Philosophy of batting leadoff by John Walsh March 3, 2010 I was skimming through the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (1985 edition) the other day and came across an interesting essay on leadoff hitters. In the player comments sections, James compares Hall of Fame shortshops Luke Appling and Luis Aparicio. James writes at some length about their different styles of offensive play: Appling was a low-power, good contact hitter who walked a lot; Aparicio hit for a lower average and walked less, but he was much faster and stole many more bases. Here are the slash stats for the two: Appling: .310/.399/.389, normalized: .301/.389/.386 Aparicio: .262/.311/.343, normalized: .274/.324/.358 With Aparicio swiping 506 bags (and leading the league nine times) and Appling stealing only 186. Part of the difference in their raw stats is due to context, the eras and ballparks in which they played. Appling played in the high-average 1930s, while the core of Aparicio’s career falls in the low-scoring ’60s. The normalized numbers above puts them on an even footing. James on Appling: Luke Appling represented a type of offensive player that was common at one time and has all but disappeared today, a small man who didn’t often hit the ball hard, but made an offensive contribution by slap-hitting .300 — actually, he once hit .388, but that was kind of flukey — and working the pitcher for 85 to 120 walks a season. On the disappearance of these hitters: This type died out abruptly after 1950, with the exception of an occasional Matty Alou. It’s hard to say why. A number of teams pulled their fences in about then, which probably reduced the distance between the infeld and the outfield, and took away many of the dying quail hits that were a staple of the profession. The similar hitters who did exist after that rarely played a key defensive position. And the emergence of the Aparicio type: After them came the speed merchants, the little leadoff men who did not hit for quite the same avarage, walked less than half as much, and tried to make their offensive contribution by stealing bases, getting into scoring position. Louis Aparicio was the prootype of such a player. James then points out that the stolen bases of the Aparacio types (which include Maury Wills and Bert Campaneris, among others) do not nearly make up for the lower OBPs these players produced. He doesn’t go through the details, but does cite the relative low runs-scored totals of these three players as evidence: none of them ever led the league in runs scored and they have only two 100-plus runs scored seasons between them (both owned by Wills).* *Here’s something that James didn’t include in his essay, though: Appling never led his league in runs scored, either. And he only scored more than 100 runs in a season once. Anyway, moving on… James then speculates on why the inferior type of leadoff hitter has taken root in the game (sorry for the long direct quotes, but the alternative is that I should come up with enough original content to fill my word quota. Besides, wouldn’t you rather read James than me? Yes, I thought so). Anyway, here’s the quote: For a decade or more, baseball was held in the grip of the Aparicio/Wills generation of leadoff men. If it seems strange that all of baseball could have fallen victim to the delusion that 40 or 50 stolen bases could compensate for a comparative inability to reach base, I would ask you to consider that all of the institutions of our society — our education systems, our criminal justice system, our entertainment industry, our military — get entangled in strange, illogical, self-defeating practices and habits, and for a decade or more not a single state nor district nor individual will find the courage, wisdom and perspective to escape; indeed, whole countries go quite mad from time to time. Is it stranger that American baseball men became convinced that they had to use a type of player that analysis or simple reasoning can quickly show is not productive? And finally, how he sees that changing: Delusions pass, and men do come to their senses. There is no doubt in my mind that by the year 2000, the Jerry Remy-, Damaso Garcia-type of leadoff hitter will be extinct, and of the two types of leadoff men — Appling and Aparicio — will develop a synthesis, a player who combines the speed and base stealing ability of Aparacio with the pesky patience of a Luke Appling. Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines are the harbingers of this new type. So, I thought I’d have a look and see if James’ prediction about leadoff hitters in 2000 was accurate or not. Here’s what I did: I made a list of all players who got at least 400 plate appearances in the leadoff slot in any given year, going back to 1952 (the Retrosheet era). Then I calculated the on-base percentage for all such players in a given year, to see if there is any historical trend over the last 50-60 years. The plot below shows my findings: The red circles show the average OBP for leadoff hitters in any given year. The red curve shows the same thing, with some of the fluctuations smoothed out. The blue curve shows the average MLB OBP for the same years. Note that I made the same 400 PA requirement for players going into