May 13, 2008
Scoring More
William Burke and Joe Sheehan try to tackle the puzzling question of why the AL is scoring less than the NL, in what appears to be an article available to everyone. My SportingNews.com column looked at this last week, with Burke and Sheehan commenting:
I'm not entirely convinced, but he lays out an interesting case.
These two researchers dig deep into the number and present evidence that fewer fly balls are leaving the park in the AL this year, leading to a large reduction in slugging percentage. However, I'm not convinced as to their why:
I think there may be some selection effects happening here. I've written about this when it comes to playoff baseball. Playoff games are generally lower scoring than regular-season games. However, part of the reason for that is that managers play as if they will be lower scoring, using more one-run strategies than they normally would and emphasizing defense to a greater extent. It becomes, if not a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that gets helped along.
Over the last year or so, we've heard a lot about teams getting away from the style of baseball played during the peak of the high-offense era, and trying to play better defense. Personnel decisions along the lines of playing Tony Pena Jr. or Asdrubal Cabrera add up, and they start to impact the league's statistics. Teams have been choosing defense over offense, and that is probably the biggest reason for the drop in offense in the AL: personnel selection. Managers and GMs are putting lesser hitters on the field in an effort to prevent runs, and they're getting just that result--for themselves and the opposition.
The only place I can see where a team truly traded slugging for defense was at shortstop in Baltimore. Asdrubal Cabrera sparked the Indians offensively last season. The Royals didn't exactly have offensive power houses at shortstop before Pena. Torii Hunter stayed in the AL. The Tigers moved their great defensive third baseman to the bench for more offense. The Yankees play Giambi at first to improve their outfield defense, but they still keep all those hitters in the game. Maybe if you look over a few season it's there, but I don't see it. I notice a lot of old Firstbase/DH types not producing.
Posted by David Pinto at
05:17 PM
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Offense
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UGH.
"I see a lot of first base/DH types not producing." Yes, precisely. How in the universe did they come up with that ridiculous "AL choosing defense over offense" premise? Of the 2 players they actually cite, one is an offensive liability. The other as you point out, isn't taking playing time away from some non-existant power hitting KC shortstop. An orang-utan taking a quick glimpse at what they refer to now as "statistics" would note that, thus far, all these big time AL sluggers have been bad-to-brutal: Thome, Konerko, Swisher, Hafner, Sheffield, Vlad, Dave Ortiz, Big Frank, Carlos Pena, Sexon (like last year), Giambi. Vic Martinez hasn't hit a home run. Not one of them has put up an .800 OPS.