You’re taking the easy way out if you’re comparing different BA with the same OBP and SLG. How often does that even happen? And duh, obviously a double is better than a single. But if you take a hitter with a .330 BA and .350 OBP with a hitter with a lower BA but same OBP, I will take the higher BA every time. Because a hit is better than a walk. Bottom line to me: don’t discard any info. Baseball is not that easy; the more information you consider, the better.
Winning any golf tournament is harder than winning any tennis tournament.
To win a golf tournament, you need to beat every, single person (often 120+ people).
To win at tennis, you need to beat 6-8 people (7 at Wimbledon).
It's not close.
You could win Wimbledon this year and never play against the best player. Someone else might beat Alcaraz and Djokovic. In golf, you have to outplay everyone.
I feel like a bit of alarm about early season hitting is a time honored Joe Blogs tradition, and I have been waiting for it to be mentioned all year.
At least this year we are comparing March/April to other March/Aprils, instead of comparing it to the entire year, but I think comparing this year on April 13th to the others through April 30th is still a bit premature.
Agreed! I thought the same thing a couple days ago! I don't know if the warmer temperatures helped recently or what but runs have been up the last few days and yesterday was ridiculous.
My friends and family fantasy team has more home runs the last 3 days than they did from March 27th-April 11th. I know that could be a coincidence, but I noticed.
Tom takes a lot more joy in baseball than he's being given credit for here! And I honestly think it may be less that understanding of the concepts is getting worse than that the social media landscape has changed - it appears that he put the latest poll on X/Twitter, and a lot of the more thoughtful fans are exactly the types who can no longer justify participating there. I do wish there was a good robust sabermetrically-inclined baseball community somewhere, though.
The thing about Golf and Tennis is pretty easy to see without knowing anything about either sport. In this century, there have been about 61 separate Golf major winners and only 21 in Tennis. There is obviously a better chance in Golf for someone to break through and win one. This seems even more true because the number of years you can be a top Tennis player is, on average, much less than the number of years you can be a top Golfer.
I will also say this (having played Tennis and even a little Golf). In Tennis, it really only takes a small talent level difference for one player to beat the other every single time, or damn close to it. It takes a much bigger difference in Golf for there to be no hope for the lesser player.
My father-in-law was a squash champion into his seventies. When I first knew him, he would have been about 56. When he came back from squash, I asked him if he'd won. "I always win," is what he said. Later, when I learned the game, I had about three people I played with. With two of them, if I won a single point in a game, I would cherish that as a triumph. The third was, happily, generally competitive with me, and we could actually each win some. Unfortunately, I got a neck injury just after I was 30 and could never play again (if you play squash when you can't turn your head, you may get hit in some pretty sensitive places).
I had a friend for several years that was pretty even with me in Tennis, and we played just about every week, weather permitting, until he had a major knee injury and couldn't play much more than light double after that. I searched for another player about my level, and found people who I killed and people who killed me, but no one close. Then I got married and kind of stopped playing much, and now I am older and (much) slower. (My best skill might have been being able to get to just about anything. That is gone now)
This is probably tennis’ biggest problem as a recreational sport. I enjoy playing tennis (although I like golf more) but for tennis to be fun you really have to play against someone at roughly the same level as you. If you’re playing against someone better than you, you’ll probably get crushed. If you’re playing someone worse than you, it’s too easy to be really fun.
Golf, on the other hand, is still fun to play with people who are better or worse than you because their skill level doesn’t really affect your play (other than maybe mentally).
I Agree about Tennis being fun Only if you have players of a fairly close skill level to play with and against. After not playing tennis for 30+ years, in my mid 50s, I picked the game up a little bit with one guy and then I moved here to the Pacific Northwest, played around a little bit on weekends, And then just before I retired, joined the indoor club, which is pretty mandatory where I live if you want to play year round. I have been fortunate to find a group of about 15 guys all of them of similar level, a couple a little bit better, but when we play, you never know for sure which team is going to win. As we’re most all of retirement age or well beyond We just play doubles. The social aspect is the most fun, but we never know who’s going to win when we do a round Robin of each person playing with the other. Today I ended up winning all three sets, on Friday I lost all three with a different group of guys. I played for a couple hours four or five mornings a week. It’s always competitive and fun. I consider myself very fortunate To be able to go out and be really active in my mature years.
