The Importance of Sports Analytics
Case Study: Tim Anderson
Eyes can be deceiving. Yes, they provide perspective, something much needed to judge a person’s qualities and personality, and how that might impact the team’s locker room. However, when judging a player’s talent and abilities, more often than not, they misjudge, lie, or often don’t tell the whole story. Scouts and fans across the league often invest themselves in all sorts of ways based on an over reliance on box score stats and what they see. The problem is, that box stat, and all those memorable experiences seeing that player shine, doesn’t actually mean what they think it means. In fact, it can even be misleading. However, this is where the importance of comprehensive analytics comes into play. Analytics provides us with a holistic view that digs into various aspects of player performance to accurately make informed judgements.
Tim Anderson has been a solid .300 hitter the past two years. Many consider him to be a star and an up and coming player in the league. However, batting average does not tell the whole story about Anderson, and we must dig deeper into Anderson’s analytics to discover whether or not his batting average can represent his true value to the team. According to Fangraphs, Tim Anderson has a “minuscule walk rate (3.3%) that is the third lowest among all players with at least 500 plate appearances, ahead of only slap hitters José Iglesias and Hanser Alberto.”
This in turn lessens his ability to get on base. Having patience and discipline; letting poor pitches go by and being selective, are just as important as a good swing. If you have both you are even more valuable to your team. But here's the thing, box stats don't make these distinctions apparent. As a result, Anderson is only halfway there. Let’s also keep in mind, although he does get hits approximately 30% of the time (as seen from his batting average), that means he doesn’t 70% of the time and because he rarely walks, it essentially means that if he isn’t getting hits in his at bats, he is likely often a liability. And part of his extremely low walk rate is a result of his poor pitch selection, as shown below in a graph provided by Fangraphs.
Tim Anderson Swing% vs All Pitchers
Season: 2019-04-05 to 2020-09-27
Count: All Counts | Total Pitches: 2564 | View: Catcher
Furthermore, data provided by Baseball Savant that shows that Anderson is in just the 2nd percentile in chase rate in 2019, and just the 5th percentile in 2020 (for context, the scale is from 0-100, which means Anderson the past two years has chasing pitches at a rate like no other compared to the average baseball player.) The ability to let poor pitches go by and not help the pitcher by swinging at those pitches not only allows those players to get on base more often to help produce runs, but also helps develop the player as if they are more selective, they are more likely to find a good pitch to hit and increase their chances at barreling the ball hitting it hard.
But if he hits consistently well, do his walks matter? Well looking at his batted ball data, the answer to that question could be yes, at least if he or his team is expecting for him to maintain this level of play. Let's think about the big picture. The goal of every pitcher is to get the batter out. Whether it is ground balls, fly balls, strike outs, getting outs is key to becoming a successful pitcher. On the flip side, the goal of a hitter is to hit balls hard; line drives, occasional fly balls, and in some cases, hard hit ground balls. But let’s remember not all hits are made equally, some types of contact lead to more outs than others. In fact, in 2016, hitters hit a measly .239 batting average on ground balls, and they had an outstanding .411 batting average on fly balls and line drives. Ground balls more often than not, produces outs.
In Tim Anderson’s case, that is actually the opposite. According to an article by Tony Blengino, Anderson in 2019 “had 24 singles on only 120 fly balls, 20% of his total, as compared to the MLB average of 9%. That has nothing to do with speed or hitting ability; it’s luck.” This means that most of his hits came on ground balls, as 54.6% of Tim Anderson’s contact came from these types of hits in 2019, and a whopping 91.3% in 2020 (albeit in a much, much shorter season), compared to the league average of approximately 44.6%. As I stated above, as a pitcher you want them to get ground balls, it results in more outs, and as a hitter, you work on your swing to reduce ground balls. Tim Anderson’s hits, as Blengino described, could be identified as “luck”, he manages to hit ground balls where defenders are unable to make a play, or hits it to defenders who do not have much defensive range. To add on to this concept of “luck”, Anderson had a whopping .399 and .383 batting average on balls in play, a metric that calculates the total number of hits a player got out of all the balls they hit into play (here is a good article about BABIP). For context, the league average is around .300, which meant Tim Anderson was well over that average. While this may seem impressive, here is a bit of context about BABIP given by Fangraphs: “Players have no control over the defenses they’re facing, and they can only direct their hits to a limited extent. Sometimes a batter makes good contact, but simply hits the ball right at a fielder. Also, a batter that consistently hits into a shift may have a lower BABIP than a typical player.” What this entails is that BABIP allows us to see if a hitter seems to be getting a boost from poor defense or good luck or getting docked for facing good defenses and having bad luck. And furthermore, while Anderson manages to consistently make contact, he does not hit the ball especially hard. In the 2019 and 2020, he ranked in the 33rd and 40th percentile, respectively, in hard hit rate, according to Baseball Savant.
Citations
Ciardiello, Carmen. “Tim Anderson's High-Wire Act.” FanGraphs Baseball, blogs.fangraphs.com/tim-andersons-high-wire-act/#more-358023.
“Tim Anderson Statcast, Visuals & Advanced Metrics: MLB.com.” Baseballsavant.com, baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/tim-anderson-641313?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb.
Slowinski, Piper. “WRC and WRC+.” WRC and WRC+ | Sabermetrics Library, library.fangraphs.com/offense/wrc/.
Slowinski, Piper. “BABIP.” BABIP | Sabermetrics Library, library.fangraphs.com/offense/babip/.
Blengino, Tony. “White Sox' Tim Anderson Is Legit, But Don't Expect A Repeat Batting Title In 2020.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 9 July 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/tonyblengino/2020/07/09/sox-ss-tim-anderson-is-legit-but-dont-expect-a-repeat-batting-title-in-2020/?sh=5f4b56007702.
Trautwig, Alex. “Tim Anderson Bat Flip.” Tim Anderson Is Going to Play the Game His Way, 30 Apr. 2019, www.si.com/mlb/2019/04/30/tim-anderson-white-sox-speaks-out.
