In the 1st inning of Opening Day 2023, Tyler Stephenson grounded into a double play with no outs and the bases loaded, scoring Jonathan India from 3rd. Conventional baseball stats would say that Stephenson made two outs (a hitless at-bat plus a GIDP) and produced zero runs (because you don’t get an RBI on a GIDP).
Offensive Run Average, or ORA, says he deserves a little
more credit and a little less blame than that. When the dust has settled and
the retrosheet files released on the 2023 season, we’ll use 2023 numbers, but
for now we’re one game in so we’ll use 2022 numbers.
Stephenson actually deserved almost 70% of the credit for India’s
4th base, and therefore about 17% of the run he scored. Why? Because of the 139
times a batter hit a ground ball that wasn’t a hit or a sac bunt with the bases
loaded and no outs in 2022, the runner on 3rd scored 97 times, or 69.8% of the
time. A base is worth a quarter of a run when the runner advancing it scores, so
Stephenson’s share of that run is 0.698 / 4 = 0.17.
I’ll go through the whole half inning. India led off with a
single. That’s one base and a quarter run for India.
TJ Friedl walked, moving India to second. Friedl ended the
inning at 3rd base, so his own bases are worthless, but he gets a base and a
quarter run for advancing India.
Jake Fraley singled, moving India to 3rd and Friedl to 2nd.
Fraley was forced at 2nd by Stephenson’s double play, so his bases are
worthless too, but he also gets a base and a quarter run for advancing India.
And then Stephenson’s double play scored India, moved Friedl
to 3rd, and forced Fraley at 2nd. Stephenson earned 70% of India’s final base
and 17% of the run, as stated. India gets the other 30% of the credit for that
base – because 30% of the time the runner on 3rd DIDN’T score on a ground ball
non-hit with the bases loaded and one out – and 0.08 runs.
Outs work the same way as bases. The runner on 1st was out
64 of 139 times (46%) and the batter was out 62 of 139 times (45%) he hit a ground
ball that wasn’t a hit or a sac bunt with the bases loaded and no outs. So
Stephenson gets the blame for 45% of his out and 46% of Fraley’s out. Fraley
gets blamed for the other 54% of his out (tough break), and Stephenson gets the
other 55% of his own out, but as a baserunner.
Jason Vosler popped up to end the inning. Here’s the final
tally:
Run Expectancy would tell you Stephenson’s GIDP generated about
-1 runs, because it lowered the Reds’ Run Expectancy for the inning from about
2.4 (when the bases were loaded with no outs) to about 0.4 (when a runner was
on 3rd with two outs), but it did score a run. This makes sense because not
only did the GIDP remove Fraley from the basepaths, it drastically reduced the
likelihood that Friedl would score.
ORA looks at things from the perspective of what actually
happened, not what could’ve happened. One run scored and two outs were recorded (through Stephenson's at-bat). The
only question is how to divvy them up among the four batters who came to the
plate. As it turns out, Stephenson deserves about 1/6 of the credit for the run
and almost 3/4 of the blame for the outs (again, based on 2022 percentages.
2023 will probably be about the same, but who knows with all the rule changes.)
That works out to an ORA of 3.14 or thereabouts for Stephenson’s first PA of
the 2023 season (0.17 / 1.46 x 27 = 3.14).
ORA was a big fan of Stephenson’s limited work in the 2022
season. In 183 PA he accumulated 30 Runs against 121 Outs – a 6.58 ORA. Only
six qualified batters had a higher average: Mookie Betts (6.79), Manny Machado
(6.92), Freddie Freeman (6.95), Yordan Alvarez (7.69), Paul Goldschmidt (7.73),
and Aaron Judge (8.71). Goldschmidt’s NL-leading ORA was identical to Fernando
Tatis Jr.’s NL- and MLB-leading ORA of 2021. Judge’s 8.71 ORA was the highest by
a qualified batter in a 162-game season in 15 years.
ORA is meant to reward players who help their team score
runs without accumulating runs or RBI for themselves, like Friedl and Fraley in
the 1st inning yesterday. But that tends to even out over the course of a full
season; most players will score from 1st on a home run and drive in runners from
3rd as often as they selflessly move runners over. A simple formula using just runs,
home runs and RBI does remarkably well at estimating ORA Runs:
(R*5 + RBI*4) / 9 + HR / 12
Divide by the usual estimate for outs (hitless at-bats plus caught
stealing, GIDP, sac flies and sac bunts) to get the simple version of ORA. Here
are the MLB leaders thru March 31st:
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