TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Post-Season Sampling -- a Walk in the Park?

I was poking around baseball-reference.com for this and that today, as is my wont, and I ran across one of those odd coincidences like Vinny Castilla's identical two-year triple crown numbers in 1996-97 and John Lowenstein's identical .242/.313 AVG/OBPs in back to back years (Lowenstein went on to hit .242 yet again in a later year).

This one was David Justice's number of at-bats in his final year -- 398 -- which turns out to be exactly equal to his career post-season at-bats. Justice is the career leader in games played in the post-season, by the way, and the oddly synchronous line between his last, injury-laden year at 36 and his career post-season numbers got me thinking. Do we have, in Justice, finally a sample size to show how "tough" the post-season is? Ignoring the probably bogus theory that some players "rise" to the post season and others do not, 112 games seems to me like a pretty good case study.

I've left in Justice's final season of 2002 as representing his "worst" "year" of 398 at-bats, which was actually still quite a productive year. I also took Justice's 162-game averages and pro-rated his stats to show what his "average" 398 at-bats produced. Finally I looked at Justice's "best" stats -- his career highs across the board, in aggregate, not necessarily his best single year (that's the way baseball-reference does it, it's like a "MAX" function in a spreadsheet) for a "best" "year" of 398 at-bats. This last seems a bit bogus to me, but it's easier than tearing one's hair out to identify an actual season as Justice's best.

Sample	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B
2002 36 OAK	118	398	54	106	18	3
21 PS series	112	398	55	89	17	2
162 Game Avg	113	398	65	111	19	2
"Best" Year	106	398	64	111	26	3

HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG
11	49	4	1	70	66	.266	.376	.410
14	63	3	2	64	79	.224	.335	.382
22	71	3	3	64	71	.279	.378	.500
28	81	7	5	64	67	.329	.427	.596

Again, the first two sets of stats -- his 2002 and his aggregate for all post-season games -- are real; the latter two are pro-rated from his average and maximum totals for all seasons.

First, it's interesting how remarkably consistent Justice was. He spent 7 seasons in the NL and 7 seasons in the AL. And his 162-game averages, pro-rated to our magic number of 398 at-bats, are remarkably close to his "best" years for the counting stats per at-bat. (The averages don't match the "highs" mind you, since those are selectively taken from a mixture of years, at-bats, etc.)

One should note that at the start of the 2004 season, Justice stood at 91st on the all-time OPS list. Not bad; maybe not Hall of Fame material, either, although Paul Waner and Lary Doby are right around him on the list (Ellis Burks and Moises Alou are close as well, if you want further comparators). Justice was certainly usually the 2nd or 3rd best hitter on any given club he was on. Pretty good career.

So in the post-season, Justice managed to walk pretty much at the same rate as he did throughout his career. He hit and slugged at a much slower rate: 50 points difference in his batting average, quite a number fewer homers but about the same number of doubles and triples, which accounts for a slugging percentage in the post-season about 120 points off his career average.

The difference between Dave Justice's usual production during the season and his production in the post-season comes down to: he got fewer singles and homers. In the post-season he got 12 fewer singles and 8 fewer homers than he got in his usual 398 at-bats; that's 18% fewer singles and 37% fewer homers. I note somewhat parenthetically that the differences in runs scored and RBI are almost entirely accounted for by the lower homer totals, even if you assume all the "missing" homers were solo shots.

It's also worth noting that the "worst" Dave Justice regular season was still better than Dave Justice post-season. It's a measure of how tough the post-season is.

I am not quite sure what to make of all this, as our one case study of a pretty good hitter with a large enough sample size to take a look at a comparison to regular season production. I'll state the obvious first, which is that one is facing better pitchers in the post-season, and they're stingier with homers and contact. But they're not any more or less stingy with the walks, at least for a player who knew how to take one.

Does this have any implications for how teams should approach the post-season? Should they be more like Bonds and Moneyball and work the count for the walk? If contact is scarcer but on-base opportunities are not, it may be that the name of the game in the post-season is patience.

I don't have the access to the data to do a formal study, but I'd love to see this thought-experiment repeated with all players with at least 50 or so plate appearances and see what comes out of it.

posted by The Crank 5:52 PM