The Value of OBP and SLG by Lineup Position for High-Scoring and Low-Scoring Teams

Last February I posted some regression results that showed that the value of OBP and SLG in terms of run scoring varied quite a bit according to position in the lineup. Here I looked at those values for high and low scoring teams because although OBP, for example, might be more important for leadoff men than for 6th or 7th place hitters, it could also vary by team. Maybe OBP does not have the same value on high-scoring teams for leadoff men as it does for low-scoring teams.

I originally looked at all teams from 1959-2004 (but not the NL from 1959). Data came from Retrosheet. My dependent variable was team runs per game and the independent variables were the OBP and SLG for each of the 9 lineup slots for each team. For what I am doing here, I eliminated all DH teams. That means all AL teams from 1973-2004. Then I found the top 25% of the teams and the bottom 25% of the teams in terms of runs per game.  Then I ran this regression for each group. The table below shows the run values for both OBP and SLG for each lineup slot for both the high-scoring teams and the low-scoring teams.

So there is quite a big difference in run value for OBP and SLG for different lineup slots between the high-scoring teams and the low-scoring teams. For some reason, sometimes the value of either OBP or SLG was higher for the low scoring team. The high-scoring teams ranged from 4.57 to 5.98 in runs per game with an average of 4.92. For the the low-scoring teams the range was 2.86 to 3.86 with an average of 3.54. There were 174 teams in both groups.

Link to earlier article

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/story/2006/2/19/192135/078