It is really not too difficult, either. In fact, it's easy.
Let's go with the idea that ARod's all-around batting average is fine. .312 is higher than his career average and it's top ten or so in the league.
I don't quite understand why we suddenly revert back to BA when we're discussing situational splits, but whatever. Let's go with at-bats, batting average, runs batted in.
(Not for nothing, but this particular breakdown has ARod batting .292 in something called "late inning pressure." Wonder how they came up with that distinction.)
Now, the reason I bring up his overall BA is because the gripe is not so much with ARod's overall BA, it's with the distribution of hits.
So, let's even things out:
RISP: 124 at-bats, 31 hits, .250 ba, 47 rbis.
No RISP: 283 at-bats, 96 hits, .339 ba, 31 rbis.
How do we even things out?
We take 8 hits from category two and move them to category one.
Adjusted RISP: 124 at-bats, 39 hits, .315 ba, ??? rbis.
Adjusted No RISP: 283 at-bats, 88 hits, .311, ??? rbis.
Ponder these additional eight hits with RISP.
In a perfect world, they'd all be bottom-of-the-ninth game-winners and I've just miraculously given the Yankees eight more wins.
That conclusion is, of course, absurd.
ARod absoutely should have more RBIs and he should hit better with RISP. I'll give him 12 more RBIs if he was hitting up to par with RISP. However, you've also got to deduct a few RBIs from category two (you've just taken away 8 hits after all -- what if all 8 of those hits were HRs?).
ARod's deficiency with RISP has probably cost the Yankees about 9 or 10 runs this season.
I don't want to ridicule those 10 runs. Ten runs are ten runs. They couldn't hurt and they probably could have helped win 1 or 2 games all by themselves.
But this is a team that's 200 runs off last year's pace.
This is a team that is seventh in the league in runs scored. So much for "Murderer's Row and Robinson Cano."
Those 10 runs would put them 190 runs off last year's pace.
If you're looking for the biggest culprit, look elsewhere.
2 comments:
Outstanding analysis! Hard to argue with that.
200 runs off last year's pace isn't quite right and, if you add 10 runs, you'd have to leverage that over the remaining 1/5th of the season. So, it's really, like, 13 runs. Whatever. I was using round numbers.
Anyway, last year, the Yankees ranked 1st in the AL in ba, ob%, slugging, HRs, and runs.
This year, the rankings are 5, 3, 6, 7, and 7.
A team's slugging percentage falls 36 points cumulatively. The bottom third of the lineup has an ob% of under .300. The batting average falls 17 points cumulatively.
Obviously, part of this dropoff is ARod's fall from Super ARod to Regular ARod. It's wildly unrealistic to expect 150+ RBIs every year (along with 50+ HRs and 140+ runs scored). You may never seen that again.
It's very odd to me that the most simplistic measure of all -- Team BA -- is right there in front of everybody's face, and that's 5,000 at-bats.
Instead, they go blaming the close-and-late, two outs, RISP cleanup hitter cross-section. Which is probably about 5 at-bats.
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