The worst thing a batter can do
The worst thing a batter can do is ground into a double play with the
bases loaded. Actually, hitting into a triple play is evidently more
costly, but that happens so rarely and besides, I’m sort of fascinated
by the double play lately. On average, grounding into
a double play costs the team almost a full run, or about three times
more than an ordinary out. However, when the bases are
loaded the cost is much higher.
For example, with the bases loaded and one out, the batting team on
average will score around 1.6 runs before the inning is over. A
double play, of course, ends the inning without any runs having
scored, so the cost of the double play is 1.6 runs. Even more costly
is a double play that occurs with the sacks full and no outs. In
that case, the run expectancy is 2.35 runs. Let’s say the DP goes
5-2-3, leaving runners on second and third with two outs (and no runs scored), a situation
with run expectancy of .61 runs. So, the cost of the double play is
the difference between those two numbers, or 1.74 runs.
Maybe I’m simply a misanthrope or, worse, someone who takes delight in
the failure of others, but I’m sort of fascinated by the double play.
Who hits into them most often and (this is my positive side breaking
out) who does the best job of avoiding them? That’s what motivated me
write my previous piece, wherein I worked out a method
for determining a player’s double play performance, taking into
account how many times he actually came to the plate with a runner on
first base and fewer than two outs.
This time I want to use that little tool to look at the best and worst
double play batters of all time. “All time” signifies “since 1953,”
which is the start of the Retrosheet Era, the years for which
Retrosheet play-by-play data is generally available.
More than one way to skin a cat
Before handing out the awards for best and worst, though, I wanted to
mention a curious (to me, anyway) fact I noted in the first part of
this analysis. Namely, that big slow guys do not always hit into lots
of double plays. In fact, big slow guys like Jim Thome and Jason
Giambi were seen to be among the best at avoiding the rally
killers.
This may not be news
to many of you (and some of you let me know!), but I have lived most of my life thinking that you had
to be fast to avoid hitting into double plays. Bill James enlightened
me on the subject (as he has on many others). Here’s what he wrote about Darren Daulton, a
pretty good hitting catcher for the Phillies back in the ’80s:
An interesting thing about Daulton is that although he had knee
surgery every winter, in his career he was 50-for-60 as a base
stealer—the fifth-best stolen base percentage in history—and
almost never grounded into a double
play. … In his career he grounded into only one double play for
every 104 at bats—the best GIDP rate in history for a
catcher (since they began keeping GIDP totals in the 1930s), and one
of the lowest ever. Richie Ashburn grounded into double plays more
often and he was a left-handed leadoff hitter who could fly. Lou
Brock, Maury Wills and Rickey Henderson grounded into double plays
more often than Daulton.
James compares Daulton to two other catchers of the era who had
similar profiles: Gene Tenace and Mickey Tettleton. They were also
good at avoiding double plays.
James goes on to give two reasons for their success in avoiding
the GDP:
- They hit fly balls, rather than grounders, and
- They’re not afraid to take a walk with a man on base.
A lot of double plays come when a hitter reaches for an outside pitch
that he ought to take and hits a ground ball to shortstop or second
base.
There’s a third reason that James does not
mention: They were not afraid to strike out with a man on base, either.
Note that James’ figures give GDPs relative to at-bats, not to DP
opportunities like I am doing.
Reading about Daulton and guys like that got me to thinking: who are
the best and worst all-time at avoiding the double play? Was Darren
Daulton really among the very best, or did he simply have fewer
opportunities than most? Does the all-time list contain its share of
lead-footed behemoths, as our current players list did last time?
Let’s get to it.
Better than the rest
So, I ran my little analysis on the complete play-by-play data set
available at Retrosheet, going back to 1953 or so. Can you guess the
name of the very best player at avoiding the double play? Here are
two hints: 1) he’s widely regarded as being one of the smartest to
have played the game, in a baseball-smarts sense, and 2) he currently
works as an announcer and inspired a Website (now defunct) dedicated to
removing him from his job.
Yes, Joe Morgan was better at avoiding the GDP than any player
in history (Retro-history, I mean). In his long career, Morgan came
to the plate 2,046 times with a man on first base and fewer than two
outs. An average player would have grounded into 235 double plays,
while Little Joe got twin-killed less than half that number, 102
times. That savings of some 133 double plays was worth roughly 63
runs for his team, or around six wins.
