RAB To Track A-Rod’s LI
Posted by Steve L. on April 5th, 2007 · Comments (6)
Joseph P. over at River Ave. Blues will be tracking A-Rod’s Plate Appearances and Leverage Index over the course of this season. As he writes:
I’m going to log each and every one of Alex’s plate appearances this season. It will be very simple: Leverage Index and the outcome of the at bat. Maybe this, combined with his WPA, will allow us to understand the whole “he doesn’t come through in the clutch” argument.
This should be fun.
Unless other players are similarly tracked, how will we know whether Alex’s performance is good, bad, or average?
by the nature of WPA, anything positive is helping your team, and negative hurts your team. every player IS tracked at fangraphs.com.
Thanks, Travis. Anyway, Leverage Index is normalized, which helps us put it into context without looking at other players (though doing so is always helpful).
If he strikes out in with a LI of 3.00 and homers when it’s 0.32, well, we know that he struck out when it mattered and homered when it didn’t make a difference.
I’m sorry to be dense, but I still have two questions.
First, I know WPA is available for every player; I was asking about the additional tracking that the person Steve linked proposed to do.
Second, Sporting Brews, you said “If he strikes out in with a LI of 3.00 and homers when it’s 0.32, well, we know that he struck out when it mattered and homered when it didn’t make a difference.” That still doesn’t tell us whether he’s more or less likely to have those outcomes than any other player. At any time, any player can strike out when it “matters” and homer when it “doesn’t” (I dispute whether scoring runs ever “doesn’t matter” but I’ll set that aside here). So I guess what I’m wondering is, what can be learned by tracking LI and outcome for Alex’s at bats and not for any other players’ at bats?
I’m sorry, Carla; I should have mentioned that I am the guy who is tracking these situations.
The answer to your question I think can be answered by: I’m sick of hearing about him never coming through when it matters and that all he hits are tack-on home runs.
While tracking all players (or at least a large sample of players) would be ideal, I simply don’t have the time for that kind of undertaking. I’ll probably run David Ortiz, Travis Hafner, Grady Sizemore, and a few others for some comparison. If I find anything interesting, maybe I’ll keep pursuing it.
Thanks a lot for the answer, Sporting Brews.
I very much agree with you on this: “I’m sick of hearing about him never coming through when it matters and that all he hits are tack-on home runs.”
I hope your efforts at tracking him (which I appreciate and will follow) don’t provide as much ammunition for people who say those things as they do for people like you and me. I suspect the truth is that A-Rod, like all players, sometimes fails in the clutch, and sometimes hits “tack-on” homers (which, again, I’m not sure I believe in).
I would definitely be interested in seeing how Alex compares to Ortiz, who is so often identified as Mr. Clutch.