Woolums: Changing the way we look at offense, part 5
From SABR member Ken Woolums at Beyond the Box Score on May 3, 2013:
For the well-hit ball theory to have any meaning, it needs to be more closely tied to results. At this point, the metric is far too subjective and vague to be truly useful. To change that, it is important to find a way to give WHB value in the context of all in-game events. What is meant by this is the following: if a double/home run/walk is worth a certain number of runs, then what is a WHB worth? Giving WHB meaning by giving it an expected run value would make it easier to tie into the context of a game.
This is where things get a bit complicated and tricky. To start, the entire basis of this theory is the underlying assumption that a well-hit ball should go for a hit. If it doesn’t, then a hitter has likely experienced the misfortune of hitting the ball to a conveniently or well-placed defense. Therefore, WHB could be treated as hits, because the expectation is that WHB go for hits. If WHB are hits, then it is possible to determine the value of a general hit by taking into account the value of each independent hit type.
Read the full article here: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2013/5/3/4289700/changing-the-way-we-look-at-offense-part-5-smash
Originally published: May 3, 2013. Last Updated: May 3, 2013.