Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site fisher.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!princeton!astrovax!fisher!david From: david@fisher.UUCP (David Rubin) Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball Subject: Re: Lineup dependency Message-ID: <769@fisher.UUCP> Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 01:07:07 EDT Article-I.D.: fisher.769 Posted: Thu Oct 3 01:07:07 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 4-Oct-85 05:37:33 EDT References: <453@philabs.UUCP> <694@mmintl.UUCP> Distribution: na Organization: Princeton University.Mathematics Lines: 21 Frank Adams has kept the issues clear. I'd like to comment on one of his contributions: > On the other hand, batters definitely DO hit better with men on base. > The book put out by the Elias Sports Bureau (it has their name in the > title) has statistics on this for the entire major leagues last year. > As I remember (the book is not here) the effect was about 20 points in > terms of batting average. So clearly there is an advantage to batting > after a player who gets on base a lot. Although the statistics for it > are not available, it seems likely that this is enhanced when batting > after good base stealers. What this says is that if a player played on a team that had a runner on every time he hit, he could expect to hit 20 points better than if he never had a runner on. Applying this to my rough guess that the best teams have runners on about half the time, and the worst about a quarter of the time, the advantage to be gained is no more than 20*(.5-.25) = 5 BA points. Exactly what I mean when I suggest that the difference is not something we ought to lose sleep over... David Rubin