the MLB average (because players with 400 PA as a group are better hitters than the full complement of MLB players — I want to compare apples to apples). I decided to put the MLB-average curve on the plot after seeing the ups-and-downs of the leadoff hitters’ OBP over the years. I suspected that the large variations were tied to general changes in MLB and not so much a changing philosophy of what a leadoff hitter should be. What about James’ prediction that by 2000 leadoff hitters would be a synthesis of the Appling and Aparacio types, i.e. fast runners and patient hitters? Actually, for about 10 years following the publication of James’ book (1985-1995), leadoff OBP rose sharply, from about .350 to almost .365. That increase was fueled not only by Henderson (.409) and Raines (.382), as James’ predicted, but also by Wade Boggs (.428), Tony Phillips (.391), Kenny Lofton (.383) and Brett Butler (.382). However, looking past the mid-’90s, I get the feeling that this was more a question of happenstance rather than a philosophical change in the way managers view the leadoff spot. In 2000, when James thought that the leadoff position would have been transformed to speedy, patient guys like Rickey Henderson, we had the following leadoff men (min. 400 PA): +-------------------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+ | Name | PA | avg | obp | slg | SB | +-------------------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+ | Castillo, Luis | 625 | 0.334 | 0.412 | 0.388 | 62 | | Erstad, Darin | 746 | 0.355 | 0.408 | 0.541 | 28 | | Furcal, Rafael | 402 | 0.295 | 0.387 | 0.382 | 40 | | Vina, Fernando | 549 | 0.300 | 0.379 | 0.398 | 10 | | Damon, Johnny | 740 | 0.327 | 0.378 | 0.495 | 46 | | Anderson, Brady | 613 | 0.257 | 0.373 | 0.422 | 16 | | Henderson, Rickey | 519 | 0.233 | 0.366 | 0.305 | 36 | | Lofton, Kenny | 585 | 0.278 | 0.366 | 0.422 | 30 | | Knoblauch, Chuck | 456 | 0.283 | 0.365 | 0.385 | 15 | | Young, Eric | 686 | 0.297 | 0.364 | 0.399 | 54 | | Stewart, Shannon | 631 | 0.319 | 0.363 | 0.518 | 20 | | Alicea, Luis | 506 | 0.294 | 0.360 | 0.404 | 1 | | Durham, Ray | 705 | 0.280 | 0.358 | 0.450 | 25 | | Offerman, Jose | 410 | 0.255 | 0.353 | 0.359 | 0 | | Belliard, Ron | 429 | 0.263 | 0.352 | 0.389 | 7 | | Owens, Eric | 428 | 0.293 | 0.346 | 0.381 | 29 | | Goodwin, Tom | 582 | 0.263 | 0.343 | 0.352 | 55 | | Benard, Marvin | 600 | 0.263 | 0.341 | 0.396 | 22 | | Long, Terrence | 561 | 0.288 | 0.336 | 0.452 | 5 | | Reese, Pokey | 426 | 0.255 | 0.317 | 0.386 | 29 | | Bergeron, Peter | 489 | 0.245 | 0.313 | 0.349 | 11 | | Williams, Gerald | 616 | 0.274 | 0.308 | 0.427 | 12 | | Womack, Tony | 658 | 0.271 | 0.307 | 0.384 | 45 | | Glanville, Doug | 534 | 0.275 | 0.302 | 0.374 | 31 | +-------------------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+ Well, at least Rickey Henderson is like Rickey Henderson. Seriously, I’m not sure quite what to make of this list. It doesn’t look dominated by this Appling/Aparacio hybrid, does it? The MLB average of OBP (taking only players with 400-plus PA), was around .360 in 2000, and I count exactly half of our leadoff hitters above average. And a number of them are way down at around .300 in OBP. For each Rafael Furcal, we have a Gerald Williams. Fernando Vina is offset by Tony Womack. Darin Erstad (in his career year) is bookended by Doug Glanville. No, I don’t see Bill James’ utopian leadoff hitter taking over by the year 2000. Another decade has gone by since 2000, though, has the Bill James Leadoff Era taken hold in that time? Referring to the graphic above, we see that over the last 10 years, leadoff OBP has seen a downward swing, followed by an upward trend more recently, while average OBP seems to be dropping over the same period. It doesn’t look, though, that managers/GMs have yet seen the light on how optimum deployment of leadoff hitters. In case you’re curious, here is the above table repeated for 2009: +--------------------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+ | Name | PA | avg | obp | slg | SB | +--------------------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+ | Jeter, Derek | 693 | 0.334 | 0.404 | 0.465 | 30 | | Figgins, Chone | 729 | 0.298 | 0.391 | 0.393 | 42 | | Suzuki, Ichiro | 678 | 0.352 | 0.385 | 0.465 | 26 | | Span, Denard | 676 | 0.311 | 0.385 | 0.415 | 23 | | Lopez, Felipe | 661 | 0.310 | 0.382 | 0.427 | 6 | | Scutaro, Marco | 680 | 0.282 | 0.376 | 0.409 | 14 | | Schumaker, Skip | 530 | 0.303 | 0.363 | 0.393 | 2 | | Morgan, Nyjer | 429 | 0.307 | 0.362 | 0.388 | 42 | | Roberts, Brian | 692 | 0.283 | 0.356 | 0.451 | 30 | | Fowler, Dexter | 440 | 0.266 | 0.353 | 0.406 | 27 | | Bourn, Michael | 552 | 0.285 | 0.351 | 0.384 | 61 | | Ellsbury, Jacoby | 553 | 0.301 | 0.351 | 0.415 | 70 | | Podsednik, Scott | 553 | 0.304 | 0.349 | 0.412 | 30 | | Kennedy, Adam | 441 | 0.289 | 0.344 | 0.410 | 20 | | DeJesus, David | 426 | 0.281 | 0.344 | 0.434 | 4 | | Furcal, Rafael | 503 | 0.269 | 0.334 | 0.375 | 12 | | Granderson, Curtis | 601 | 0.249 | 0.325 | 0.453 | 20 | | Kinsler, Ian | 505 | 0.253 | 0.325 | 0.488 | 31 | | Upton, B.J. | 457 | 0.241 | 0.312 | 0.373 | 42 | | Rollins, Jimmy | 691 | 0.250 | 0.295 | 0.423 | 31 | +--------------------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+