But you know what, yea! I do wanna know. Because if you tell me Oneil Cruz is hitting .350 I would think he must have improved on his 3rd percentile whiff rate and I would be wrong, and that is funny to me.
Tango is correct when evaluating a player’s past value based on the actual value he has already delivered. However, in high-leverage situations - such as late innings in close games with runners on base - pitchers tend to be more careful and are much less likely to issue walks. In those spots, a player’s ability to consistently make contact and hit for average becomes potentially valuable.The same is true against elite pitching, such as in the playoffs, where top pitchers walk batters at a much lower rate. There, the ability to actually put the ball in play and generate hits carries greater potential impact. The key word is potential. Batting average helps identify which hitters are better equipped to deliver damage in these critical, high-pressure situations against high-quality pitching where walks are much less likely.
I am curious if you know of any research that would indicate that pitchers are less likely to walk batters in high-leverage situations. I've never seen any research to this effect. Would be curious if this is actually true, rather than just a statement with an air of truthiness. (I won't call it what Bill James would...)
Actually BRef shows a slight increase in walks in high-leverage situations but there are also more IBBs. Innings 7-9 have the fewest walks vs innings 1-3 and 4-6. So my comment is not fully accurate and should be amended but is not totally inaccurate. Maybe we can agree that in high leverage situations hits have more value relative to walks than they do in lower leverage situations. Or put differently, the difference in value of hits in high-leverage is larger than in low leverage.
Right. You'd have to separate out the intentional and semi-intentional walks. It's gets difficult but assuming you go there - any situation where it's not strategic to walk the batter. Up by one in the 9th, bases empty, nobody out, definitely don't walk the batter. Up by one in the 9th, runners on second and third, 2 out, best hitter at the plate - yeah probably walk him. I agree that it's likely the number of value added walks late game is fewer.
A factor that makes tennis so much harder to win is that you have to start over at even every day. You don’t get credit for your excellent play the day before. If you play a fantastic round 1 and win easily, that has zero carryover to day 2. Same thing to day 3, 4, …
In golf if you have a great 1st round and are leading the field by 3 strokes, that advantage carries over. Same thing applies to all the rounds. A great round of golf can totally offset not so great rounds. You can have a bad round - on any of the 4 days- and still win. It is very unusual to be able to have a bad match and win in tennis. Of course it can happen, your opponent that day can have an even worse match. And in tennis once you have a bad match, you are out. Done playing. While in golf, you still have 3 rounds to offset your bad round.
Statistics do not always equate to value. In the Analytics vs. Eye Test argument, I think about who I'd pick if we were choosing sides on the playground. I believe that hits are contagious and have a positive effect on the rest of the team. So, if I'm picking my team, I'll always take the player who more consistently gets hits.
Answer: Babe Didrikson did both, but *only* won 2 gold medals (hurdles, javelin) to her 10 golf majors (the last won after cancer surgery while wearing a colostomy device). So I say golf major is easier.
Well there are 4 golf majors every year and only one Olympics every 4 years (unless someone is competing in both the Winter and Summer!) so there are far more chances to win a golf major.
Not realistically. No one is capable of competing in dozens of different Olympic events at this point. Certain sports offer more opportunities than others (swimming and gymnastics in the Summer Olympics and skiing in the Winter) but still no one has ever won more than 8.
Gotta be honest after what Rory did at 12 yesterday I was really hoping to wake up this morning to a Rory Masters story that could serve as a companion piece to the day Golden Bell story you wrote after Tiger won
I did a quick spreadsheet to visualize the difference between Player A 260/365/510 and Player B 315/365/510. I picked 504 PA, which is close to the 502 for a qualifying season. There are no reach on error or HBP in my example :-)
Player A: H 147, 1b 94, 2b 33, 3b 2, HR 18, BB 37, TB 238 .315/.365/.510
Player B: H 112, 1b 54, 2b 33, 3b 0, HR 25, BB 72, TB 220 .260/.365/.509 (rounding)
You can play with the mix of hits for each, but the total bases and total hits need to be the ones above for the %'s to work.
According to Mike Hegan in Ball Four, the hardest thing in sports is explaining to your wife why *she* needs a penicillin shot for *your* kidney infection.
