The Orioles and LI
Posted by cookinwithgas on May 6, 2007
I have posted additional information on the stats page. One addition is the 2007 wOBA leaders amongst qualified batters (through May 3). The stats needed for the formula are from Baseball Prospectus.
I have also added stats that show how Orioles pitchers and batters have done in the various levels of Leverage situations - Low, Medium, High, and Very High. I’ve never seen them separated in this fashion. Of course, that probably just means that I’m the only one who sees value in doing so. We always hear about how certain batters do in clutch situations vice non-clutch. I’m thinking this shows us just this. Of course, I also have to give the standard sample size warning.
So what do the numbers tell us? They’ve only had 31 opportunities in Very High Leverage situations, so I’ll skip those numbers initially. Orioles batters actually perform better in Medium Leverage situations than they do in Low Leverage situations. Their OPS by level (Low / Medium / High):
637 / 781 / 689
So they actually perform much better in Medium Leverage situations than they do in Low Leverage situations, before coming back to earth somewhat in High Leverage situations.
One concern that I have is that their BB% and K% each goes in the wrong direction as the situation gets tougher:
BB% – 8.7 / 7.1 / 5.2
K% – 15.0 / 15.8 / 24.3
It would be interesting to see how these numbers compare to league averages.
The team leader in OPS in Low Leverage situations is Freddie Bynum (who saw that coming?), who was helped immensely by his home run and only eight opportunities. The true leader is Mora (with only a .770 OPS). Brian Roberts walked 20% of the time in these situations.
Kevin Millar leads the team in Medium Leverage situations with a 1.289 OPS, not to mention that he walks 19% of the time. Based on WPA, Millar counts for a win all by himself with .469 WPA points.
Miguel Tejada leads those with at least 10 opportunities with a .904 OPS in High Leverage situations – even though he has yet to walk in 16 plate appearances. Patterson has really hurt the team in these situations (accounting for almost 1 loss all by himself).
Patterson, Roberts, Millar, Markakis, Gomez, and Gibbons have all come through in Very High Leverage situations.
I also track how the team performs in situations in which the LI was 2.0 or higher. Through their first 30 games, the Orioles had 290 such situations – 145 offensively, 145 defensively. This works out to 12% of all plays.
Starting pitchers produced positive results in 40 of 62 opportunities. They had an overall WPA of .645 (so they have been 1.29 wins over .500). They’ve held opposing batters to a .598 OPS in these situations. The downside is that opposing batters have walked 17% of the time in these situations.
Relievers produced positive results in only 47 of 83 opportunities. They had an overall WPA of 1.136 (so they have been 2.72 wins below .500). Opposing batters have to the tune of a .873 OPS (and .410 OBP) in these situations. Ouch.
Position players produced positive results in 49 of 145 opportunities (34% success rate compared to 35% in other situations). They had an overall WPA of .065 (so they have been 0.13 wins over .500). They’ve posted a .771 OPS in these situations.
Overall, they have a WPA of (-).543 in these situations. The overall team WPA is about (-)1.000 (by virtue of having lost two more games than they’ve won), which means they have about a (-).457 WPA in sub 2.0 Leverage situations.
NOTE: The data needed for this article is from the great site, Fangraphs.
