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Cubs walk Bryce Harper 6 times in a game...but is this good strategy?


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Watching the Cubs walk Bryce Harper six times yesterday--intentionally, twice with runners on 1st and 2nd with 2 outs reminded me of the following article, reprised below. While the strategy worked for the Cubs yesterday, they may have been more lucky than smart.

 

Basically, through simulations, it appears that the strategy of walking even the greatest hitter of all time at his peak who would be surrounded by total mediocrity costs your team runs. Of course the situation isn't completely analogous in that this deals with total runs whereas the Cubs were dealing with a specific situation and trying to prevent one run from scoring, but the conclusions are likely similar. And even if not, and only NWK could handle the high level math involved in a perfectly analogous situation, the details are worth reading.

 

Even sportswriters experience a moment of brilliance every now and then. When they come they are impossible to ignore.

 

But only after consulting former Houston Astros manager Larry Dierker was the Cubs' Don Baylor offered this piece of advice: Take Barry Bonds out of the equation by walking him intentionally every time he comes to bat.

 

"You can support that idea statistically," offered Dierker, who won four division titles in five seasons at the end of the dugout. "If you do the math, you're better off walking him than pitching to him."

 

Perhaps there was a mix-up with delivery of Tuesday's Tribune at Baylor's condominium. Either that or Baylor weighed my suggestion against a study that baseball's deepest thinker, Bill James, did about Babe Ruth.

 

Baylor shockingly tempted fate by pitching to Bonds in last week's three-game series. It is what the game's most dangerous hitter wanted.

 

"I'd pitch to me," Bonds said. "This is baseball. It's only fair."

 

Bonds proved the point Tuesday night by going 0-for-3 and taking one Jason Bere fastball off his right hip.

 

Wednesday night Bonds rested his sore hamstring and Dusty Baker missed his best chance to use him off the bench, instead using Damon Minor as a pinch-hitter with one on and the score tied 4-4 in the sixth inning.

 

In Thursday's series finale, Bonds was 0-for-4, amazingly making three outs swinging at the first pitch. That's 0-for-7 for the series. He reached base once in eight plate appearances.

 

So maybe the blanket intentional-walk policy wasn't the best idea.

 

Thoughtful reader Joal Kjarsgaard ever so gingerly pointed that out, referring to a study that is included in the revised version of James' "Historical Baseball Abstract," which was released last fall.

 

Turns out that there is a flaw in my basic assumption--that a 1.000 OPS (the total of a player's on-base percentage plus slugging average) must be less productive than one in the range of 1.400, which is where Bonds has been in the historic stretch that began last season.

 

This bit of "math" plays its own set of tricks because it is isolated on one player, not taking into account what having that player on base would do for the guys hitting behind him. James studied that effect when he looked at Ruth.

 

"Is there such a thing as a hitter so good that it would make sense simply to walk him every time he came to the plate?" James asked. "If there were such a hitter, of course, it would have to be Babe Ruth."

 

Ruth's career OPS of 1.164 is the highest in history. For his study, James looked at Ruth's 1921 season, when he was arguably his most productive--.378, 59 homers, 171 runs driven in and 177 runs scored.

 

Instead of Bob Meusel, "Home Run" Baker, Wally Pipp and others from the '21 Yankees, he surrounded Ruth with a below-average virtual lineup that included the likes of Jamie Quirk, Don Wert, Al Weis and Gerald Perry.

 

Using computers programmed to factor in the random nature of baseball performance, he ran that lineup through 1,000 simulated seasons in which Ruth was walked every time he came to the plate. Then he ran another 1,000 simulated seasons in which the computer pitched to Ruth, walking him only in those situations when one normally would.

 

"Conclusion?" James wrote. "It's not even close. Walking Ruth every time up does far, far more harm than good, even under these impossibly extreme conditions."

 

Averaging the two models, James found that the team for which Ruth hit .385 with 61 homers scored 601 runs per season and finished with a winning percentage of .326. The team for which he was walked every time scored 667 runs and had a .380 winning percentage.