Decades ago, USA Today took a completely unscientific look (they asked their sports reporters) at the Most Difficult Things To Do In Sports. Among the ten finalists were returning a power serve in tennis (think of how fast the ball comes off the racket, and how little time you have to react) and hitting a long, straight drive in golf (the tiniest of variation in your swing, and the ball winds up in the rough). The one that made me go "Yeah, that makes a LOT of sense" was the pole vault. You have to sprint while carrying this insanely long pole, plant the tip of it on target, hope the pole bends just right, contort your body enough to get over the bar, and then don't break yourself on landing....
The most difficult thing was, of course, hitting a major league fastball. You have to start your swing even before the ball leaves the pitcher's hand.....
So now that the pitchers are throwing the ball so much harder and faster than they did decades ago, does the batter have to start swinging just as the pitcher begins his windup?! 👍🙄
In tennis vs. golf, I think this is one of those things where tennis has way more discreet activities (number of times hitting the ball) in a tournament than does golf. In a tennis match, each (men's) player will hit the ball probably 800 times. One round of golf the player hits the ball 70 times.
With more trials, it is more likely that the best player will win. Fewer trials create higher variance outcomes.
While it may be an interesting discussion, we're all really just arguing over what "easier" means. There's multiple tennis players with more than 20 grand slams. Nicklaus is the only golfer even close with 18. And golfers are competitive for a lot longer than tennis players (except maybe the Joker). It seems pretty obvious it's "easier" to win a bunch of tennis majors if you are the best (or second best) player in tennis.
I suspect (but am too lazy to do the research) that it is much easier for a solid but not great golfer to win a grand slam tourney than a solid but not great tennis player.
You’re taking the easy way out if you’re comparing different BA with the same OBP and SLG. How often does that even happen? And duh, obviously a double is better than a single. But if you take a hitter with a .330 BA and .350 OBP with a hitter with a lower BA but same OBP, I will take the higher BA every time. Because a hit is better than a walk. Bottom line to me: don’t discard any info. Baseball is not that easy; the more information you consider, the better.
Winning any golf tournament is harder than winning any tennis tournament.
To win a golf tournament, you need to beat every, single person (often 120+ people).
To win at tennis, you need to beat 6-8 people (7 at Wimbledon).
It's not close.
You could win Wimbledon this year and never play against the best player. Someone else might beat Alcaraz and Djokovic. In golf, you have to outplay everyone.
I feel like a bit of alarm about early season hitting is a time honored Joe Blogs tradition, and I have been waiting for it to be mentioned all year.
At least this year we are comparing March/April to other March/Aprils, instead of comparing it to the entire year, but I think comparing this year on April 13th to the others through April 30th is still a bit premature.
Agreed! I thought the same thing a couple days ago! I don't know if the warmer temperatures helped recently or what but runs have been up the last few days and yesterday was ridiculous.
My friends and family fantasy team has more home runs the last 3 days than they did from March 27th-April 11th. I know that could be a coincidence, but I noticed.
Tom takes a lot more joy in baseball than he's being given credit for here! And I honestly think it may be less that understanding of the concepts is getting worse than that the social media landscape has changed - it appears that he put the latest poll on X/Twitter, and a lot of the more thoughtful fans are exactly the types who can no longer justify participating there. I do wish there was a good robust sabermetrically-inclined baseball community somewhere, though.
The thing about Golf and Tennis is pretty easy to see without knowing anything about either sport. In this century, there have been about 61 separate Golf major winners and only 21 in Tennis. There is obviously a better chance in Golf for someone to break through and win one. This seems even more true because the number of years you can be a top Tennis player is, on average, much less than the number of years you can be a top Golfer.
I will also say this (having played Tennis and even a little Golf). In Tennis, it really only takes a small talent level difference for one player to beat the other every single time, or damn close to it. It takes a much bigger difference in Golf for there to be no hope for the lesser player.
My father-in-law was a squash champion into his seventies. When I first knew him, he would have been about 56. When he came back from squash, I asked him if he'd won. "I always win," is what he said. Later, when I learned the game, I had about three people I played with. With two of them, if I won a single point in a game, I would cherish that as a triumph. The third was, happily, generally competitive with me, and we could actually each win some. Unfortunately, I got a neck injury just after I was 30 and could never play again (if you play squash when you can't turn your head, you may get hit in some pretty sensitive places).
