Does a high percentate of swings and misses mean poor hitting?

[BuckeyeGuy]

You have to understand, no one person is coming up with this.

I sort of figured given that you asked how do you measure it lol!

The feeling is, pitches per pa needs to be compared to the team average. In theory, that will show aggression/passiveness as players who are below the average in PPPA will be the more aggressive.

I disagree on the stat used, but that was my point about defining what we mean when we say "aggressive" or "passive."

But, what you need to do is make sure the next time you tell Mary she needs to be more aggressive, she has to understand it exactly the same way you do, and not just assume she understands what you mean.

Absolutely.

Much of the time these discussions don't get started correctly. You must define any subjective/descriptive terms for everyone and get consensus on the definitions before you can even try to find the right or best or most useful way to measure.

Lower than average (how much lower??? this is why I suggested using 1 or 2 standard deviations as a cutoff) PPPA seems not good, as it leaves out the batters who foul off a lot of pitches, or batters like Ted Williams (and apparently Mike Trout) who would take strike 1 nearly every at bat. The % of pitches swung at, controlled for % strikes seen seems much better, IMO. The best part about using a GLM in this case is that for every confounding factor you want to include you can simply control for it in the equation.

Not sure I like RC as a stand alone stat, but I'm willing to use it here. However, I wouldn't use it trying to explain my lineup to parents lol!

 

[coach james]

I think it boils down to what YOU consider a great hitter is...
Is he/she crushing 30% of balls hit to or over the fence, or are they just making contact with 80% but getting out on easy grounders?

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

I think it boils down to what YOU consider a great hitter is...

Well, at that point you can just toss the stats out the window lol!

 

[Scorekeeper]

..Much of the time these discussions don't get started correctly. You must define any subjective/descriptive terms for everyone and get consensus on the definitions before you can even try to find the right or best or most useful way to measure.

I agree to a point. But a lot of times I try to get people to define things for themselves so they can learn 1st hand how freakin’ hard it is to do that and get much of a consensus.

Lower than average (how much lower??? this is why I suggested using 1 or 2 standard deviations as a cutoff) PPPA seems not good, as it leaves out the batters who foul off a lot of pitches, or batters like Ted Williams (and apparently Mike Trout) who would take strike 1 nearly every at bat. The % of pitches swung at, controlled for % strikes seen seems much better, IMO. The best part about using a GLM in this case is that for every confounding factor you want to include you can simply control for it in the equation.

That’s why looking at team averages as the guide works for me. Because for every Ted Williams on a team, there’s gonna be a Mad Vladd.

But just for S&G, how would you control for % of pitches swung for % of strikes seen?

Not sure I like RC as a stand alone stat, but I'm willing to use it here. However, I wouldn't use it trying to explain my lineup to parents lol!

Why is RC any more difficult to explain to parents as the basis for making lineup decisions than any other metric? To me, runs is what making a lineup is about, so if it’s the best indicator of runs, that’s its rationale.

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

But just for S&G, how would you control for % of pitches swung for % of strikes seen?

By "control" I am talking about a constant that is part of the general linear model that I would create. I'd have to dig out my stats lecture notes from last year to give you the methodology, but I think we can agree that players who see a higher % of strikes are going to have a higher % pitches swung at? We distill that to a constant that gets applied to all players we evaluate.

And OPS is way easier to explain than RC, at least to rec parents lol!

 

[Scorekeeper]

By "control" I am talking about a constant that is part of the general linear model that I would create. I'd have to dig out my stats lecture notes from last year to give you the methodology, but I think we can agree that players who see a higher % of strikes are going to have a higher % pitches swung at? We distill that to a constant that gets applied to all players we evaluate.

I don’t know if players who see a higher percentage of strikes will have a higher percentage of pitches swung at. It sounds logical, but needs to be tested. I’ll see what I can do to prove it one way or the other.

And OPS is way easier to explain than RC, at least to rec parents lol!

That’s only because most newbies have never heard of RC, not because it’s harder to calculate or understand. The reason is familiarity. If you make those parents familiar with RC and explain why it’s a much better indicator, there’s no reason they wouldn’t understand it.

 

[Scorekeeper]

Well BuckeyeGuy, I don’t know if this really PROVES anything, but it does show what I have for data on it. As you can see, while it does relate to some degree to strike percentages, the % of total pitches swung at doesn’t relate well to strike percentages.

Of course I might be misunderstanding what you’re looking for.

View attachment pitchtypes5.pdf

 

[Westwind]

I would like to see someone start a thread explaining and discussing value of rc stat. Would like to know how it should be used for offensive strategy and lineup purposes.

 

[straightleg]

I was wondering if I could spot any kind of relation between what rate a batter swings and misses and some other typical hitting metrics, and came up with the attached. The only thing I really saw right off the bat was that the batters who swung and missed at the highest rate were the ones who had the best OPS and Runs Created numbers. Hmmmm.





A lot of girls want to lift their head early in the swing. Might look for that?



SL