomez, post on.
I believe the Giants are an impatient team because I watched a lot of games AND there is some data about it.
Good hitters (with or without power) are usually more selective which causes them walk more. The Giants wouldn’t turn into a powerhouse just by taking more walks, but they would have scored more runs.
My problem is that the Giants organization does seem to undervalue walks. I don’t believe this just because data shows they don’t walk. I believe this because they say things like “we don’t want to teach how to walk” and “Noonan has the best plate discipline in the orginization.”
I agree with Chilibean in that I think there probably is an organizational philosophy — on some level, majors, minors, etc. — that preaches ‘aggressiveness’.
In 2008, the Giants were 3rd in the majors for Swing% (The Royals and Astros were 1-2..ugh)
http://www.fangraphs.com/teams.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&type=5&season=2008&month=0
In 2005 without Bonds, they were 7th in the majors.
Swing% is a FanGraphs statistics and it’s defined as:
Swing%: The overall percentage of pitches a batter swings at.
I think it’s one part philosophy and another part player personal. Which, the acquisition of is probably influenced in some way by the organizational philosophy. The Noonan comment is still puzzling.
/emerges from rock
>>I think there probably is an organizational philosophy — on some level, majors, minors, etc. — that preaches ‘aggressiveness’.<<
Maybe. The point I’m trying to make is, we can’t tell from any of this data whether or not that’s true.
Swing %, just like BB% can just as easily be a function of bad hitters (i.e – more strikes thrown to them), as it as a function of untoward aggressiveness.
—
Question: Is there a point at which a team (not a player) can be OVERpatient – where BB% gets so high and swing% so low that those values start to negatively correlate to run production?
I’m thinking specifically of the A’s last year, who walked a boatload but could not score runs.
From Ted Williams’ book “The Science of Hitting”:
>> My first rule of hitting was to get a good ball to hit. <<
Whether hitters are too aggressive or not aggressive enough is probably less important than knowledge of the strike zone. Even free swingers like Pablo Sandoval ought to be able to “work the count” by knowing what pitches to lay off of (which would depend a great deal on the game situation, of course). This is supposedly why we have coaches and etc.
I worry that we don’t really have instructors–just guys with big chaws who say “way to smack that ball, kid.”
The Giants were also third in the league in swinging at pitches out of the strike zone. So, combined with what Chris wrote in 15, the Giants were swinging often and without discipline. At this point, given what we’ve heard from the front office this offseason, it’s pretty clearly an organizational philosophy.
I’m not expecting apples to be oranges here (as in, I’m not expecting them to tell Sandoval to go up trying to walk), but it would be nice to see that the front office actually knows how above average offenses function.