The series on similar ballplayers continue with Omar Moreno. The series started with Ken Phelps, someone a bit under appreciated in his day. Omar was likely a bit over appreciated. He led the league in PA and at bats in 1979 and 1980. To that, you need to draw few walks, and bat in front of a pretty good offense. Omar didn’t get on base much or hit for power, but he somewhat made up for the lack of long hits with great base stealing. In his first five seasons in the majors, he stole 217 bases, caught just 64 times. In doing the comparison to other players, however, we’re only looking at batting prowess.
To remind you of how this works, here’s the relevant information from the Ken Phelps post:
Along with the BABIP prior, we have a very good four dimensional description of the batter:
- How often he puts the ball in play.
- How often he gets a hit on balls in play.
- How often he homers.
- How often he strikes out.
I thought these would well to construct a mean squared difference similarity score. I collected all players with at least 1500 career plate appearances since 1969, the year the mound reached its current height, division play began, and I started watching baseball. To get the score, I square the difference of the four measures with the player of interest, and divide by four. I did not account for playing time, a huge component of value. I was more interested in players with similar skills.
Here are the ten players in that time frame most similar to Omar Moreno:
| Batter | BIPPrior | BABIP | BABnIP | KBnIP | MeanSqDist |
| Omar Moreno | 0.971 | 0.294 | 0.028 | 0.667 | 0.0000000 |
| Steve Lyons | 0.965 | 0.285 | 0.035 | 0.669 | 0.0000408 |
| Tony Scott | 0.976 | 0.288 | 0.025 | 0.679 | 0.0000597 |
| Brian Hunter | 0.972 | 0.306 | 0.029 | 0.674 | 0.0000693 |
| Alcides Escobar | 0.971 | 0.297 | 0.036 | 0.681 | 0.0000854 |
| Garth Iorg | 0.968 | 0.282 | 0.045 | 0.673 | 0.0001517 |
| Denny Hocking | 0.958 | 0.290 | 0.037 | 0.651 | 0.0001217 |
| Milt Cuyler | 0.970 | 0.278 | 0.024 | 0.650 | 0.0001868 |
| Willie Bloomquist | 0.975 | 0.314 | 0.026 | 0.681 | 0.0001994 |
| Bill Almon | 0.957 | 0.297 | 0.039 | 0.685 | 0.0001495 |
| Joe Girardi | 0.967 | 0.297 | 0.038 | 0.641 | 0.0002701 |
Omar and his ilk get most of their hits on non-home runs, as seen by their high BABIP prior. The great majority of their balls not in play (home runs, walks, hit by pitch, and strikeouts) fall into the strikeout category. Their BABIPs are around league average, but with the strikeouts they end up with a career batting average much lower than their BABIP. Moreno hit .252 for his career, as did Steve Lyons. Girardi came in at .267, but notice his K probability is lower. Garth Iorg was a platoon player with a very different split against lefties and righties. (I wonder if Garth and his brother Dane sat around saying, “Party on Dane.” “Party on Garth!”)
Moreno’s 1979 was a good but not great season. Back then, the wisdom said that a near .300 batting average, playing every day, and stealing a ton of bases made one a great lead-off man. Moreno did not post a .300 OBP after age 28, but his reputation helped him hang around through his age 33 season.