Player-Seasonal Notation: Part One
This is a simple little thing I’ve played around with ever since I was a kid. It’s easy and it’s fun, and it might also be of some use at making complicated things clearer.
It goes like this: every team always has nine batters in its lineup, right? So if you want to know exactly what the average batter’s stat line looked like for any team in any year, all you do is divide the team batting line by nine. That’s it.
We did a little bit of this in an article several months ago, on the 1957 Kansas City Athletics. We took the 1957 A’s team stat line:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 5170 563 1262 195 40 166 536 364 760 35 27 .244 .294 .394 .688
And then we divided it by nine, to illustrate just exactly what a team batting line such as that meant, in terms of what kind of a threat the typical 1957 A’s batter represented:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 574 63 140 22 4 18 60 40 84 4 3 .244 .294 .394 .688
We contrasted this with the very different sort of line that had been put up by the same franchise just eight years earlier, the 1949 Philadelphia A’s:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 5123 726 1331 214 49 82 680 783 493 36 25 .260 .358 .369 .727
And what a dramatic contrast that presented in terms of the average batter they sent up to the plate:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 569 81 148 24 5 9 76 87 55 4 3 .260 .358 .369 .727
As I say, I’ve been doing this for a gazillion years. Mostly it’s just kind of a silly little timewaster, the baseball stat geek’s version of doodling. But I do think there can be some real value to it.
How it Helps
Obviously, dividing any row of numbers by a constant doesn’t change the relationship between any of the values; in a sense they’re just the same line of figures, just expressed differently.
But that different mode of expression can be useful. Bill James used to do a similar thing with players’ career stats by dividing them by a constant to convert them into a per-162-games rate, calling it “Seasonal Notation.” Baseball Reference performs that calculation today. Doing so doesn’t change the relationship between any of the values in the player’s career stat line, but it expresses them in a form more familiar to us, one which allows us to more easily assimilate and assess. We’re all used to seeing stat lines of players compiled in single seasons, so presenting a player’s career stats in that format puts them in easily digestible and comparable context.
Dividing a team’s batting stats by nine performs a similar service. It allows us to more easily comprehend just how good or bad a team’s batting performance was and understand more readily what style of offense they presented. It helps to make the large figures in a team stat line more sensible, more resonant. I suggest that this form of team stat presentation, following James’s lead, can reasonably be called “Player-Seasonal Notation.”
What it Shows
Let me throw a couple more examples of Player-Seasonal Notation at you. These are the team stat lines produced by the offenses that scored the most and the fewest runs in the majors in 2004, the Boston Red Sox and the Arizona Diamondbacks:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 5720 949 1613 373 25 222 912 659 1189 68 30 .282 .360 .472 .832 5544 615 1401 295 38 135 582 441 1022 53 32 .253 .310 .393 .703
Now here are those stat lines divided by nine:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 636 105 179 41 3 25 101 73 132 8 3 .282 .360 .472 .832 616 68 156 33 4 15 65 49 114 6 4 .253 .310 .393 .703
Player-Seasonal Notation demonstrates that it was as if the Red Sox, all year long, in every inning of every game, in every at-bat, sent someone roughly equivalent to Scott Rolen or Hank Blalock to the plate. Meanwhile the Snakes, also in their every plate appearance all season, were putting somebody more like Alex Gonzalez or Alex Gonzalez (either one, take your pick) up there.
Could the contrast be any more vivid?
