Dick Allen's Baseball Blog - Baserunning (December 1, 2003)
Others may also be interested in my earlier, somewhat related, comments:
Factors that affect the chances of scoring (September 24, 2003)
--posted by TangoTiger at 10:23 AM EDT
Posted 3:37 p.m.,
December 4, 2003
(#1) -
mathteamcoach
I'm feeling bad that this post has gotten no interest. Dick Allen, you have a nice blog, keep it going!
Are these numbers accounting for pinch runners? It doesn't seem so. Many of the 'A' rated players are pinch-runner types, and if you are dividing the number of times the player scored by the number of times he reached first on his own merit, you are missing all of the times he was put on 1st or 2nd or 3rd base by his manager.
Run scoring is such a team-oriented statistic, I don't know how much this number tells us. Maybe someone could answer, or already has answered, this question: when a runner scores a run, how much of the credit should he get for that run? Pinch-runners certainly deserve a lot less than the guys who batted (or walked or whatever) their way onto the bases.
Posted 7:43 p.m.,
December 4, 2003
(#2) -
Crack
Gee, what a fizzle. I assumed that this had something to do with the real Prick Allen. I do commend him, though, for being smart enough to stay out of the public...
Posted 9:36 p.m.,
December 6, 2003
(#3) -
Jhat
(homepage)
Thanks, mathteamcoach. As you'll see above the running thing, Bill James was good enough to 'critique' what I'd written and pointed out the same thing.
The pinch running factor and the batting order thing are very important, probably too important to ignore. But it was quite fun to play around with the numbers, so all was not lost.
PS My "Crash" Dick Allen book is at my folks' house, and I'll be picking it up over christmas. After that I'll be excerpting bits of it, so if you want to read about the "real" Dick Allen then you'll be able to do so.
cheers!