Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
May 22, 2008
Chipper and Injuries

Big League Stew saw a picture of Chipper Jones in pain last night and thought his run at .400 might be over:

Jones sat out a game with a sore groin last week, so I can only assume the inevitable injury is creeping closer. But here's to his continued (good) health. Of all the things I'd like to see this season, an extended run at .400 is at the top of the list for individual achievements.

Actually, an injury might help Chipper stay near .400. In 1980, George Brett only played 117 games and recorded 449 at bats and hit .390. An injury that's not too severe reduces the sample size of at bats for Chipper, increasing the odds of a high batting aveage. At his current rate, Jones will get 585 at bats this season. The probability of a .309 hitters (Jones's lifetime BA) hitting .400 in 585 at bats is 1.9* 10E-6, or .0000019. If we reduce that to a 117 game season, however, he'd only get 422 at bats, and the probability of .400 goes up to 4.3* 10E-5, or .000043, about 22 times higher.

However, Jones is quite a ways towards the goal. The probability of Jones getting at least enough hits to hit .400 in 422 at bats is .0023. In 585 at bats, it's .000095. So you see, an injury could take the injury from highly improbable to merely implausible.

Here's a spreadsheet you can use to calculate the probability of Jones hitting .400. Just change the "Total Braves Games" to see how being on the DL changes his chances.


Posted by David Pinto at 12:31 PM | Players | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Injuries would only help him if you assume he would sit out, and be healthy enough to hit well when he played... If the injuries were small and nagging and he played through them, they would obviously do nothing but hurt his chances.

Posted by: Alex J. at May 22, 2008 03:10 PM

Good stuff. I'd recommend 3 changes to the spreadsheet, though: first, a column for 'player's true talent level", and second, a "games missed" column.

Third, include walks and base the spreadsheet off of PA's, since (3.1*162) 502 PA's are required for the batting title, not 502 AB's. A guy who walks a lot will have an easier time of it as well (williams had 147 walks in his .406 year).

Posted by: SleepyCA at May 22, 2008 05:08 PM

this .400 talk stuff is so premature it's ridiculous. Why don't i say right now that the chances of chipper jones hitting .400 is ZERO.

Posted by: andy at May 22, 2008 06:14 PM

andy: "Why don't i say right now that the chances of chipper jones hitting .400 is ZERO."

Because you would be wrong.

Posted by: sabernar at May 22, 2008 06:42 PM

Big disadvantage for Chipper are his health and that the Braves are going to be in contention but not strong enough to pull away. He's probably going to have to drag it out there a lot when he could use a day or two off.

Posted by: Bandit at May 23, 2008 07:35 AM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?