Joe Morgan was a fascinating player. He was the kind of player who
sometimes is under-appreciated, for the simple fact that he does many
things very well, without necessarily finishing atop the league
leaderboards in the major stat categories. Joe Morgan never led the
league in hits, never won a home-run or batting title. He never paced
the league in doubles or even stolen bases. He did lead in triples
once and runs scored only once. His Bill James “black ink” score is
15, about half of that of the average Hall of Famer.
But the stats that most (or many) people care about change over
the years and some of today’s most-valued stats were Joe Morgan’s stock in
trade: He led the league in OBP four times, walks four times, slugging
percentage once and OPS twice.
Of course, if Joe Morgan was under-appreciated, it wasn’t by much. He
did win two MVP awards and five Gold Gloves, and was elected to the Hall
of Fame in his first year of eligibility. He was considered the best
player on Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine, a two-time World Series winner,
and often considered one of the best teams of all time.
Still, you sometimes get the feeling that Morgan was even better than
you or I know. Bill James quoted somebody (I couldn’t dig up the quote)
saying that Joe Morgan, when leading off first base, was never, ever fooled by a pitchout.
He just seemed to know when the pitchout was called and he simply would not try to steal on that pitch.
James also concluded that Morgan was the best “percentage player” in history and a study I did a few years ago, using James’ method, found Morgan to be among the very “smartest” ballplayers of the last 50 years. And now we have filled in
another piece of the puzzle of the greatness of Joe Morgan. He, more
than any other player, avoided those rally-strangling double plays.
Here are the Top 20 players in avoiding the GDP in the Retrosheet era. DPA stands for Double Plays Avoided and
represents the number of double plays a player avoided compared to an average player with the same number of opportunities. See my previous piece for more details.
+-------------------+------+------+---------+------+---------+ | Name | Opps | GDP | DP_rate | DPA | DP_runs | +-------------------+------+------+---------+------+---------+ | Morgan_Joe | 2046 | 102 | 0.050 | 133 | 63 | | Bonds_Barry | 2356 | 165 | 0.070 | 96 | 45 | | Davis_Willie | 1969 | 127 | 0.064 | 95 | 45 | | Mantle_Mickey | 1766 | 103 | 0.058 | 94 | 44 | | Mathews_Eddie | 1784 | 106 | 0.059 | 93 | 44 | | Evans_Darrell | 1930 | 132 | 0.068 | 91 | 43 | | Damon_Johnny | 1373 | 75 | 0.055 | 79 | 37 | | Clark_Will | 1607 | 100 | 0.062 | 77 | 36 | | Gibson_Kirk | 1309 | 73 | 0.056 | 75 | 35 | | Carter_Joe | 1877 | 133 | 0.071 | 75 | 35 | | Pinson_Vada | 2138 | 166 | 0.078 | 73 | 34 | | Strawberry_Darryl | 1220 | 64 | 0.052 | 72 | 34 | | Jackson_Reggie | 2214 | 183 | 0.083 | 72 | 34 | | Thome_Jim | 1856 | 137 | 0.074 | 71 | 33 | | Griffey_Ken | 1531 | 106 | 0.069 | 70 | 33 | | Griffey_Ken Jr. | 2346 | 190 | 0.081 | 70 | 33 | | Rivers_Mickey | 956 | 45 | 0.047 | 67 | 31 | | Anderson_Brady | 1179 | 65 | 0.055 | 65 | 30 | | Abreu_Bob | 1626 | 119 | 0.073 | 64 | 30 | | Williams_Billy | 2341 | 199 | 0.085 | 64 | 30 | +-------------------+------+------+---------+------+---------+
This is a list of some pretty good ballplayers, in fact all 20 of
them were stars and several are either in the Hall of Fame or will be. It’s kind of
cool to see Ken Griffey pere et fils right next to each
other. And speaking of underrated, there is Darrell Evans, sometimes
cited as the most underrated player in history.