 

When Ruth was pitched to, he came to the plate 726 times and had 210 hits, accounting for 532 total bases, while making 330 outs. Walking him every time results in 726 bases and zero outs.

 

"As great as Ruth was, as terrible as his teammates were, he was still nowhere near the point at which it made sense to simply walk him every time he came to the plate," James wrote.

 

In James' study, his chosen No. 5 hitter, .265 career hitter Gino Cimoli, hit only nine homers but still drove in 151 runs. In the event Bonds ever was walked every plate appearance for a full season, Jeff Kent (or whoever was hitting behind him at the time) might break Hack Wilson's record of 191 RBIs.

 

"A real hitter (rather than Cimoli) would drive in more than 200," James concluded. "It's not worth it; it's not even close. There is no such thing as a hitter so good he should be routinely walked."

 

Not even Bonds? Guess not.

 

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-04-28/sports/0204280281_1_babe-ruth-walking-big-hitters

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I wonder if they would have walked him all those times if Daniel Murphy had been batting right after him, rather than Ryan Zimmerman.

I doubt it.

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The other thing about OPS is that, as was indicated in Money all, a point of OBP is greater than a point of SLG. Therefore, a .300/.500/.700 gives a 1.200 OPS while a .000/1.000/.000 gives a 1.000 OPS, but if a point of OBP is worth twice a point of SLG, then the latter is more valuable.
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Wasn't it Davy Johnson who walked Bonds with the bases loaded once?

 

This is nothing new walking a guy several times when there is a pile of stool batting behind the guy.

 

Rich Aurilia batting behind Bonds was at that time better off than the once solid Zimmerman

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This only got attention because the game was low scoring/ he got a ton of at bats/ it went extra innings/ and it worked.

 

If game ends in 9/ fails/ he only at the plate 4 times it gets very little press.

Despite this being Maddon's approach all series.

I have heard so many people chime in on this.

1 said the intentional walk needs to be banned, but he was NOT intentionally walked each time...it was sort of don't throw strikes ...

I get why it's interesting, but it's part of the game, just very rare to see.

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This only got attention because the game was low scoring/ he got a ton of at bats/ it went extra innings/ and it worked.

 

If game ends in 9/ fails/ he only at the plate 4 times it gets very little press.

Despite this being Maddon's approach all series.

I have heard so many people chime in on this.

1 said the intentional walk needs to be banned, but he was NOT intentionally walked each time...it was sort of don't throw strikes ...

I get why it's interesting, but it's part of the game, just very rare to see.

This only got attention because the game was low scoring/ he got a ton of at bats/ it went extra innings/ and it worked.

 

If game ends in 9/ fails/ he only at the plate 4 times it gets very little press.

Despite this being Maddon's approach all series.

I have heard so many people chime in on this.

1 said the intentional walk needs to be banned, but he was NOT intentionally walked each time...it was sort of don't throw strikes ...

I get why it's interesting, but it's part of the game, just very rare to see.

This only got attention because the game was low scoring/ he got a ton of at bats/ it went extra innings/ and it worked.

 

If game ends in 9/ fails/ he only at the plate 4 times it gets very little press.

Despite this being Maddon's approach all series.

I have heard so many people chime in on this.

1 said the intentional walk needs to be banned, but he was NOT intentionally walked each time...it was sort of don't throw strikes ...

I get why it's interesting, but it's part of the game, just very rare to see.

This only got attention because the game was low scoring/ he got a ton of at bats/ it went extra innings/ and it worked.

 

If game ends in 9/ fails/ he only at the plate 4 times it gets very little press.

Despite this being Maddon's approach all series.

I have heard so many people chime in on this.

1 said the intentional walk needs to be banned, but he was NOT intentionally walked each time...it was sort of don't throw strikes ...

I get why it's interesting, but it's part of the game, just very rare to see.

Sure, it became a bigger thing in the public eye for those reasons but I'm glad it did. It's infinitely more interesting than what passes for most sports coverage these days (like Drake at the Raptors game
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