“Quality At Bats: Follow UP”
I am confused
I thought the only way to win games was to score runs. And I thought the only way to score runs was to get hits. But I thought that hits are hits regardless of how well they are, well, hit. And outs aren’t hits. But somehow outs can be quality at-bats (QABs). And somehow QABs can lead into runs. So how can outs possibly lead to runs? And, therefore, wins?
This makes no sense. But it makes perfect sense. Because QABs, for the most part, reside outside the realm of outcome and, rather, focus on the elements of baseball that the hitter can, for the most part, control. This falls under the theory that, the more times a team gets a QAB from a player, the greater the likeliness that the QAB will result in a hit, and a run scoring one at that.
As a reminder, let’s look at what constitutes QABs, as defined earlier in our newsletter series:
(1) Any hard hit ball regardless of outcome
(2) A walk or hit-by-pitch
(3) Moving a runner over with zero outs, sacrifice bunting, scoring a runner from third base, bunting for a hit, or successfully executing a hit-and-run
(4) Having a six-pitch at bat regardless of outcome
Statistics show that a team earning 10 QABs in a game will likely score 2 runs per game. But increasing that QAB total by 50 percent results in a 250 percent increase in runs scored: from 2 runs to 7 runs. The key to this is the timeliness of QABs.
It is certainly possible for a team to have 15 QABs and not score 7 runs. It happened to my 18Uers the other day. But over the course of a 21-out game, the statistical likeliness that 15 of those 21 outs being QABs is fairly low; however, the likeliness of those 15 QABs NOT being 15 of those 21 outs is incredibly high. And as you go from 10 QABs to 15 QABs, the likeliness that those QABs will be strung together goes up as well.
In fact, statistically speaking, the law of large numbers is what enables a 50 percent bump in QABs (from 10 to 15) to produce a 250 percent bump in runs scored. That theorem, according to Wikipedia, means: “the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed.” Thus, it is more likely that as QABs increase (more trials are performed), the more likely it becomes not only that they are hard hit balls, but that they are hard hit balls that produce successive base hits, and/or hits that drive in runs.
Additionally, the more QABs your team can create, the more likely it is that the team will take advantage of non-QAB hits – in other words, those bloops and bleeders that count as hits, but not QABs, nevertheless will result in runners on base and, therefore, runs scored.
So, to summarize, teach players to hit the ball hard with frequency and you teach your players to create their own luck. Outs can’t be hits but they can create runs. To the tune of a 250 percent increase in runs scored.