Drilling Down Further on Slugging Splits: Quantity vs. Quality

by Lucas Apostoleris on Apr 7, 2011 3:23 PM EDT in Research

A few days ago, Bill Petti had a good piece on this site about how slugging rates differ for players when pulling the ball and hitting to the opposite field. Today, I would like to expand on that topic. Quantity and quality are two things I'm going to focus on - the amount of balls hit to each trajectory, and the success that the batter had to each field. With that in mind, here are some major league averages from 2008-2010 for percentage of balls hit to the pull, opposite, and center fields along with the wOBAcon* for each split.

*I'm fine with slugging percentage, but I slightly prefer wOBAcon (weighted on-base average on contact) because the weightings are more accurate than in SLG. The formula I'm using for wOBAcon is ((0.89*1B)+(1.26*2B)+(1.59*3B)+(2.04*HR))/BIP; the league average wOBAcon for 2008-2010 was .360.

	Type%	wOBAcon
Pull	.438	.413
Center	.375	.331
Opposite	.187	.296

First, a bit deeper on quantity. The three tables below show the league leaders in pull%, center%, and opposite%. I'm using a minimum of 500 balls in play over the past three seasons (2008-2010).

Rank	Player	Pull%
1	Marcus Thames	.599
2	Gary Sheffield	.559
3	Carlos Pena	.535
4	Kenji Johjima	.534
5	Andruw Jones	.533
6	Ben Francisco	.532
7	Mark Teixeira	.516
8	Jorge Cantu	.513
9	Josh Willingham	.512
10	Dan Uggla	.510

Rank	Player	Center%
1	Luis Castillo	.443
2	Willy Taveras	.423
3	Scott Podsednik	.405
4	Yorvit Torrealba	.403
5	Brendan Ryan	.392
6	Gregor Blanco	.391
7	Gerardo Parra	.389
8	Nyjer Morgan	.389
9	Julio Borbon	.388
10	Jeff Keppinger	.388

Rank	Player	Opposite%
1	Michael Young	.364
2	Ryan Theriot	.354
3	Akinori Iwamura	.352
4	Nick Punto	.350
5	Ryan Sweeney	.348
6	Derek Jeter	.348
7	Ichiro Suzuki	.342
8	Willie Bloomquist	.342
9	Joe Mauer	.341
10	Luis Castillo	.340

Seems pretty reasonable - lots of guys (Thames, Pena, Teixeira, Uggla, etc.) are notorious power hitters. Suzuki and Jeter don't surprise me one bit on the opposite field leaders.

So now, what about the quality?

The numbers below show a hitter's wOBAcon to a field relative to the league average (scroll up to refresh your minds on the averages). 100 is league average; higher is better. It's the same concept as Baseball-Reference's sOPS+ (I'm not using any park factors here). I've set the minimum at 100 contacted pitches.

PULL

Rank	Player	wOBAcon+
1	Mike Stanton	150
2	Kevin Youkilis	146
3	Dan Uggla	143
4	Mark Reynolds	138
5	Russell Branyan	137
6	Jonny Gomes	135
7	Mike Cameron	134
8	Laynce Nix	132
9	Miguel Cabrera	131
10	Josh Willingham	131

CENTER

Rank	Player	wOBAcon+
1	Jack Cust	161
2	Ryan Howard	154
3	Jayson Werth	152
4	Kendry Morales	150
5	Alex Rodriguez	148
6	Mark Reynolds	147
7	Chris Davis	144
8	Matt Holliday	144
9	Joey Votto	144
10	Carlos Gonzalez	143

OPPOSITE

Rank	Player	wOBAcon+
1	Ryan Howard	205
2	Jim Thome	203
3	Adrian Gonzalez	181
4	John Baker	174
5	Joey Votto	174
6	Joe Mauer	169
7	Mark Teahen	164
8	Brad Hawpe	162
9	Jim Edmonds	161
10	Lance Berkman	157

Something Bill discussed in his article that I'd like to just briefly touch on here is consistency - some guys have great disparity in their production to different fields, while others are much more consistent. A good way to do this is by looking at triple slash lines for pull/center/opposite wOBAcon. Bill identified Mark Teixeira (.527/.338/.259), Jose Bautista (.539/.364/.185, though very small sample size for opposite field data), and especially Curtis Granderson (.503/.324/.253) as being some pull-heavy hitters last year (remember that the data I'm using here are since 2008). Bill noted that Jim Thome (.405/.452/.601) and Lance Berkman (.422/.375/.464) were particularly good at hitting to the opposite field relative to the pull field last year. Conversely, Prince Fielder (.465/.439/.405) and Shin-Soo Choo (.443/.447/.449) were some of the more balanced sluggers.

Data are from Fangraphs.

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Comments

Miggy Cabrera's wOBAcon?

Subjectively, he’s a masher of the baseball in all directions and is particularly good to right-center.

Me Elsewhere:

Bless You Boys (Tigers Blog) / Beyond the Boxscore / My Michigan State (and Big Ten) Baseball Blog. / Western Michigan University Hoops / my Last.fm account.

by Mike Rogers on Apr 8, 2011 1:16 AM EDT reply actions

From 2008-2010, Miguel was substantially above average to all fields

Pull/center/opposite:
.542/.399/.402

Compared to the league average, he’s best at going to the opposite field (136 wOBAcon+).

by Lucas Apostoleris on Apr 8, 2011 1:25 AM EDT up reply actions

That's what I figured. Awesome.

I’d like to see some more stuff with wOBAcon as well, by the way. Also, maybe some rip-off’s of Harry Pavlidis’ “adjusted” stats. For instance, K+, BB+, etc. using K% and BB% (where BB% = BB+HBP/TBF). Like, leader boards and whatnot. Especially given that Fangraphs doesn’t provide K% as K/TBF.

Me Elsewhere:

Bless You Boys (Tigers Blog) / Beyond the Boxscore / My Michigan State (and Big Ten) Baseball Blog. / Western Michigan University Hoops / my Last.fm account.

by Mike Rogers on Apr 8, 2011 2:22 AM EDT up reply actions