 | Your Junk my Happy Zone | |
| by Brandon Corbett |
Feliz Dia de Los Muertos! Let us talk about things that have come and gone. A lot was made of the bat switch this past season, and a lot of fun was had with the bat switch this past season. But what exactly did the bat switch mean when all was said and done?
The trick to comparing 2012 and 2013 stats from WSEM is that you cannot take the numbers at face value. Since, the two seasons featured a different number of teams playing, and thus a different number of games played, you must first account for that by dividing the "counting" stat categories by the number of teams involved: 8 for 2013, 10 for 2012. After doing that you will see that the number of hits per team saw a modest increase of 15.6% this season. That is just about exactly what we were looking for with the switch. It led to a league-wide batting average of .263, which falls just north of the MLB average of .253. For comparison: the WSEM average in 2012 was .226.
The power numbers are where things really took off. The .037 (16.4%) increase in league batting average led to more than triple that for slugging percentage, with a league-wide jump of .121 in that stat: an increase of 33.5%. Bolstering that inflation were the number of doubles per team increasing by 42%, while the number of home runs per team saw a staggering 71.4% increase. Obviously, the bigger barreled bats account for part of the boom, but can we really find them solely responsible for the power surge? After all: "band boxes" and "tail winds" were things evidently. The fact that triples per team decreased by 37.5% this past season seems to back up the shared role that smaller fields other factors also played in the slugging increase. Now for a related, but irrelevant, fun fact: there were only 7 triples hit in the 2013 season, and each came from a different player.
One more place the bat switch was hugely successful, and my favorite stat boom to see from 2012 to 2013, is how runs per team nearly doubled this season! That 96.7% increase moved home plate from the desert littered with 15+ inning 1-0 affairs to much more fertile tracks of land. Another way to look at the run production boost is how many plate appearances came between there were per run scored. In 2012 this number was 8.61, and it dropped sharply to just 57.1% of that in 2013: 4.92. Bringing a run around to score every fifth batter instead of every eighth or ninth certainly makes for much more exciting action for the 75% of the league who are not pitchers. Plus, when you look at the minimum number of plate appearances in a game (15 for WSEM, 27 for MLB), having our PA/R be a little over half the MLB makes it much more analogous.
One thing here that does not make the game more exciting, unless you are the Mayor or Billy Beane, is the big 78% jump in walks per team. Much like the HR/team numbers and overall slugging percentage, though, the big change in this one stat only corresponds to a league-wide on-base percentage increase of 28.7%, slightly less than double the increase in league batting average. In the spirit of full disclosure, I find myself quite responsible for the large increase in walks: in 2013 I had 46 walks, which perfectly matched my number of career walks from the previous two seasons combined.
The inflated walk total seems to be something that is already remedying itself. Pushing the mound back three feet was something we knew would make pitchers adjust, and those adjustments seemed to be made as the season went on: i.e. pitchers found the zone with more practice from 48'. Figuring I needed some facts to back that statement up for this article, I ran the numbers for five random pitchers. I took their walk totals over their first five games in 2013, then compared that to the rest of their season. All but one of those five pitchers saw a decrease in walks per inning as the season went on. These four all saw double-digit percentage decreases in their walks: 13%, 17%, 25%, and a Jim Price "wow!" worthy 67%. In addition, two of them were giving up less than one walk per inning over the second half of their season. The takeaway here? Pitchers are only continuing to get better from 48', and walks will settle down.
That is essentially what we expect heading forward: the offense had an up year last year with the changes, now - with no sweeping rule changes - pitching will start to counter. Managing the quality of competition in a Wiffleball league is a balancing act. Pitching will always be the centerpiece of Wiffleball; pitching prowess is the reason the ball exists, after all. But with the majority of players in the league never toeing the rubber, it is nice to see the pitchers take a slap across the face once in awhile.
