Do the Atlanta Braves really need a ‘big bat’.. or just better hitters?
In a first look at team needs for 2018, there has been concern about how to replace Matt Kemp (if indeed he could be moved elsewhere). This is a quick investigation about the necessity of the ‘big bat’.
How much does a home run threat contribute to the offense of a team? When we hear that the Atlanta Braves will be trying to trade Matt Kemp to another team, the immediate question to be asked is ‘who would replace him?’
Ronald Acuna‘s bat could be that answer, but the bigger question is this: how important is Kemp’s presence? Or that of any thumper in the middle of a lineup?
Sure: we perceive that having that kind of a threat behind Freddie Freeman is important, and we might feel that it’s true. But how does that work over the long haul?
This 2017 season is seeing an increase in runs scored per team and per game – 4.65 over 4.48 in 2016. That’s an increase of .17, or 3.8%.
That home run rate, however has jumped to a record 1.26 per game – that up a whopping 0.10, or 8.6%.
So perhaps there is a correlation in homers and runs scored? Yes (of course), but it’s more complicated than that.
The Evolution of the Home Run
I have taken the liberty of charting some of these key stats for all of major league baseball for the period of 1900 to present day. Because there are significant periods of change in the game, they are at least noted on the charts… though we’ll find that the numbers seem to track fairly well, regardless:
- The Dead Ball Era: 1900-1919 (also prior to 1900, but 1900 also begins the so-called ‘modern era’, so that’s when my charts begin)
- The Steroid Era: roughly 1983-2009.
To a lesser extent, there was also a ‘pitching era’ in the mid-to-late 1960’s in which pitching prowess excelled – ultimately leading MLB to lower the mound height in an attempt to combat the trend of fewer runs being scored. This ‘mini-era’ peaked in 1967.
The question I wish to answer is this: do additional home runs necessarily improve a team’s ability to score runs?
Let’s start with this: a comparison between runs scored per game and per team since 1900, with home runs also overlayed. The runs value has been divided by 4 to allow this data to better fall in the range of the home run rate.
What should be apparent is that with the exception of just a few years, run scoring almost always falls between 4 and 5 runs per game, on average, for each team. This has been even more the case since the early 1930’s.
If you look closer, there was a general downtrend from about 5 RPG to under 4 from 1931 through the late 1960’s, with a brief upswing in the 1940’s. After, the pendulum swung the other direction until peaking at just over 5 RPG again in 2000. Then – possibly because steroids were on their way out of the game – that number crashed again, bottoming in 2014 at 4.07 RPG.
So run production has ebbed and flowed multiple times throughout the last 100+ years. But what about homer rates – the ultimate measure of the power bat.
That’s actually a bit more interesting.
As you can see quite readily, run production really hasn’t risen even as the home rate has risen dramatically.
How is this possible? Shouldn’t homers automatically translate into more run scoring?
It does… but it turns out that there’s an offset.
The K factor
Here’s chart #2… with strikeouts and home run rates overlayed. I had to multiply the homer rate by six in order to show the lines more-or-less on top of one another… even while we’ve seen an explosion of homers since 1920, the strikeouts have reached an epidemic level.
In short, for every home run hit today, there are 6.5 strikeouts. In the early 1930’s (to pick an average set of years), that ratio was still about the same as it is today.
In other words, the contribution that home runs make to the game seems to be getting dampened by the increased strikeouts. Since those 1930’s, the homer rate has tripled… but has the run production? Clearly not.
It’s a Hit
Let’s try one more chart:
Again, the data have been normalized to better show the correlation… and indeed, there seems to be strong correlation here. Even a small difference in batting average seems to be directly correlated with strong changes in run scoring.
That correlation has changed – that is to say that the highest level of run scoring (in the 1930’s) is associated with a time in which the hitters were averaging in the .270-.295 range. In more modern times, teams approached that kind of run production while batting in the .260’s.
However, as though numbers waned a bit (we are in the mid-.250 range across baseball today), run-scoring has indeed fallen from those highs at the end of the steroid era.
Examples from Today
The highest homering club today is the New York Yankees (235, leading Texas by 1 and the Astros by 2).
On the other end of the spectrum? The Braves, Pirates, Giants…maybe not too surprising… and the Red Sox. However, the Sox are 10th overall in run-scoring… and 12th in average (.259)
The Braves are also outperforming their homer positioning, ranking 20th in runs plated. I can’t say that about the Giants and Pirates, but there’s another team that’s bucking the assumed trend:
The Blue Jays are 6th in the major in homers, but 25th in run-scoring. Note that they are 29th in the majors in hitting, with a .242 clip.
So what about our home leaders? Well, the Astros are #3 in HR, #1 in run-scoring, and #1 in batting average. By the way: the Houston strikeout rate? Best (lowest) in the majors. The Yankees? #1, #2, and #7 while their K-rate is 17th best.
So the theory is holding… run-scoring appears to be much more closely related to good, old-fashioned good hitting – which sometimes leads to homers, though that doesn’t seem to be necessary.
So – about that big bat
Todd Frazier, Mark Reynolds, Joey Gallo… these are the poster children of baseball in the 2010’s: high homers, high strikeouts, low average.
More from Tomahawk Take
- Atlanta Braves 2012 Prospect Review: Joey Terdoslavich
- Braves News: Braves sign Fuentes, Andruw’s HOF candidacy, more
- The Weakest Braves Homers Since 2015
- Atlanta Braves Sign Joshua Fuentes to Minor League Deal
- Braves News: New Year’s Eve comes with several questions about the 2023 Braves
I submit that hitters of that ilk aren’t worth having, for they don’t help you score runs on a consistent basis. In fact, check these numbers:
- Mark Reynolds: career 104 wRC+
- Todd Frazier: 111 (though 104, 108 over the past 2 seasons)
- Joey Gallo: 108
Those numbers are over 100, so each player is ‘better than average’… but you would think there should be more run-production out of players hitting in the 30-40 HR range most years.
Not without a decent batting average to go with it, it seems… and the historic run-scoring numbers back that up.
Matt Kemp? 19 homers, still clinging to .277… lower K-rate at 21.2% and a wRC+ of exactly 100.
In total, the analytics suggest that the big bat is actually a bit overrated. That honestly surprised me: I believed going in that the numbers would be a lot closer.
So about the Braves? They gone pretty full bore into analytical analysis, so be assured: they already know about this data.
So maybe hitters like Ronald Acuna and Freddie Freeman could end up being the next poster children – for a raw-hitting run-production movement still to come.