Yin and Yang
All right, let’s have some fun with this. Let’s compare the approaches of the 1960s Detroit Tigers with those of the 1980s St. Louis Cardinals. Here they are in high performance mode:
Team AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 1962 Tigers 606 84 150 21 4 23 80 72 99 8 2 .248 .328 .411 .739 1985 Cardinals 607 83 161 27 7 10 76 65 95 35 11 .264 .336 .379 .715
And here’s when they were operating a bit less efficiently:
Team AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 1968 Tigers 610 75 144 21 4 21 71 58 107 3 4 .235 .302 .385 .687 1984 Cardinals 604 72 152 25 5 8 68 57 103 24 8 .252 .317 .351 .668
And here are a couple of contemporaries who were trying to do similar things, but with less success:
Team AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 1965 Senators 597 66 136 20 4 15 63 63 125 3 2 .228 .302 .350 .652 1980 Padres 616 66 157 22 5 7 61 63 88 27 8 .255 .323 .342 .665
Okay, how about two teams that played in the Polo Grounds in New York 33 years apart, but could scarcely have achieved more starkly different results:
Team AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 1930 Giants 617 107 197 29 9 16 98 47 42 7 ? .319 .367 .473 .840 1963 Mets 593 56 130 17 4 11 51 51 120 5 6 .219 .281 .315 .596
And file this one under “Evidence That There Is More Than One Way To Skin A Cat:”
Team AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 1922 Robins 601 83 174 26 8 6 75 38 35 9 7 .290 .332 .392 .724 2001 Brewers 610 82 153 30 3 23 79 54 155 7 4 .251 .319 .426 .745
On the Mound
Player-Seasonal Notation can also be applied to team pitching stats. But with pitchers, we don’t have the obvious factor of nine to use as our constant: teams aren’t required to constantly rotate nine pitchers through each ball game (though it may appear that way sometimes). We could just divide team pitching lines by nine, but with pitchers there’s no compelling reason to use that figure the way there is with batters, and moreover, the result of dividing by nine—a pitching line of somewhere around 160 innings pitched—doesn’t resonate the same way that a batting line of about 600 at-bats does.
Therefore, with pitching lines, I prefer to use a constant of 6.5 as the divisor, for no reason other than the fact that it yields a line of around 210 to 220 innings—a proportion that mimics a full-season starting pitcher.
Good, Bad…
So here’s the Player-Seasonal Notation we get when we apply the divisor of 6.5 to the pitching staff that allowed the fewest runs in the majors in 2004 and the one that surrendered the most:
Team IP H HR BB SO W L ERA 2004 Cardinals 224 212 26 68 160 16 9 3.75 2004 Rockies 221 251 30 107 146 10 14 5.54
How about a nice contrast-and-compare between the staffs of a 116-game winner and a 119-game loser:
Team IP H HR BB SO W L ERA 2001 Mariners 225 199 25 72 162 18 7 3.54 2003 Tigers 221 249 30 86 118 7 18 5.30
This one’s always fun, as an illustration of mastery and mockery of the strike zone, by the same franchise 18 years apart:
Team IP H HR BB SO W L ERA 1967 Twins 225 206 18 61 168 14 11 3.14 1949 Senators 207 221 12 120 69 8 16 5.10
In terms of ERA, the absolute all-time best and worst occurred just 23 years apart, in the same league:
Team IP H HR BB SO W L ERA 1907 Cubs 211 162 2 62 90 16 7 1.73 1930 Phillies 211 307 22 84 59 8 16 6.71
…and Just Different
Speaking of Cubs’ staffs, here are a couple of versions, 80 years apart, that used greatly differing methods to achieve just about exactly the same result:
Team IP H HR BB SO W L ERA 1923 Cubs 210 218 13 67 63 13 11 3.82 2003 Cubs 224 201 22 95 216 14 11 3.83
The Flow…
Okay, for now we’ve just been having fun. But now let’s look at how Player-Seasonal Notation can illustrate the trends of team development and decline.
Here are the batters of the Boys of Summer Dodgers, in their final dozen years in Brooklyn:
Team AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 1946 Dodgers 587 78 153 26 7 6 71 77 64 11 ? .260 .346 .361 .707 1947 Dodgers 583 86 159 27 6 9 80 81 62 10 ? .272 .361 .384 .745 1948 Dodgers 592 83 155 28 6 10 75 67 76 13 ? .261 .336 .381 .717 1949 Dodgers 600 98 164 26 5 17 91 71 63 13 ? .274 .350 .419 .769 1950 Dodgers 596 94 162 27 5 22 86 67 70 9 ? .272 .346 .444 .790 1951 Dodgers 610 95 168 28 4 20 88 67 72 10 8 .275 .347 .434 .781 1952 Dodgers 585 86 153 22 4 17 81 74 78 10 5 .262 .345 .399 .744 1953 Dodgers 597 106 170 30 7 23 99 73 76 10 5 .285 .362 .474 .836 1954 Dodgers 583 86 158 27 6 21 82 70 69 5 4 .270 .349 .444 .793 1955 Dodgers 577 95 156 26 5 22 89 75 80 9 6 .271 .355 .448 .803 1956 Dodgers 566 80 146 24 4 20 76 72 82 7 4 .258 .342 .419 .761 1957 Dodgers 582 77 147 21 4 16 72 61 94 7 4 .253 .324 .387 .711
That could very plausibly be an individual player who develops power into his peak and then loses speed and enters his decline phase.
