Adam Duvall continues to dominate early-April baseball. He now leads the AL in hits, runs, triples, RBI, and every rate stat... including simple ORA.
His game yesterday is a little easier to break down than Sunday's was. So... why not? If I keep trying to explain this stuff maybe I'll eventually get good at it.
In the 1st he walked and then scored on a Triston Casas homer. Duvall got himself to first; Casas did the rest of the work. No need to over-complicate things: Duvall got himself a quarter of the way home; he deserves a quarter of his Run. 0.25 batting Runs, zero Outs.
Duvall walked again in the 3rd but this time he was left stranded. You can't have created any runs if no runs were scored. This time his base wasn't worth anything. Still 0.25 batting Runs, zero Outs.
In the 5th Duvall singled and went to 2nd on a wild pitch, but was ultimately stranded at 3rd. This time he earned two bases: one with his bat and one with his baserunning. But once again, those bases were worthless. Still 0.25 batting Runs against zero Outs.
In the 6th Duvall finally got to hit with some runners on, and came through with a single scoring Alex Verdugo from 2nd. The retrosheet event files for 2023 won't be released until after the World Series, but in 2022, runners on 2nd advanced an average of 1.728 bases when batters singled with two outs and runners on 1st and 2nd. If Verdugo had stopped at 3rd, he would have advanced only one base. He would have had a below average advance for a runner in his situation, and so the batter - Duvall - would have deserved credit for the one base Verdugo did take.
Since Verdugo scored from 2nd, he deserves some of the credit for that final base - home "base" - for advancing above and beyond the average. Verdugo advanced two bases. Duvall gets credit for the average advance his single produced from a baserunner in that situation - 1.728 bases. He still gets credit for all of Verdugo's 3rd-base advance, and also 0.728 of his home-plate advance. Verdugo gets the rest: 1 - 0.728 = 0.272.
Since Verdugo scored those two bases are worth a quarter run each. Duvall gets 1.728 / 4 = 0.432 batting Runs, and Verdugo gets 0.272 / 4 = 0.068 baserunning Runs. The other runner - Masataka Yoshida - and Duvall were both stranded so I don't care about their bases. Duvall is now up to 0.682 batting Runs still with zero Outs.
In the 8th Duvall came up with runners on 2nd and 3rd and two outs, and grounded out to end the inning. It was his only out but it represented the biggest WPA swing of the game according to baseball-reference, as the Red Sox were only down one run to the Pirates in this rematch of the 1903 World Series. Anyways, batters were put out 97.5% of the time they hit a ground ball that wasn't a hit in this base/out situation. So Duvall gets 0.975 batting Outs and another 0.025 baserunning Outs for not reaching base on an error or a fielder's choice.
Duvall's ORA box score for the game:
I created a simple formula for estimating a batter's Runs, based on the last 15 seasons of ORA, using only runs scored, home runs, and RBI: (R*5 + RBI*4)/9 + HR/12.
The simple method estimates Duvall earned 5/9 of a Run for the run scored; he actually only earned 1/4. The simple method estimates he earned 4/9 of a Run for the RBI, which is almost exactly what he did earn: 0.432 Runs.
So this game, the simple formula overestimated Duvall's Run contribution. In Sunday's game, it short-changed him a little bit. It all evens out for most batters, unless they make a habit of having more "selfless" plays (moving runners over without scoring or driving in any themselves) than "selfish" plays (scoring from 1st on a homer or driving in runners from 3rd), or vice versa.
Besides, ORA is on the same scale as ERA - Runs per 27 outs - and Duvall's ORA for this game (based on 2022 percentages) is 0.682 x 27 = 18.41, which is higher than the simple ORAs for the season of all but two other players.
That would be more than enough for Duvall to retake the #1 spot in the Simple ORA Top 10. As it is the simple method says he earned one full Run (against the one Out), which still lowers his season average slightly.
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