So it turns out that Duvall's "meh" game was a game in which he broke his wrist diving for a fly ball in the 9th inning. Don't I feel bad. Duvall will lead MLB in Simple ORA until a couple more Boston games, after which he will no longer qualify for a batting title. The Orioles' Ryan Mountcastle has already passed him in simple Runs after a 2-homer, 9-RBI game yesterday. The Red Sox, meanwhile, lost again to the indomitable Rays. They are now 5-3 with Duvall and 0-3 without him.
I was going to skip an ORA walk-thru today, but what was that?! Ryan Mountcastle had 9 RBI in one game? I might have to take a closer look at that. A batter's Run contribution can be estimated by the formula (R*5 + RBI*4)/9 + HR/12. Mountcastle therefore had (2*5 + 9*4)/9 + 2/12 = (10+36)/9 + 1/6 = 46/9 + 1/6 = 5.28 estimated Runs. He had two estimated Outs: a hitless at-bat and a sac fly. To figure up how many Runs and Outs he really contributed, I'll have to dive into yesterday's O's/A's play-by-play armed with the 2022 percentages.
In the 1st Mountcastle hit a sac fly scoring Austin Hays. The situation is a fly ball that wasn't a hit with a runner on 3rd and one out. That happened 193 times in 2022, and the runner on 3rd advanced 150 bases, 0.777 bases per event. The batter gets credit for the average advance, if the runner equals or surpasses it. Hays gets credit for the rest - 0.223 - for his baserunning for scoring on the fly ball out. But Mountcastle had nothing to do with getting Hays to 3rd in the first place. He was already 3/4 of the way home. Each base advanced is worth a quarter of a run, so Mountcastle is actually only responsible for 0.777 of Hays' final base (home "base") and 0.194 of his run - far less than the 0.444 (4 / 9) the simple method credits him for.
Errors are included in fly-ball non-hits, as they are in all batted-ball non-hit event types. But no errors happened in this situation in 2022. The batter was out 193 out of 193 times. If there had been an error or two, a tiny fraction of Mountcastle's out would go in his baserunning Outs; baserunning Runs and Outs are kind of catch-alls for everything a batter/runner does that doesn't have anything to do with his batting ability. If a batter had reached base even once when he hit a fly ball non-hit with a runner on 3rd and one out, that means Mountcastle had a chance to reach safely. Since it didn't happen in this situation in 2022, my system assumes Mountcastle was 100% out the instant he hit a playable fly ball, so the out is 100% a batting Out. 0.194 batting Runs against 1.000 batting Out for the sac fly.
In the 3rd Mountcastle hit a single scoring Jorge Mateo from 3rd. Of the 357 times a batter singled with two outs and runners on 1st and 3rd, the runner on 3rd scored 354 times - 99.2% of the time. Mountcastle gets credit for 99.2% of Mateo's final base, and one quarter of that, or 24.8%, of his run. Mountcastle also gets credit for advancing Adley Rutschman to 2nd and himself to 1st, but they were stranded there so those bases are worthless. Mountcastle is now up to 0.442 batting Runs against the 1 batting Out.
In the 5th Mountcastle hit a 3-run homer, scoring Hays from 2nd and Rutschman from 1st. Home runs are easy: the average advance is always however many bases the runner is from home. Since the batter gets credit for the average advance and those bases are always worth a quarter-run each (because the runners scored), Mountcastle gets 1/2 of a run for the runner on 2nd, 3/4 of a run for the runner on 1st, and a full run for himself. That's 2.25 batting Runs for his first homer of the day, which brings him to 2.692 for the game so far.
In the 6th Mountcastle grounded out with Rutschman on 2nd and one out. Rutschman stayed put and was ultimately stranded at 2nd. This time the batter was only out 91% of the time he hit a ground ball that wasn't a hit or a sac bunt with a runner on 2nd and one out. So Mountcastle gets 0.91 of a batting Out and the rest - 0.09 - goes in his baserunning Outs. Through 6 he has 2.692 batting Runs against 1.91 batting Outs, 0.09 baserunning Outs, and 2 total Outs.
And in the 7th came Mountcastle's 2nd home run - a two-out grand slam. Add up all the bases everyone advanced and divide by four. 10 / 4 = 2.5 batting Runs. That brings him up to 5.19 Runs for the game, almost the same as the 5.28 the simple formula estimated. Here's his ORA box score for the game:
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