I had a friend for several years that was pretty even with me in Tennis, and we played just about every week, weather permitting, until he had a major knee injury and couldn't play much more than light double after that. I searched for another player about my level, and found people who I killed and people who killed me, but no one close. Then I got married and kind of stopped playing much, and now I am older and (much) slower. (My best skill might have been being able to get to just about anything. That is gone now)
This is probably tennis’ biggest problem as a recreational sport. I enjoy playing tennis (although I like golf more) but for tennis to be fun you really have to play against someone at roughly the same level as you. If you’re playing against someone better than you, you’ll probably get crushed. If you’re playing someone worse than you, it’s too easy to be really fun.
Golf, on the other hand, is still fun to play with people who are better or worse than you because their skill level doesn’t really affect your play (other than maybe mentally).
I Agree about Tennis being fun Only if you have players of a fairly close skill level to play with and against. After not playing tennis for 30+ years, in my mid 50s, I picked the game up a little bit with one guy and then I moved here to the Pacific Northwest, played around a little bit on weekends, And then just before I retired, joined the indoor club, which is pretty mandatory where I live if you want to play year round. I have been fortunate to find a group of about 15 guys all of them of similar level, a couple a little bit better, but when we play, you never know for sure which team is going to win. As we’re most all of retirement age or well beyond We just play doubles. The social aspect is the most fun, but we never know who’s going to win when we do a round Robin of each person playing with the other. Today I ended up winning all three sets, on Friday I lost all three with a different group of guys. I played for a couple hours four or five mornings a week. It’s always competitive and fun. I consider myself very fortunate To be able to go out and be really active in my mature years.
I don't care if it's April 13; Oneil Cruz is batting .355 and if you tell me that doesn't matter you can go to hell.
And yet he is a worse outfielder than Greg Luzinski. Must be their similar builds. You'll always have 1979, yinzer!
How dare you say that to an O's fan!
His OBP is .429 and his Slugging Percentage is .645. Do you need to know his batting average to know he's gotten off to a good start?
It's a joke, Rick.
But you know what, yea! I do wanna know. Because if you tell me Oneil Cruz is hitting .350 I would think he must have improved on his 3rd percentile whiff rate and I would be wrong, and that is funny to me.
Golf is clearly easier for the rando to win. If you play your best golf, you don't have Scheffler out there blocking your best shots.
Tango is correct when evaluating a player’s past value based on the actual value he has already delivered. However, in high-leverage situations - such as late innings in close games with runners on base - pitchers tend to be more careful and are much less likely to issue walks. In those spots, a player’s ability to consistently make contact and hit for average becomes potentially valuable.The same is true against elite pitching, such as in the playoffs, where top pitchers walk batters at a much lower rate. There, the ability to actually put the ball in play and generate hits carries greater potential impact. The key word is potential. Batting average helps identify which hitters are better equipped to deliver damage in these critical, high-pressure situations against high-quality pitching where walks are much less likely.
I am curious if you know of any research that would indicate that pitchers are less likely to walk batters in high-leverage situations. I've never seen any research to this effect. Would be curious if this is actually true, rather than just a statement with an air of truthiness. (I won't call it what Bill James would...)
Actually BRef shows a slight increase in walks in high-leverage situations but there are also more IBBs. Innings 7-9 have the fewest walks vs innings 1-3 and 4-6. So my comment is not fully accurate and should be amended but is not totally inaccurate. Maybe we can agree that in high leverage situations hits have more value relative to walks than they do in lower leverage situations. Or put differently, the difference in value of hits in high-leverage is larger than in low leverage.
Right. You'd have to separate out the intentional and semi-intentional walks. It's gets difficult but assuming you go there - any situation where it's not strategic to walk the batter. Up by one in the 9th, bases empty, nobody out, definitely don't walk the batter. Up by one in the 9th, runners on second and third, 2 out, best hitter at the plate - yeah probably walk him. I agree that it's likely the number of value added walks late game is fewer.