Rally killers par excellence
Here’s the list of the all-time trailers, the guys who killed more
rallies than anybody in the last 55 years:
+-----------------+------+------+---------+------+---------+ | Name | Opps | GDP | DP_rate | DPA | DP_runs | +-----------------+------+------+---------+------+---------+ | Franco_Julio | 1854 | 310 | 0.167 | -102 | -48 | | Scott_George | 1606 | 279 | 0.174 | -96 | -45 | | Torre_Joe | 1611 | 277 | 0.172 | -95 | -45 | | Pena_Tony | 1321 | 235 | 0.178 | -86 | -41 | | Rice_Jim | 2066 | 315 | 0.152 | -76 | -36 | | Konerko_Paul | 1197 | 209 | 0.175 | -74 | -35 | | Rodriguez_Ivan | 1922 | 287 | 0.149 | -73 | -34 | | Simmons_Ted | 1865 | 287 | 0.154 | -70 | -33 | | Clayton_Royce | 1326 | 217 | 0.164 | -69 | -33 | | Adair_Jerry | 730 | 149 | 0.204 | -68 | -32 | | Piniella_Lou | 1257 | 211 | 0.168 | -65 | -31 | | Carty_Rico | 1181 | 199 | 0.169 | -65 | -30 | | Castilla_Vinny | 1438 | 224 | 0.156 | -64 | -30 | | Ausmus_Brad | 1192 | 196 | 0.164 | -63 | -29 | | Concepcion_Dave | 1737 | 264 | 0.152 | -62 | -29 | | Robinson_Brooks | 2120 | 300 | 0.142 | -61 | -29 | | Bailey_Bob | 1200 | 197 | 0.164 | -61 | -29 | | Ripken_Cal | 2598 | 350 | 0.135 | -60 | -28 | | Coomer_Ron | 657 | 131 | 0.199 | -59 | -28 | | Davis_Tommy | 1443 | 219 | 0.152 | -57 | -27 | +-----------------+------+------+---------+------+---------+
I must confess, I have a soft spot in my heart for Julio
Franco. Although he and I were born in the same year, he stopped
playing baseball around 35 years after I did. But let’s not let
misty-eyed sentiment get in the way of the task before us. Let’s tell
it like it is: Julio Franco, bless his soul, killed more would-be
rallies than any other player in history.
This list of GDP sluggards is more of a mixed bag the the best-of list
that precedes it. There aren’t many really bad hitters here, although
part of that has to do with bad hitters not accumulating enough at-bats to
make a list like this. A couple of the below-average hitters (Ausmus,
Clayton) were in the lineup for their gloves. There are some good
hitters here, too.
Three Hall of Famers (Rice, Brooksie, Ripken) plus Pudge
Rodriguez, who’ll be enshrined one day (or maybe not, you can’t be too sure these days), are accompanied by three more
near-misses (in terms of ability, if not votes garnered): Torre,
Simmons and Concepcion.
This seems like a good time to mention the influence of batter
handedness on double play tendencies. As several readers pointed out
after my first article, left-handed hitters have a real natural
advantage in avoiding the ground-ball double play. This point, which
I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t noticed on my own, is starkly
confirmed by the above tables. Of the Top 20, all are left-handed
swingers except for Mantle, who was a switch-hitter, and Carter, who
batted right. Conversely, the Bottom 20 list contains 19 right-handed
hitters and one switcher (Simmons).
We can come up with several likely reasons for this: (1) left-handed batters are closer to first base and therefore beat out the relay more often;
(2) lefties can take better advantage of the “hole” on the right side, created when the first baseman holds the runner on. Most ground balls are pulled, so lefties will hit the hole more often; (3) perhaps double plays started on the right side—4-6-3 and 3-6-3 are more difficult than their 6-4-3 and 5-4-3 counterparts. I have not studied this, but my intuition tells me that (2) is the most important effect here.
Odd couples
When you look down the list of career double play performance, ranked by DPA, say, you see some unlikely players as neighbors on the list. For example,
| Name | Opps | GDP | DPA | | Whitaker_Lou | 1772 | 142 | 58.7 | | Trammell_Alan | 1804 | 155 | 50.4 |
These guys were one of the best double-play combos in
history, on the defensive side of the ball, of course. They weren’t
too shabby on the other side, either. They each grounded into some
50-odd fewer double plays than an average player would have.
| Name | Opps | GDP | DPA | | Beltran_Carlos | 1212 | 100 | 37.0 | | McCarver_Tim | 1203 | 99 | 37.0 |
These two would not seem to have much in common, except that they hit
into almost exactly the same number of DP in the same number of
opps. Well above average performance, which we expected for the speedy Beltran. For the catcher McCarver, not so much.
