Your Favorite Offensive Stat

I think of all the offensive stats, my son(and myself) is probably the most proud of his low strikeout total.  9 total strikeouts at the plate last spring/summer/fall in 62 games playing HS varsity, 16U in the summer and 17U/18U in the fall.

That is seriously impressive

How many hard hit balls did I have.  Do not care about numbers, average, etc.  Focus on hitting the ball hard for the team.  Simple!

What level of play?

All levels! 

To much pressure placed especially on kids by parents keeping track of average, hits, HR's, etc.  If you focus on just hitting it hard you will get your share that fall in.

Lets say any level of college or pro ball, JH. Is there a single stat that is the first thing you might look at, just to get things started in analysis?

On base percentage and runs scored.

My favorite when my kids are pitching is the unproductive out but that wasn't your question.

OBP and runs scored just as Sdlefty suggested. 

OBP & RBI...

OBP here as well.....love having players that get on base!

Quality at bats, because I know that if I have some good at bats and hit the ball hard, the hits will follow.

I'm with Sdlefty, I would say that Quality At Bat is the most important. As Steve Springer says "get inside the ball and hit it hard somewhere, the rest you have no control over"

As far as strike out rate this can be very deceiving, if it was a QAB, then yes, but if it is a weak grounder and an unproductive out then no. 

My son has a very low strike out rate (college - 10%) and the coaches are suggesting that he takes a few more aggressive swings "some times" and accepts a few more strikeouts, he may get a few extra base hits as a result. He is a big strong middle of order hitter so his approach may be different than a top of the order get-on-base player.

There are some new advanced statistics that I am not aware of and I am sure statsfornats will pop in here with. 

I can’t believe some of you folks! After all the grief I’ve taken by simply mentioning the word “stats”, yet someone comes who has made 10 posts, has no interest other than using the board as a source to improve his product to make $$$$, and people are fawning all over each other to participate in a discussion most have said was irrelevant.

Have you looked at his web site? The hassle-free way to compute team stats and promote players to recruiters.

I like hassle free, but promoting players to recruiters using stats? I’m pretty sure this board has stated over and over again that recruiters don’t care about stats.

Sorry  Frozenropes, I’ve been bitten on this before, so if you want anything from me, there has to be a quid pro quo.

In pro ball there is a stat called wRC+, which stands for Weighted Runs Created. It is an all-encompassing stat that normalizes both the values of each particular occurrence at the plate and includes park factors as well. In the public sector, I believe this is the most accurate statistic to get the best gauge of a player's overall contribution.

wRC+ is based off of wOBA, or "Weighted On-Base Average." I would explain it here but truthfully, I would not be able to do a better job than this: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/woba/

wRC+ is simply a normalized version of wOBA, in order to set the results to league average. So, a 100 wRC+ is a league average hitter, a 95 wRC+ is five percent below league average, a 105 wRC+ is 5 percent above league average, etc. This allows us not only to compare players to each other in the same season (I.e.: The leaders in 2013 were Miguel Cabrera, at 192 wRC+ and Mike Trout, at 176 wRC+), but in different eras as well. It takes into account the fact that the run scoring environment is different year-to-year, and normalizes the statistic to show how the player compares against his competition. Here is a list of the wRC+ leaders all-time: http://www.fangraphs.com/leade...yers=0&sort=17,d 

There is a similar statistic used at Baseball Prospectus called TAv (Total Average), which also takes into account situational hitting. It is, in my opinion, very similar to wRC+, and is set to a scale similar to that of Batting Average (I.e.: .260 is generally around average). I prefer wRC+ simply because I like the format of comparing based on percentages above or below the mean, but TAv's use of situational hitting differs from the formula in wRC+, which intrigues me as well.

To follow up on previously suggested figures, OBP is a bit deceiving because it considers all times on base equal. In 2013, Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto were #1 and #2 in OBP in MLB, but Cabrera had a SLG more than 150 points higher than Votto. Cabrera hit extra base hits much more frequently, and therefore his times on-base were more valuable than Votto's. 

