Giving Victor Martinez Credit for Situational Hitting

When a team is losing, fans usually talk about how they never hit with runners in scoring  position.  When a team is winning like the Tigers have been recently, everyone wants to talk about their great situational hitting.  One man in particular who is getting praise for his ability to hit with runners in scoring position is designated hitter Victor Martinez.

Many fans complain that statistics like on base percentage, slugging average and OPS don't address situational hitting. Traditional fans like to use Runs Batted In, but that is a team dependent statistic.  A player has more or less opportunity to drive in runs depending on who is batting in front of him.

Other fans point to batting average with runners in scoring position, but that is based on a limited number of plate appearances.  It also doesn't consider the number of outs, the specific base runners (e.g. bases loaded versus second base only) or the type of hit (single, double, triple or home run).  It also ignores a player's performance when no runners are in scoring position. 

What we want is a statistic which gives a player credit for everything he does including situational hitting.  Batting RunsBatting Runs Above Average by the 24 Base/Out States (RE24) - found at Baseball-Reference - does just that.   In the past, I have discussed just plain Batting Runs  (see the bottom section of the linked article).  Batting Runs is an estimate of how many runs a player contributed to his team beyond what an average hitter would have contributed in his place.   RE24 is similar to Batting Runs except that it uses base/out states in the calculation.  An example of a base/out state is "runners at first and third and one out".  There are 24 possible base/out states and RE24 takes all of them into consideration.

In the calculation of Batting Runs, a double with the bases loaded and two outs counts the same (0.770 runs) as a double with the bases empty and no outs. On the other hand, RE24 counts the bases loaded double more than the bases empty double (2.544 versus 0.632) because it does more to increase the expected runs scored in the inning.

RE24 for one at bat is the difference between run expectancy at the beginning and end of a play.  For example, suppose Martinez bats with a runner on first and one out. In that situation, we would expect 0.556 runs to score by the end of the inning.  Assume that Martinez then doubles, putting runners on second and third with one out. In that situation, we would expect 1.447 runs to score by the end of the inning. Therefore, Martinez's double is worth 0.891 runs.

Summing RE24 over all of a batter’s plate appearances yields his season total RE24. For
example, Martinez has a RE24 of 39.5 this year.  So, by that measure, he has contributed about 40 runs above what an average batter would have been expected to contribute given the same opportunities. This is much higher than his 20.3 Batting Runs, which means that Martinez has been extremely good in situations with high run expectancy and has contributed more to his team’s runs than Batting Runs indicates.  Indeed, we can estimate that he has contributed an extra 19 runs with his situational hitting, which is a lot.

Table 1 below shows the top ten batters in the American League in terms of RE24 in 2011.  RE24. Miguel Cabrera is second to Jose Bautista in both Batting Runs and RE24.  While Martinez is only 17th in the league in Batting Runs, he is fifth in RE24.

The Tigers have 66.7 Batting Runs as a team this year and their team RE24 is 61.1.  So, their situational hitting performance has not significantly helped or hurt them.  Their individual RE24 leaders (Table 2) are no surprise.  Regardless of how you cut the data, Cabrera, Martinez, Alex Avila and Jhonny Peralta are the clear offensive leaders.

What is interesting is that Martinez is so far ahead of the rest of the team in RE24 minus BtRuns.  This shows that Martinez has added more with his situational hitting than any other Tiger.  The majority of his teammates actually look slightly less productive when you add situational performance into the equation.


Table 1: AL RE24 Leaders

Player	Team	BtRuns	RE24	RE24-BtRuns
Bautista	TOR	60.6	59.2	-1.4
Cabrera	DET	57.2	56.3	-0.9
Ellsbury	BOS	34.7	50.2	15.5
Gonxalez	BOS	47.0	44.9	-2.1
Martinez	DET	20.0	39.5	19.5
Granderson	NY	33.9	38.3	4.4
Ortiz	BOS	42.8	36.1	-6.7
Gordon	KC	33.1	33.8	0.7
Napoli	TEX	29.0	33.6	4.6
Cano	NY	20.3	30.7	10.4