| Name | Opps | GDP | DPA | | Henderson_Rickey | 1774 | 173 | 26.8 | | Stairs_Matt | 1193 | 107 | 26.3 |
Rickey Henderson was above average at avoiding the DP, but he wasn’t
nearly as above average as you might have expected for the greatest
base stealer in the history of the game (or at least, the most
prolific). I once wrote an article for this site on the triple and I noticed the Rickey hit far fewer triples than
I was expecting. He apparently was not quick out of the box, being a
right-handed hitter who took a vicious cut. Whatever the reason,
the most feared base stealer in the game was as good as avoiding the
DP as Matt Stairs,
the Wonder Hamster.
| Name | Opps | GDP | DPA | | Davis_Eric | 1171 | 112 | 17.3 | | Luzinski_Greg | 1409 | 147 | 17.2 |
Another odd couple consisting of an explosively fast baserunner and a
slow outfielder with distinctive facial hair. It should be noted that
the Bull had a few more opps to reach his 17 double plays
saved. I’m just sayin’…
| Name | Opps | GDP | DPA | | Vaughn_Mo | 1332 | 135 | 11.4 | | Powell_Boog | 1558 | 164 | 11.3 |
I claim these two huge left-handed first basemen were quite similar
players, even though neither one appears on the other’s list of similar
players at bb-ref.com. I’m thinking double-play tendency should be
added to the similarity criteria. Both of these slugging sluggards
were above average in avoiding the double play.
| Name | Opps | GDP | DPA | | Hrbek_Kent | 1456 | 166 | -2.1 | | McGee_Willie | 1383 | 157 | -2.2 |
Willie McGee was the fleet-footed center fielder for the Whitey-ball
Cardinals of the 1980s. The man could fly. But he hit a lot
of ground balls with men on base, a lot of ground balls and he
couldn’t beat ’em all out. Kent Hrbek could not fly.
| Name | Opps | GDP | DPA | | Jeter_Derek | 1614 | 195 | -14.2 | | Boggs_Wade | 1974 | 236 | -15.2 |
Both great hitters, both hit into more than their alloted quota of
double plays. Boggs did it by being slow, while Jeter got there by
hitting lots of grounders and batting from the right side.
| Name | Opps | GDP | DPA | | Rose_Pete | 1997 | 251 | -22.4 | | Ramirez_Manny | 1832 | 230 | -24.8 |
One was Charlie Hustle, the other was just Being as in Manny Being
Manny. Didn’t somebody say once that “perfect speed is Being there”?
Either way, Pete and Manny are there in the bottom half of my double
play list.
| Name | Opps | GDP | DPA | | Clemente_Roberto | 1884 | 252 | -41.1 | | Piazza_Mike | 1685 | 229 | -41.6 |
When Piazza was on the Mets, he was often criticized for his
propensity for grounding into the double play. I don’t think I ever
heard anyone complain about Clemente in that regard.
Summing up
After writing two articles comprising some 5,000 words on the double play, maybe it’s best to make a quick summary. Most batting stats, even the advanced ones, don’t include grounding into double plays, which is the worst thing a batter can do. For most batters, GDPs don’t make a big difference in their overall value, but for some they do. Well maybe not a big difference, let’s say a medium-sized difference. To properly evaluate a player’s GDP performance, though, you need to consider how many DP opportunities he came up in, which requires more work than simply calculating Base Runs or something.
The other thing to take away from all this is that sometimes a player will fool you—the big slow guy (Luzinski) will be good at avoiding the GDP, while the speedster (McGee) will not. Avoiding the DP is not only about speed, but about putting the ball in play (or not), ground ball tendencies and which side you bat from.
The scene: the 2525 All-Star Game of the Dead, played on a cornfield in Iowa. It’s the bottom of the ninth, with the Spirits down by a run, but they have Phantom closer Firpo Marberry on the ropes: the bases are full with only one out. Spirits manager Brian Bannister knows, without even having to consult the run expectancy table that he keeps in his back pocket, that his team is expected to score about two runs. But the double play is to be avoided at all costs. Bannister gathers his courage and calls Clemente, who is on deck, back to the dugout. Trying to avoid Clemente’s glare, the Spirits manager looks down the bench. “Hamster!” he calls out. “Grab a bat, you’re on.”
References & Resources
The citation from Bill James was taken from the New Historical Baseball Abstract. See the entry for Darren Daulton.