The trick to comparing 2012 and 2013 stats from WSEM is that you cannot take the numbers at face value. Since, the two seasons featured a different number of teams playing, and thus a different number of games played, you must first account for that by dividing the "counting" stat categories by the number of teams involved: 8 for 2013, 10 for 2012. After doing that you will see that the number of hits per team saw a modest increase of 15.6% this season. That is just about exactly what we were looking for with the switch. It led to a league-wide batting average of .263, which falls just north of the MLB average of .253. For comparison: the WSEM average in 2012 was .226.
| Stat | % change from 2012-2013 |
| H/team | 115.6 |
| 2B/team | 142.0 |
| 3B/team | 62.5 |
| HR/team | 171.4 |
| TB/team | 132.5 |
| BB/team | 178.0 |
| R/team | 196.7 |
| AVG | 116.4 |
| SLG | 133.5 |
| OBP | 128.7 |
| Stat | WSEM '12 | WSEM '13 | MLB '13 |
| AVG | .226 | .263 | .253 |
| SLG | .360 | .481 | .396 |
| OBP | .355 | .457 | .318 |
| R/G | 2.43 | 4.78 | 4.17 |
| PA/R | 8.61 | 4.92 | 9.13 |
One more place the bat switch was hugely successful, and my favorite stat boom to see from 2012 to 2013, is how runs per team nearly doubled this season! That 96.7% increase moved home plate from the desert littered with 15+ inning 1-0 affairs to much more fertile tracks of land. Another way to look at the run production boost is how many plate appearances came between there were per run scored. In 2012 this number was 8.61, and it dropped sharply to just 57.1% of that in 2013: 4.92. Bringing a run around to score every fifth batter instead of every eighth or ninth certainly makes for much more exciting action for the 75% of the league who are not pitchers. Plus, when you look at the minimum number of plate appearances in a game (15 for WSEM, 27 for MLB), having our PA/R be a little over half the MLB makes it much more analogous.
One thing here that does not make the game more exciting, unless you are the Mayor or Billy Beane, is the big 78% jump in walks per team. Much like the HR/team numbers and overall slugging percentage, though, the big change in this one stat only corresponds to a league-wide on-base percentage increase of 28.7%, slightly less than double the increase in league batting average. In the spirit of full disclosure, I find myself quite responsible for the large increase in walks: in 2013 I had 46 walks, which perfectly matched my number of career walks from the previous two seasons combined.The inflated walk total seems to be something that is already remedying itself. Pushing the mound back three feet was something we knew would make pitchers adjust, and those adjustments seemed to be made as the season went on: i.e. pitchers found the zone with more practice from 48'. Figuring I needed some facts to back that statement up for this article, I ran the numbers for five random pitchers. I took their walk totals over their first five games in 2013, then compared that to the rest of their season. All but one of those five pitchers saw a decrease in walks per inning as the season went on. These four all saw double-digit percentage decreases in their walks: 13%, 17%, 25%, and a Jim Price "wow!" worthy 67%. In addition, two of them were giving up less than one walk per inning over the second half of their season. The takeaway here? Pitchers are only continuing to get better from 48', and walks will settle down.
That is essentially what we expect heading forward: the offense had an up year last year with the changes, now - with no sweeping rule changes - pitching will start to counter. Managing the quality of competition in a Wiffleball league is a balancing act. Pitching will always be the centerpiece of Wiffleball; pitching prowess is the reason the ball exists, after all. But with the majority of players in the league never toeing the rubber, it is nice to see the pitchers take a slap across the face once in awhile.
What bat did you actually change too? We have been trying a Easton Pro Stix this fall in test games and are going to go with it in 2014. I love more hits and less strikeouts. The rare 1-0 pitching gem is great to see, but when it becomes every game it's time to change things up.
ReplyDeleteJamie, we use both the Easton Pro Stix and Louisville C271.You nailed it with those last two sentences. More hits/plays in the field make things a lot more fun out there for everyone.
DeleteThe two bats are pretty much identical when it comes to performance. We tested them a little prior to the 2013 season but I wanted to know just how DIFFERENT the bats were from the yellow stick. We found that you are just as likely to hit a home run with either of those bats as you are with the yellow stick but the ball traveled an average 20-30 feet further when hit with the Louisville C271 or Easton ProStix. Naturally home run counts and batting averages went up. What can I say, we're not a dominant pitching league. But match the new bats with expanding the playing field to 90 degrees (we had a similar set up that you had last year with the 70 degree angle). So if you guys want to hit more hits and defenses and pitchers step up their game, switch to the bigger bats. It's a lot of fun.
ReplyDelete