In yesterday’s post, we looked at a stat we are calling “production” which was proposed by uber-sportswriter, Joe Posnanski.  Posnanski proposed the stat, but it was originally created by baseball researcher Tom Tango. 

To recap, “production” assigns a point value to a players hits, walks, stolen bases, etc.  Using “production” (which I will refer to as PRO from now on), let’s take a look at some of baseball’s best hitters and their PRO score.

• Albert Pujols          399.9
• Prince Fielder        373.5
• Mark Teixeira         351.4
• Ryan Howard         342.7
• Adrian Gonzalez     340.0
• Ryan Braun             338.3
• Miguel Cabrera       338.3
• Chase Utley             333.4
• Hanley Ramirez      331.2
• Adam Dunn             322.7
• Aaron Hill                 319.6
• Mark Reynolds        318.8
• Joe Mauer                318.4
• Ryan Zimmerman    314.8
• Evan Longoria         312.6
• Jason Bay                307.1
• Pablo Sandoval       306.0
• Ichiro Suzuki            301.7
• Kendry Morales       301.1
• Carlos Lee               288.2
• Kevin Youkilis          279.6
• Alex Rodriguez        260.6

There are a couple of things I take from this list.  First, Albert Pujols is head and shoulders above all other players when it comes to producing runs for his team.  Second, Prince Fielder is much more important to the Brewers offense than I give him credit for.  Third, I have a new found respect for Adam Dunn.  Fourth, Aaron  Hill is having a monster year.

So how do the Cubs line up using PRO?

• Derrek Lee                  313.4
• Ryan Theriot                247.7
• Kosuke Fukudome    241.7
• Alfonso Soriano          200.9
• Milton Bradley             191.5
• Aramis Ramirez         160.0
• Mike Fontenot             151.3
• Geovany Soto             141.3
• Micah Hoffpauir         116.6
• Jake Fox                        98.2
• Jeff Baker                      94.8
• Koyie Hill                       92.0

This list does a good job of showing 1) how pathetic the Cubs offense was in 2009, and 2) how much better Derrek Lee was than anyone else on the team.  The list also makes the point that as good as Aramis Ramirez was at the plate this year, being out on the DL can kill your PRO numbers.  It makes sense.  If you don’t play, you can’t help your team score runs

The numbers we’ve looked at so far are all from the 2009 season (as of 10/1/09).  For the Cubs stats, I included every position player that had at least 200 at-bats.  There’s nothing magical about that figure.  It was just an arbitrary figure I chose.

Now, let’s compare PRO to OBP.  As I stated previously, PRO does a much more effective job of tracking a player’s production relative to a team’s runs scored than OBP.  As an example, here are the Cubs OBP leaders (minimum 200 at-bats):

• Derrek Lee                 .395
• Aramis Ramirez        .386
• Milton Bradley            .378
• Kosuke Fukudome  .374
• Ryan Theriot              .348
• Jeff Baker                   .343
• Jake Fox                     .318
• Geovany Soto            .318
• Koyie Hill                    .307
• Alfonso Soriano        .303
• Mike Fontenot           .301
• Micah Hoffpauir        .299

You’ll note that Derrek Lee led the team in PRO and OBP.  Not too surprising.  Aramis Ramirez had the second highest OBP on the team, but that doesn’t really tell you how valuable he was to the team over the course of the entire season.  He was only the sixth more valuable player based on PRO because he missed two months of the season on the DL.  Milton Bradley had the third highest OBP on the team, but he was only the fifth most valuable player on the team when it came to actually scoring runs.  Ryan Theriot was second when it came to helping the team score runs, but he ranked just fifth when it came to OBP.

This brings up an important observation.  PRO is a good indication of how much a player helps his team.  A player’s personal stats may not be that stellar, but if he scores high in PRO, he is still valuable to his team.  This is important because, after all, baseball is a team sport.  What a player does for his team matters more (or should matter more) than how successful he is at building his personal stats.

In his article, Posnanski also talks about the “negative hitting” stats, or “negative production” formula that Tango created.  Honestly, I don’t completely understand it.  Here’s the formula:

(At bats – hits) + sacrifice flies + caught stealing

Here’s what I don’t understand: At-bats – hits = outs.  So far, so good.  But why add in sacrifice flies?  Don’t sacrifice flies help a team to score runs?  What about caught stealing?  We already accounted for caught stealing in the PRO stat.  Aren’t we penalizing a player twice for being caught stealing?

Also, it seems to me that the type of out (fly out, ground out, strikeout, GIDP), can have an impact on scoring runs.  For instance, a ground out is more likely to advance a runner than a fly out or a strike out.  Shouldn’t these variables be accounted for in the formula?

Posnanski has some questions about the “negative production” (NEG PRO or -PRO) formula as well, but he concludes that Tango is smarter than he is, so he accepts the formula at face value.  I can’t accept the “negative production” formula for a couple of reasons.  First, I don’t understand it.  It doesn’t make sense to me.  Second, it complicates the PRO stat.  The beauty of the PRO stat is that it is simple.  I want simplicity in my stats and and the “negative production” component complicates the issue (although if it works, it makes the stat more accurate and more valuable).

In the end, this was a fun discussion, but until teams, pundits, writers, etc. start using PRO as a legitimate stat, it’s not going to much matter.  I would love to see a very accurate, yet simple stat (like PRO) introduced and accepted.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that that will happen anytime soon.  Even so, I think PRO is a step in the right direction.