I haven’t made a contribution here in a while, somewhat because life has been a touch too much in the way, and moreso because it’s just been too depressing to contemplate Tiger thoughts since the collapse that began with the trip west right before the trading deadline.

I’m firmly in the Alan Trammell camp. Would I have left in Nate Robertson a couple games back? Yeah, I probably would have. But a manager has to manage the egos on the team, too. My dad hated Sparky Anderson‘s “captain hook routine”, which is what he called it when Sparky would pull a pitcher who was throwing perfectly fine for a fresh arm out of the bullpen. Even in Game 5 of the ’84 Series, he wondered why Sparky wouldn’t trust Dan Petry past 3-2/3 innings, after all, the Pads had only tied the game… But then, once you bring on Bill Scherrer, why, oh why, do you replace him with Aurelio Lopez after one lousy single among his 3 outs? Then you trust Senor Smoke for 2-1/3 perfect innings — that’s 7 up, 7 down — but you bring on Willie Hernandez for the final 2 innings? Let’s just say that the homer Willie gave up to Kurt Bevacqua to draw the Pads to just a 5-4 deficit was not greeted well. I wasn’t as vocally anti-Sparky as my dad was, because I took the big picture into account. You can’t argue with results. Ask my dad about the Willie Hernandez-for-Aurelio Lopez move today, he’ll get a bulging vein in his forehead over it, I guarantee you.

Well, I spent far more words on that than I intended, but part of that was the nice surprise of finding the fantastic play-by-play of Game 5 of the ’84 World Series available from the fine folks of retrosheet.

What I really wanted to comment on today was the demise of Rondell White to a separated left shoulder. I had noticed several times already that Rondell was among the league leaders in batting average, a stat that surprised me. I had not been under the impression that Rondell was the 8th-best hitter in the AL. Then I set out to create a chart that might show why I had that perception. But let me explain something first. Bill James sometimes talked about how much a player’s batting average represented his total offensive output, which got me to thinking about Rondell’s batting average versus his OPS. Now, remember that OPS consists of batting average twice plus a player’s walk rate, plus his extra bases (or isolated power). For instance, let’s say it’s Opening Day, and the top 4 players of your lineup come up 5 times each. If player A goes 3-for-5 on all singles, he has a 600 batting average, 600 OBP and a 600 SLG, for a 1200 OPS. If player B goes 2-for-5 with a home run, he has a 400 batting average, a 400 OBP and a 1000 SLG for a 1400 OPS. If player C goes 2-for-4, both singles, plus a walk, he has a 500 batting average, a 600 OBP and a 500 SLG for an OPS of 1100. If player D goes 1-for-3 with a triple and 2 walks, he has a 333 batting average, a 600 OBP and a 1000 SLG for an OPS of 1600. In that situation, the man with the worst batting average has the team lead, rater surprisingly to some, in OPS. However, the guy who just had 3 singles isn’t so shabby, either, because those singles count toward both his OBP and his SLG, so they are essentially counted twice. Anyways, that is how I came up with the following chart (of the top 25 batting averages in the American League), with the final stat being the percentage of the player’s OPS coming from his batting average (for the formula-friendly, that’s 2xBA divided by OPS).

1. J. Damon – BA 332, OPS 852 – 77.9%
2. P. Polanco – BA 329, OPS 817 – 80.5%
3. M. Young – BA 327, OPS 886 – 73.8%
4. V. Guerrero – BA 326, OPS 975 – 66.9%
5. B. Roberts – BA 319, OPS 918 – 69.5%
6. M. Tejada – BA 317, OPS 911 – 69.6%
7. A. Rodriguez – BA 314, OPS 1013 – 62.0%
8. R. White – BA 313, OPS 836 – 74.9%
9. T. Hafner – BA 309, OPS 974 – 63.4%
10. I. Suzuki – BA 308, OPS 794 – 77.6%
11. J. Varitek – BA 305, OPS 939 – 64.5%
12. D. Jeter – BA 304, OPS 831 – 73.2%
13. D. Ortiz – BA 303, OPS 993 – 61.0%
14. J. Peralta – BA 302, OPS 906 – 66.7%
15. G. Sheffield – BA 302, OPS 925 – 65.3%
16. S. Hillenbrand – BA 301, OPS 835 – 72.1%
17. H. Matsui – BA 299, OPS 861 – 69.5%
18. M. Sweeney – BA 297, OPS 864 – 68.8%
19. J. Mauer – BA 297, OPS 805 – 73.8%
20. C. Crisp – BA 296, OPS 788 – 75.1%
21. R. Ibanez – BA 295, OPS 819 – 72.0%
22. J. Lugo – BA 295, OPS 745 – 79.1%
23. B. Mueller – BA 294, OPS 809 – 72.7%
24. I. Rodriguez – BA 290, OPS 752 – 77.1%
25. D. DeJesus – BA 290, OPS 791 – 73.3%

There you have it, Placido Polanco has the least offensive contribution outside of his batting average among this group, and since this is the top 25 batting averages in the league, he’s likely also the leader in that category league-wide. Other players coming in at worse than White are Ichiro, Coco Crisp, Julio Lugo and the Tigers’ own Ivan Rodriguez, mainly due to his precipitous drop-off in the walk department (just 6 in 386 at-bats… far worse than his career average). Or, in other words, the Tigers are owners of (quite likely… again, I haven’t calculated these for all American Leaguers) 3 of the top 6 emptiest batting averages in the league. Small wonder why we’re having problems scoring runs.

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