Birnbaum: Fun with Frank Thomas splits in an MVP season

January 16, 2019/in /by admin

From SABR member Phil Birnbaum at Sabermetric Research on January 15, 2019:

This was Frank Thomas in 1993, a year in which he was American League MVP with an OPS of 1.033.

                 PA   H 2B 3B HR  BB  K   BA   OPS 
————————————————–   
’93 F. Thomas   676 174 36  0 41 112 54 .317 1.033  

Most of Thomas’s hitting splits were fairly normal:

Home/Road:              1.113/0.950
First vs. Second Half:  0.970/1.114
Vs. RHP/LHP:            1.019/1.068
Outs in inning:         1.023/1.134/0.948
Team ahead/behind/tied: 1.016/0.988/1.096
Early/mid/late innings: 1.166/0.950/0.946
Night/day:              1.071/0.939

But I found one split that was surprisingly large:

              PA   H 2B 3B HR BB  K   BA   OPS  RC/G 
—————————————————-
Thomas 1     352 108 22  0 33 58 34 .367 1.251 14.81 
Thomas 2     309  66 14  0  8 54 20 .259 0.796  5.45 

“Thomas 1” was an order of magnitude better than “Thomas 2,” to the extent that you wouldn’t recognize them as the same player. 

Read the full article here: http://blog.philbirnbaum.com/2019/01/fun-with-splits.html

---

Originally published: January 16, 2019. Last Updated: January 16, 2019.