Yuniesky Betancourt: What value does he bring to the team? (part 2)

[SoCalBrewfan]

Remember that 1 minus OBP is the out percentage, so a .340 obp will get more plate appearances over the course of a game than a .275. It takes 41 plate appearances to make 27 outs with a .340 obp, and 37 for the .275. So it's like the .340 team gets an extra inning every game....but it's better than that, because the odds of stringing together several hits+walks is better with longer sequences.

 

As an aside, I saw this on MLB trade rumors:

 

The Angels have interest in Betancourt, tweets Troy Renck.

 

Alas, it's the reliever they want, not the reviled.

[DuWayne Steurer]

I believe that if you had a lineup full of decent OBP/ low power guys, you would not score many runs. In many instances, it would take 3 guys reaching base to score a run. Obviously plate discipline is a good thing in that ideally you could work the count to the point where you get a fastball to drive- or draw a walk.

Bill James actually looked at this, years ago -- I forget which book it's in. He ran a computer simulation with one lineup full of OBP guys and one full of SLG guys (I think he used one player who exemplified each type) over hundreds of games. The OBP team scored a lot more runs. You could do a more sophisticated version of the study with, say, one team that's .400/.400 and another that's .300/.500, and I'm pretty sure (though I don't have the knowhow to test my intuition) that the OBP team would win again. Not making outs is the single most important part of a baseball offense.

 

Interesting. Thanks for the post, I'll try to Google it later. My only argument against this would be with guys like Carroll/Counsell who rarely sniff a .400 SLG. If they had a say, .340/.360 line, how would they fare against a .275/.425?

http://www.baseball-refer...com/teams/STL/1985.shtml

 

Off the top of my head......'85 Cards. 1st in OBP, 6th in SLG, and 1st in runs. Granted, they stole a lot of bases, but the value of the stolen base is overrated to a degree. Plus, even taking away runs created by their steals, they'd still have been near teh top of the league in runs, despite a .379 SLG%

 

Basically, no matter how you slice it, if the OPS is equal, a team with a a higher OBP will score more runs.

[1992casey]

Discussion continued in this topic:

 

What happened to Yuniesky Betencourt?