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I really enjoyed the thread “Judging pitcher performance” so I thought I’d try to see what folks thought about judging hitters. But notice that this time I was careful to try to limit the discussion to amateur baseball.

 

So here’s the question. Realizing that there are a million ways to judge ball players, what do you think is the best single metric to judge hitter performance? For many years it was BA, but that has definitely changed. Personally I like OBP or RC but realize there can be many other valid ways to do it.

 

A metric I like a lot but isn’t generally a popular one is “Bases per Out”, and another is “Reached Base Average”. I also like to see hitter contact percentages, and how productive they are by using Clint Hurdle’s productivity guidelines. Something else I look at a lot is how hitters move runners.

 

There’s just so many metrics it’s impossible to pick out just one as being the on best depicting how good a hitter is, but everyone has that one metric they believe does it.

Last edited by Stats4Gnats
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If you could add ROE to OPS I'd be very happy indeed.   ROE should be included at all levels, but especially at the amateur level, high ROE can result in a lot of production. 

You could also make a case that "hitter performance" isn't a complete picture.  So if you could factor SB's and maybe even runs into an "offensive performance" metric that could be even better. 

JCG posted:

If you could add ROE to OPS I'd be very happy indeed.   ROE should be included at all levels, but especially at the amateur level, high ROE can result in a lot of production. 

 

I couldn’t agree more! I include ROEs in many of the computations I do, but I’m also very careful to make sure I put the standard calculation there as well. Not that I think it’s necessary, but rather that I don’t like being sneaky. When ya get caught doing that it hurts your credibility, especially when it’s so easy to show both ways. Please see attached.

 

You could also make a case that "hitter performance" isn't a complete picture.  So if you could factor SB's and maybe even runs into an "offensive performance" metric that could be even better. 

 

True, which is why I also mentioned Bases per Out (See Attached), and points out how difficult it is to pull any single metric out of the gozillions available.

Attachments

Until a hitter gets over 100 plate appearances you can only judge him by his decision making and mechanics. Statistics in small samples leads to misjudgment. 

There are extremes that can be used to judge. If a kid whiffs fifteen times in twenty at bats there's a problem. But I don't think it would take looking at a stat sheet to know.

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