It seems reasonable to assume that, to first order, the chances of scoring from third with two outs won't depend a lot on the talent of the runner. Obviously, speed will matter on a passed ball or wild pitch, but we'll represent that these events are relatively infrequent, and can be dismissed in our early approximations, and can limit ourselves to the cases where the batter reaches base.
In this study, I'm tracking runners by the base they reached as a batter. So the cases I'm looking at are unlikely to be influenced by free passes (because the bases behind them are known to be initially empty, and it would take three passes to bring the runner home). So we can concentrate on the relationship between batting average and run scoring.
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POS AVG R% 1 253 28.7 2 248 28.3 3 266 29.4 4 246 27.7 5 244 27.2 6 242 26.7 7 230 25.5 8 183 21.1 9 262 29.5
The linear fit is excellent, and it makes sense that R% is higher than AVG (which is, to be clear, not the batting average of the next player, but rather H/AB while these runners are at third), though I'm a bit surprised at the size of the gap.
Note that, as two out triples are a rare bird, the sample sizes here are fairly small (from 1300 in the leadoff spot to 600 in the last slot).
I am satisfied that this demonstrates the existance of a real effect from the varying quality of the subsequent batters. Hardly earth shattering, but if it didn't turn out this way, I'd have a show stopper on my hands.
May 8, 2004 6:29 PM
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