…and The Ebb
Even more dramatically, check out the systematic, stage-by-stage unraveling of the 1960s New York Yankees’ offense:
Team AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 1960 Yankees 588 83 153 24 4 21 78 60 91 4 3 .260 .328 .426 .754 1961 Yankees 618 92 162 22 4 27 87 60 87 3 2 .263 .328 .442 .770 1962 Yankees 627 91 168 27 3 22 88 65 94 5 3 .267 .336 .426 .762 1963 Yankees 612 79 154 22 4 21 74 48 90 5 3 .252 .307 .403 .710 1964 Yankees 634 81 160 23 4 18 76 58 108 6 2 .253 .315 .387 .702 1965 Yankees 608 68 143 22 3 17 64 54 106 4 2 .235 .298 .364 .662 1966 Yankees 592 68 139 20 4 18 63 54 91 5 3 .235 .299 .374 .673 1967 Yankees 605 58 136 18 2 11 53 59 116 7 4 .225 .294 .317 .611 1968 Yankees 590 60 126 17 4 12 56 63 106 10 6 .214 .290 .318 .608
What’s eerie is how closely the team decline was paralleled by that of Tom Tresh.
The Success Cycle
The Detroit Tigers of 1978-1989 (the Trammell–Whitaker–Gibson era, for the most part) demonstrated a distinct beginning-middle-end pattern:
Team AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS 1978 Tigers 622 79 169 24 4 14 74 63 77 10 4 .271 .338 .392 .730 1979 Tigers 597 86 161 25 4 18 81 64 90 20 10 .269 .340 .415 .755 1980 Tigers 628 92 171 26 6 16 85 72 94 8 8 .273 .348 .409 .757 1981 Tigers 400 47 102 16 3 7 45 45 56 7 4 .256 .331 .368 .699 1982 Tigers 621 81 165 26 4 20 76 52 90 10 7 .266 .323 .418 .741 1983 Tigers 621 88 170 31 6 17 83 56 92 10 6 .274 .334 .427 .761 1984 Tigers 627 92 170 28 5 21 88 67 105 12 8 .271 .341 .432 .773 1985 Tigers 619 81 157 28 5 22 78 58 103 8 5 .253 .318 .424 .742 1986 Tigers 612 89 161 26 3 22 83 68 98 15 6 .263 .336 .424 .760 1987 Tigers 628 100 171 30 4 25 93 73 101 12 6 .272 .347 .451 .798 1988 Tigers 604 78 151 24 3 16 72 65 93 10 5 .250 .323 .378 .701 1989 Tigers 604 69 146 22 3 13 63 65 100 11 6 .242 .316 .351 .667
The strike-shortened 1981 season looks just like an injury-hampered year, doesn’t it?
Coming Together…
Remember those Dodgers from earlier? Here we pick up their pitchers, after they moved across the continent, and the developing Koufax-centered staff mastered its control. (They also derived great benefit out of the move from the Coliseum to Chavez Ravine in 1962 and the enlargement of the strike zone in 1963):
Team IP H HR BB SO W L ERA 1958 Dodgers 210 215 27 93 132 11 13 4.47 1959 Dodgers 217 203 24 94 166 14 10 3.79 1960 Dodgers 215 187 24 87 173 13 11 3.40 1961 Dodgers 212 207 26 84 170 14 10 4.04 1962 Dodgers 229 213 18 90 170 16 10 3.62 1963 Dodgers 226 204 17 62 168 15 10 2.85 1964 Dodgers 228 198 14 70 163 12 13 2.95 1965 Dodgers 227 188 20 65 166 15 10 2.81 1966 Dodgers 224 198 13 55 167 15 10 2.62
…and Falling Apart
And on the other side of the coin, as far as relentless descents from heaven to hell go, it’s hard to top the 1931-1936 Philadelphia Athletics:
Team IP H HR BB SO W L ERA 1931 A's 210 206 11 70 88 16 7 3.47 1932 A's 213 227 17 79 92 14 9 4.45 1933 A's 207 234 12 99 65 12 11 4.81 1934 A's 206 220 13 107 74 10 13 5.01 1935 A's 204 229 11 108 72 9 14 5.12 1936 A's 208 253 20 107 62 8 15 6.08
All right, enough of this. Next time we’ll apply this fun little tool in a more rigorous manner and see what insights it may help us derive into the ever-changing nature of run production and prevention.