A factor that makes tennis so much harder to win is that you have to start over at even every day. You don’t get credit for your excellent play the day before. If you play a fantastic round 1 and win easily, that has zero carryover to day 2. Same thing to day 3, 4, …
In golf if you have a great 1st round and are leading the field by 3 strokes, that advantage carries over. Same thing applies to all the rounds. A great round of golf can totally offset not so great rounds. You can have a bad round - on any of the 4 days- and still win. It is very unusual to be able to have a bad match and win in tennis. Of course it can happen, your opponent that day can have an even worse match. And in tennis once you have a bad match, you are out. Done playing. While in golf, you still have 3 rounds to offset your bad round.
Statistics do not always equate to value. In the Analytics vs. Eye Test argument, I think about who I'd pick if we were choosing sides on the playground. I believe that hits are contagious and have a positive effect on the rest of the team. So, if I'm picking my team, I'll always take the player who more consistently gets hits.
What's harder, winning an Olympic gold medal in a track and field event -- say, hurdles, or javelin, or to win a major golf title?
Answer: Babe Didrikson did both, but *only* won 2 gold medals (hurdles, javelin) to her 10 golf majors (the last won after cancer surgery while wearing a colostomy device). So I say golf major is easier.
Well there are 4 golf majors every year and only one Olympics every 4 years (unless someone is competing in both the Winter and Summer!) so there are far more chances to win a golf major.
You’re forgetting that there are dozens of Olympic events in which one can compete.
Not realistically. No one is capable of competing in dozens of different Olympic events at this point. Certain sports offer more opportunities than others (swimming and gymnastics in the Summer Olympics and skiing in the Winter) but still no one has ever won more than 8.
Hence, my original conclusion: winning a golf major is easier.
I was agreeing with you by pointing out there are far more opportunities to win a golf major so of course it’s easier.
It’s just sheer math.
Gotta be honest after what Rory did at 12 yesterday I was really hoping to wake up this morning to a Rory Masters story that could serve as a companion piece to the day Golden Bell story you wrote after Tiger won
I did a quick spreadsheet to visualize the difference between Player A 260/365/510 and Player B 315/365/510. I picked 504 PA, which is close to the 502 for a qualifying season. There are no reach on error or HBP in my example :-)
Player A: H 147, 1b 94, 2b 33, 3b 2, HR 18, BB 37, TB 238 .315/.365/.510
Player B: H 112, 1b 54, 2b 33, 3b 0, HR 25, BB 72, TB 220 .260/.365/.509 (rounding)
You can play with the mix of hits for each, but the total bases and total hits need to be the ones above for the %'s to work.
According to Mike Hegan in Ball Four, the hardest thing in sports is explaining to your wife why *she* needs a penicillin shot for *your* kidney infection.
Decades ago, USA Today took a completely unscientific look (they asked their sports reporters) at the Most Difficult Things To Do In Sports. Among the ten finalists were returning a power serve in tennis (think of how fast the ball comes off the racket, and how little time you have to react) and hitting a long, straight drive in golf (the tiniest of variation in your swing, and the ball winds up in the rough). The one that made me go "Yeah, that makes a LOT of sense" was the pole vault. You have to sprint while carrying this insanely long pole, plant the tip of it on target, hope the pole bends just right, contort your body enough to get over the bar, and then don't break yourself on landing....
The most difficult thing was, of course, hitting a major league fastball. You have to start your swing even before the ball leaves the pitcher's hand.....
So now that the pitchers are throwing the ball so much harder and faster than they did decades ago, does the batter have to start swinging just as the pitcher begins his windup?! 👍🙄
In tennis vs. golf, I think this is one of those things where tennis has way more discreet activities (number of times hitting the ball) in a tournament than does golf. In a tennis match, each (men's) player will hit the ball probably 800 times. One round of golf the player hits the ball 70 times.
With more trials, it is more likely that the best player will win. Fewer trials create higher variance outcomes.
While it may be an interesting discussion, we're all really just arguing over what "easier" means. There's multiple tennis players with more than 20 grand slams. Nicklaus is the only golfer even close with 18. And golfers are competitive for a lot longer than tennis players (except maybe the Joker). It seems pretty obvious it's "easier" to win a bunch of tennis majors if you are the best (or second best) player in tennis.
I suspect (but am too lazy to do the research) that it is much easier for a solid but not great golfer to win a grand slam tourney than a solid but not great tennis player.
So, what does "easier" mean? Not much, IMO.