TUCSON, Ariz. | It is one thing, Royals manager Trey Hillman believes, to stress his belief that on-base percentage is the best means of measuring a player’s offensive contributions.
Just don’t get the wrong impression. Hillman won’t be gracing the cover of next year’s Baseball Prospectus. He might be enlightened, in a stats sense, when measured against predecessor Buddy Bell, but Hillman isn’t moved by studying a player’s VORP (value over replacement player).
Mention of PECOTA (player empirical comparison and optimization test algorithm), and the result is a dismissive stare.
“I use statistics,” Hillman said, “but I don’t go that deep. I’m certainly not an expert in sabermetrics. If I go too deep into the statistical study, I lock up.”
So he sticks to his comfort zone, which starts, as he makes clear, with on-base percentage.
“OBP is a no-brainer,” Hillman said. “Get on base and have guys drive you in. Be aggressively disciplined in the strike zone, but take your walks. After that, it depends on what you’re talking about.
“If you’re talking about the middle of the lineup, which I consider three through seven, then I look for run production. So I go to slug (slugging percentage).”
That’s pretty much it, except for studying a player’s left-right tendencies.
“I don’t put it in writing,” he said, “but I try to get educated on all of our offensive players in their overall average and right-left statistics from the last couple of years. Not down to the exact number but a general idea.
“I know that Ross Gload has hit well for his whole major-league career against left-handed pitchers. I know that Ryan Shealy, typically, does not.”
It’s no surprise — is it? — that Hillman cited two cases that go against form.
Gload is a left-handed hitter whose career average against lefties is .345, far better than his .283 career average against right-handed pitchers. In contrast, Shealy is a right-handed hitter with a .305 career average against right-handers but only .153 against lefties.
Shift the topic to pitchers, and Hillman simply reverses his OBP formula — looking first to see how many runners a pitcher permits per inning.
“Innings pitched to walks and then number of hits to innings pitched,” he said. “I then go to Ks (strikeouts), then runs allowed and then to home runs.
“Who is giving up the bombs and why are they giving them up? Strikeouts tell you whether a guy has an out pitch.”
And if he doesn’t?
“If he’s a starting pitcher,” Hillman said, “then the hits-per-inning is important. I’ve seen guys with low runs per inning but give up more hits than innings pitched.
“That means one thing and one thing only, that guy is good at pitching out of his own jams.”
That guy, of course, is likely to get more of a chance to work through jams. If it sounds uncomplicated, well, that’s really what Hillman has in mind.
“The stats I ran in Japan were simple,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s like providing too much information for the players. You experience paralysis by analysis.”
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