I think I have learned to really look at the numbers when looking at a players career. And I mean all the numbers you think are relevant.
And I believe that I also learned that Slugging % is a bigger indicator of what a player is doing than I previously thought. I did not value Slugging % because I knew it involved calculating total bases and I placed no real value on that part of the equation. Now I think I was wrong. Oh, well me being wrong is pretty much a daily thing.
But before I get to the slugging numbers I want to make one point I forgot to make yesterday about Barry Bonds home run numbers. After I figured out the home run split between 86-97 and 98-07 I averaged the homers between the splits. From 86-97 he averaged 31 per year and from 98-07 he averaged 38 per season but the second split does not really matter for my purposes.
What does matter is I took the 31 per season between 86-07; then added the home runs he might have hit if he had stayed at the 31 per season level (372) and the 374 he hit between 86-91 for a possible career total of 746. Either way Barry Bonds is the home run king and Major League Baseball should remove the asterisk from his statistics. And I think on homers alone Barry Bonds is a first ballot HOF'er.
NOTE: Writer's block is a terrible thing. I have been trying to finish this the last few days but it seems like everything I have written has been gibberish. Yes, you can add the joke here.
Since I have written this in the sequence I did the research I will look at Bonds' On Base % (OBP). I find it some what amazing that I failed miserably in algebra but when I saw the formula for finding a player's on base % it looked like algebra and I understood it. Maybe if I would have found a way to use baseball to learn algebra I might have actually passed the class. Oh well, it's only 20+ years to late for that.
Anyway, I have thought for years that other than batting average a player's OBP was the best way to judge how good they were. I may have slightly altered my thinking on that but I will get to that later.
In the time between seasons 86-97 Bonds OBP was .408%. From 98-07 his OBP was .496%. I calculated the difference to be .088% and to me that is a somewhat major difference. I would have expected both the HR numbers and OBP to be significantly higher if the "experts" were right about how steroids greatly help a players abilities.
Even though I still think the increase in home runs can still be attributed to Bonds becoming a better hitter; the OBP numbers are more significant to me and has me questioning my thinking a little.
And then I got to the Slugging % (SLG% ) and was astonished at what I found out. From 86-97 Barry Bonds SLG% was .551%. From 98-07 Bonds' SLG% was .670%. That is a percentage point difference of .119 and that is a major difference to me.
My understanding of what a SLG % means is not the just the average a player hits a but in includes the amount of total bases and my understanding is a bit hazy on this but I believe its and indicator of power. I have always figured it to mean that with a greater number of doubles and triples a players SLG% increases. If anyone who reads this can confirm or deny my thinking I would greatly appreciate being told.
If I am right, I think the much higher SLG% number may be and indicator that Barry Bonds' home run splits may not have been much of a power indicator but if his double and triple increases were significant we may be able to see the aid that steroids give.
I will look into that before I look at Mark McGuire (spelling?) and Sammy Sosa. Hopefully tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment