Having looked at runners on third with two outs, I turned my attention to the case of a runner on third with no outs. Clearly, we should still expect any hit to score the runner, but we have the additional possibilities of sacrifice hits and sacrifice flies to consider.
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When examining run scoring for this case, I found that the top two spots in the order were scoring significantly more often (87%) than the rest of the lineup (81%). What's different?
Well, with fewer outs, there are more following hitters coming up - rather than being dependent on the next hitter, the runner is depending on the next three or four. But that doesn't hold up - the best part of the lineup is behind the #3 spot, yet those players are scoring only 83% of the time.
The control we relaxed is outs, so perhaps it makes sense that the difference is rate of scoring on outs. I reran the survey, this time tracking the batting event, and batted ball type of the event the runner scored (I'm not sure that this will be useful once we work away from second base, but we shall see). This allows me to compute a scoring rate for each type of event.
One difference between the two out case and the no out case is that, in the latter instance, singles don't always score the runner - though there is little variation through the lineup. Also, errors are not as efficient as they were.
But the important difference is that, with no outs, runners can score from third on an out. The bottom seven spots in the lineup do so about 38% of the time.
The top 2 spots do so 48% of the time.
That advantage, when broken out, comes to roughly 5% on fly balls, 10% on line drives, and 15% on ground balls.
Bunts? Not enough opportunities - the players lower in the lineup get more chances to score on bunts. The flyballs and line drives perhaps could be excused by sluggers hitting the ball a little further, but the ground balls really cinch that the runners speed is key.
With one out, those scoring rates drop, and squeeze closer together. The top spots in the lineup still produce about 5% more runs on outs than their counterparts.
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this specific situation is pretty rare. For instance, the difference between a leadoff hitter and Jim Rice (with regards to triples), comes to roughly 8 runs in a 16 season career spanning 2089 games.
But if the effect influences enough other, more common, situations, it could prove to be significant.
May 9, 2004 3:10 PM
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