Runs scored and RBI mean absolutely nothing when analyzing individual performance. Both of these statistics rely on the performance of teammates and therefore, in my opinion, are not individual stats. I don't take these stats into consideration when doing player analysis. There are other ways to analyze a player's performance within the game that are in this realm of situations, such as how he performs with RISP and his base running capabilities. But I would HIGHLY recommend that folks do not analyze runs scored or RBI as individual performance measures.

Most teams have analytical departments with a lot more access to a lot more data than that in the public sector, and therefore have proprietary algorithms to accomplish many of the same points of analysis. The above is a reflection of what is available publicly.

I like OBA, though I really like what Josh's is but have either no way tocalculate that for HS / summer ball or I am just incapable (which is probably more the case )

The difficult part of calculating such figures for amateur levels is the discrepancy of talent. It's certainly possible to do so with access to enough data, but I would question the accuracy of such measures due to the volatility of level of competition. That could be a great research study, though, and one I would absolutely love to read.

Yeah, certainly have seen the competition level all over the place. more so in HS than travel, simply because his summer team plays a a certain level (highest torunaments for Ohio but not National high level tournaments). so compettition is relatively level.

BTW, congrats on your new job with Arizona

Oh darn, so you'll be sitting this one out?

Stats, most of us enjoy stats at some level and, regardless of the OP's intent, welcome discussion on the topic.  I believe the grief you get is usually because of  the when and how.

Regarding the OP...

I, too, like hard hit balls for youth and OBP for higher levels.   

Originally Posted by cabbagedad:…I believe the grief you get is usually because of  the when and how.

But that doesn’t mean always, which means there’s something else going on as well.

Regarding the OP...

I, too, like hard hit balls for youth…

Do you have the universal definition for a hard hit ball? I’d sure like to see it. And I’d sure like an example of any metric you’ve developed, and how you use it as a coach to make player decisions.

Favorite Stat....  wPA

The denominator is how many plate attempts my son has and the numerator is how many I get to see.  (watched Plate Attempts) 

I forgot quality at bats!  BB, sac, deep fly ball, hitting behind runner, hit and run, squeeze all if executed are QAB's.  What I like to do during a game is count the number of QAB's each player has.  In addition, we also make an internal competition for the most QAB's for a game - Prize awarded at end of game or series.  As Spring says,  "BA Ave. is the devil..."

I really like the Hard Hit Ball concept, odds are the more hard hit balls you get the more of a chance they will fall for a hit. It also is great for player and team confidence. Using HHB notation at the coaches discretion on the score card, coaches could calculate all kinds useful information off that. Do you guys think that would be useful at the high school and lower level?

QAB all for that too. Love the way you implemented that...get kids off of the mental mindset of batting average

The service does not simply send only the stats to recruiters. It also sends schedule of where and when games are played as well as posts everything to Max Preps and to any media outlet. Automatically. Pretty good deal. I'm just curious as to what this forum thought was important. 

1. Hit the ball hard, with good technique, hands inside the ball, stay back, separate! 

2. OBPS

3. Strike outs. 

love it

At HS level, we keep a QAB sheet which includes a mark for hard hit ball.  Players keep the chart.  When in doubt, they ask each other and/or a coach.  I'm not as concerned with the accuracy or measurement as much as the thought process.

I don't coach youth any more but if I did, this would likely be one of the only offensive stats I would keep... again, to develop a mindset.

Originally Posted by Frozenropes:

The service does not simply send only the stats to recruiters. It also sends schedule of where and when games are played as well as posts everything to Max Preps and to any media outlet. Automatically. Pretty good deal. I'm just curious as to what this forum thought was important. 

I never said that’s all it did. If you’d have been around the last couple of months you’d understand why I only bothered to note that one particular facet of what you claim to do.

FWIW, I say good on ya and hope your effort is a successful one. I just hope you contribute some small percentage of the $$$$ you make tapping it as a resource.

Have you gone to many coach’s forums and asked them what they thought?

