Hitting statistics

Baseball overflows with statistics. That's part of why we love the game. OPS, runs created, ISOP (Slugging percentage minus batting average) are just some of the (oftentimes unnecessary) bunch of numbers that statisticians produce.]

As BBC players we try to use these to our advantage to set our lineups. But how important are statistics to BBC, and which ones should we pay more attention to? After all there's a stat for just about any situation and any time of day.

Let's start with hitting statistics, we will cover pitching another time. Pay attention to these stats when setting your batters:

-Home and road BA
-Batting average against righthanders and lefthanders
-Multi hit games in the last 10 games
-The stud pitcher/bad pitcher factor

You might ask yourself, that's it? I can rely on FOUR sets of stats to produce the best lineup? Well, yes and no. Yes, because I consider these to be the best indication of how a hitter or set of hitters will perform on a game by game basis. No, because there are an infinite number of external factors that will negate them (weather, rest, place in the batting order are just some of these).

I want to break down each of these areas.

1. Home BA vs road BA
It's not hard to conclude that generally a hitter will bat better at home than on the road. What you want to look for are players that derive a majority of their relatively high BA from home at bats. Ian Kinsler is a great example of this (.275 BA, .381 @ home, .167 road). You know who else? Brad Hawpe; he bats a massive .423 at home, but his overall is .336. You can probably guess what he does on the road. This doesn't work in the same way for road statistics, however. Most often a player who bats a ton better away than at home is an anomaly that will regress.

2. BA vs LHP/RHP
Works in almost the same way as home/road splits. Here, you'll want to look for righty or lefty 'killers.' Matt Diaz and Scott Hairston kill lefties. Hawpe and Joe Mauer crush righthanders. You get the drill.

3. Multi hit games in last 10 games
Some people may not agree with me on this, but I consider this stat very important. It's a very good indication of how well a player is seeing the ball. A player can be having a horrible season and I would consider him just for having a few of these recently. I cut off this number at 4 or 5. You can do likewise, and tweak it based on other 3 stats. This is how I consider if someone is hot or cold. Chris Davis crushing 5 homers in 10 games should let you know RBIs and home runs alone aren't a good indicator of performance for BBC. Same thing with a 10 game hit streak. If a player only has 1 two-hit game during that span, don't consider him hot.

4. Stud/bad pitching
Here's where I think some people rely too much on how good or bad a pitcher is doing. Basically it breaks down like this: You NEVER want to pick against a stud pitcher, and you never want to 'load up' more than four players on any bad pitcher. My definition of a stud pitcher is a lights out, proven non-rookie, who hasn't been crushed in any of his starts. To put it in easier terms, think of this pitcher as someone you would not hesitate to choose as your pitching staff. As of this writing, I can only think of four: Dan Haren, Johan Santana, Tim Lincecum, and Zack Greinke. There's a few close ones, but not close enough.
So when it comes to bad pitching you'll want to consider not loading up very seriously. Things have to come together almost perfectly for me to consider a loadup. Look to the other statistics to help you know when to do this, but never ever choose more than 4 (possibly, rarely 5) batters from one team.

So after knowing these four areas, you'll want to strike a balance between them, while not ignoring any of them. A quick example: Let's say Brad Hawpe has 5 multi hit games over his last 10, going against a right hander at Coors Field. Only problem is that right hander is Tim Lincecum. It's pretty obvious that you don't pick Hawpe in this situation, but keep in mind if you do, you ignored the pitching rule, even though you satisfied 3 of the other 4 areas.

As a side note, I don't consider any one of these stats the most important or least important of the four. I usually try to toss in a few gut choices here and there and balance it with salary and external factors to make my hitting lineup.

Hopefully a little of my strategy will work for you as well. Good luck and thanks for reading!