Table 2: Tigers Ranked by RE24

Player	BtRuns	RE24	RE24-BtRuns
Cabrera	57.2	56.3	-0.9
Martinez	20.0	39.5	19.5
Avila	32.6	28.4	-4.2
Peralta	18.7	14.3	-4.4
Boesch	10.9	9.1	-1.8
Young	1.8	2.7	0.9
Betemit	3.0	2.6	-0.4
Jackson	-5.5	-1.7	3.8
Dirks	-1.3	-4.3	-3
Kelly	-9.6	-7.0	2.6
Santiago	-2.6	-9.1	-6.5
Raburn	-9.0	-12.2	-3.2
Ordonez	-12.6	-18.3	-5.7
Inge	-19.8	-22.7	-2.9

Tigers Who Got On Base

On Friday, I presented the Times On Base (TOB) leaders for 2010 and throughout baseball history.  Now, I'm going to do the same thing just for Tigers players.  The TOB statistic is the counting stat complement of the rate statistic On Base Percentage.  Whereas rates do a good job of measuring quality of performance, they tell us nothing about playing time.  That is where counting stats come into play.

Table 1 shows that Miguel Cabrera reached base 272 times last year, which was more than any other Tiger.  Austin Jackson (232) and Johnny Damon (217) were next in line.  Victor Martinez (189) should replace Damon in getting on base while adding some power. 

Table 1: Tigers Times On Base Leaders, 2010

Player	Team	PA	H	BB	HBP	TOB
Miguel Cabrera	DET	648	180	89	3	272
Austin Jackson	DET	675	181	47	4	232
Johnny Damon	DET	613	146	69	2	217
Victor Martinez	BOS	538	149	40	0	189
Brandon Inge	DET	580	127	54	5	186
Brennan Boesch	DET	512	119	40	5	164
Ryan Raburn	DET	410	104	27	8	139
Magglio Ordonez	DET	365	98	40	0	138
Ramon Santiago	DET	367	84	30	7	121
Alex Avila	DET	333	67	36	2	105

Table 2 shows that the legendary Ty Cobb reached base 336 times in 1915, a Tigers record which has stood the test of time.  Norm Cash had the second highest total (326) in his big 1961 season.  Cobb and second baseman Charlie Gehringer both appear on the top ten list three times.  For some, the biggest surprise on the list might be Tony Phillips with 313 TOB in 1993.  To put that in perspective, no major league player has reached base that many times in any of the last six seasons.


Table 2: Tigers Single Season Times On Base Leaders

Player	Year	PA	H	BB	HBP	TOB
Ty Cobb	1915	700	208	118	10	336
Norm Cash	1961	672	193	124	9	326
Charlie Gehringer	1934	708	214	99	3	316
Charlie Gehringer	1936	731	227	83	4	314
Tony Phillips	1993	707	177	132	4	313
Hank Greenberg	1937	701	200	102	3	305
Ty Cobb	1911	654	248	44	8	300
Charlie Gehringer	1937	660	209	90	1	300
Ty Cobb	1924	726	211	85	1	297
Hank Greenberg	1938	681	175	119	3	297

Not surprisingly, Ty Cobb, who leads the Tigers in almost everything, finished with over 5,000 TOB (5,133).  That is the third highest total of all time behind Pete Rose and Barry Bonds.   The closest Tiger was Al Kaline with 4,339.  The biggest surprises on the list might be shortstop Donie Bush with 2,899.

Table 3: Tigers Career Times On Base Leaders

Player	First year	Last year	pa	h	bb	hbp	tob
Ty Cobb	1905	1926	12,105	3,900	1,148	85	5,133
Al Kaline	1953	1974	11,597	3,007	1,277	55	4,339
Charlie Gehringer	1924	1942	10,237	2,839	1,186	50	4,075
Lou Whitaker	1977	1995	9,967	2,369	1,197	20	3,586
Harry Heilmann	1914	1929	8,390	2,499	792	39	3,330
Alan Trammell	1977	1996	9,375	2,365	850	37	3,252
Sam Crawford	1903	1917	8,869	2,466	646	16	3,128
Norm Cash	1960	1974	7,772	1,793	1,025	85	2,903
Donie Bush	1908	1921	8,451	1,745	1,125	29	2,899
Bobby Veach	1912	1923	6,782	1,859	512	53	2,424

Note: The raw data used to calculate Times On Base came from Lahman's database.