Originally Posted by cabbagedad:

At HS level, we keep a QAB sheet which includes a mark for hard hit ball.  Players keep the chart.  When in doubt, they ask each other and/or a coach.  I'm not as concerned with the accuracy or measurement as much as the thought process.

I honestly don’t see the point of measuring something if going in you don’t care about its accuracy. But, that’s your choice. So what is it you do with that metric? What thought process is it you’re trying to instill, and why is it you believe you have players who don’t think that way?

I don't coach youth any more but if I did, this would likely be one of the only offensive stats I would keep... again, to develop a mindset.

You answer implies you are using other offensive stats. What are they?

I know my son's college program tracks QAB or "Productive AB's. The rest I am not too sure about. I do know one thing. They don't have a statistics department in the baseball program, however they do have a very good math program. Hmmm maybe a Sr project for an aspiring statistician .  

I personally love the wPA! However I would add a few more points to the LwPA vs VwPA.

L=Live

V=Video

.......I knew Stats could not stay out of this one for long.

I'm not so sure about QAB as a strong offensive indicator, but my opinion on this is based on a statistical sample of exactly one. My son had a so-so year at the plate last summer.  However is QAB was consistently near the team lead on the team stats page.  So I was very open to the idea that maybe he was "just having a lot of bad luck" despite the fact that he was really swinging it well.  The problem was that it didn't pass my own eye test; he didn't look comfortable at the plate a lot of the time last Summer, especially in the front half of the season.  The rest of his offensive #'s coincided with what I was seeing - inconsistent approach and inconsistent results.  Our team scorer is meticulous and knows his stuff, so I'm not sure what the disconnect might have been with son's high QAB% vs. his pedestrian offensive output (he hit well enough relatively speaking, but certainly not among the team leaders).  One reason that occurred to me at the time is that QAB takes into account how deep a guy goes in the count... the more pitches you see in general, the higher your QAB will tend to be.  Not sure seeing a lot of pitches automatically correlates with having productive at bats. I have no issue with seeing first ball fast balls hit to the gap for extra bases (except when son is pitching, of course).

Thanks Stats. Most coaches I have talked to like OBP, slugging %, or modified versions of both. I like some of the discretionary stats that don't fault players for having good at bats (where they don't necessarily get a hit).

My quote - "I'm not as concerned with the accuracy or measurement as much as the thought process."

So, I didn't say I don't care about the accuracy.  In fact, I said players check with other players and coaches when in doubt.  Furthermore, the book and QAB chart are usually reviewed for reasonable accuracy after each game. 

As for the rest, I'll leave to your imagination.  Otherwise, the likelihood of this thread going south becomes quite good.

OPS is nice, though it helps to know how important OBP is relative to SLG for the run scoring environment you're looking at, and at the HS and college level I'd expect OBP to be more important by a larger margin than it is at the pro level (where it's roughly twice as important).

Every QAB stat I've ever seen has been mostly worthless.  The things that actually matter in most QAB systems are actually captured by OBP or OPS anyway.

Considering offensive stats I'm assuming we are leaving high school alone since accuracy has been a debate?

See link from BA below - Interesting.

http://www.baseballamerica.com...ed-for-the-hit-tool/

Well this ought to tell you something about how you're perceived on here.  You destroy every thread you contribute to.  I think you would try to go against someone who said that grass was green and the sky was blue.

As for my favorite stat I'm in the QAB group.

BTW - cabbagedad stay away from the burning flame that is responding to stats.  Responding to him is like a moth being attracted to those electric blue bug zappers on the front porch.  You see something you want to point out but he's that electricity that kills you.  I'm just coming in close enough to hopefully pull you back before you get zapped.

But, Stats, he has a website. His information and opinions, therefore, are obviously superior to yours. Get yourself one of those fancy new-fangled websites and something to sell and then come back.

Personally, I try to stay away from "hard hit balls" as a statistic for a couple of reasons:

1) it is subjective; and

2) for one of the reasons others mentioned supporting it - given a decent sampling of at bats, it will inherently show up as improvement in other statistical categories.