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This World Series, more than any other in recent memory, has been dominated by two stories: the rise of small markets (I hope you’re at home watching the Dodgers and Yankees) and the triumph of small ball. Never mind that the Rays struck out more often than the Rangers in the ALCS, or that the Brewers struck out more, hit more homers, and committed more errors than the Dodgers in the NLCS. Check out the story here, the facts be damned! The parts that the gunners avoided (um, the Brewers had 14th*-highest K% in the majors) and batting on the bases (um, the Rays average for extra-base hits in hits, Brewer below average), with old-school pitching (um, the Rays and Brewer are primarily ranked 20th.th* and 21St*respectively in innings per start) were left standing in the competition for the current metal. Leaving three-out teams (um, the Brewers ending a higher percentage of plate appearances with a hit, walk or homer during the season than the two teams they won in the playoffs, the Dodgers and the Padres; a point the Rays actually cost) in the dust.
Instead of refuting the contention with only the stimulus in the parenthetical expressions, I decided to create a small ball model and calculate a small ball index for each team. Here are the parts I used (and, for those keeping score at home, their sources);
- High contact percentage: The percentage of swings in which the batters touch the ball. This is worshiped in small circles. (Baseball Prospects leaderboards, Batted Ball tab)
- Low percentage of veins: the percentile that crackles the voice outside the hitting zone. A low percentage indicates a disciplined, less successful approach. (Ibid.)
- Low confidence in home runs: Guillen’s number is the percentage of the team generated by homers. The smaller Guillen’s number, the less confident the team is in the suffocating ball knocking it out of the park. (Baseball Prospects leaderboards, Standard tab)
- Stolen bases: Self-explanatory. (Ibid.)
- Bunts: I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Shall I look at the victims only, or at all wars? I decided on this because the trigger of the martial art balls is as small as the actual sacrifices, which have become rare in the universal DH world. (Stathead actual batting split finder, Hit Trajectory = Bunts)
- Extra bases taken: Going from first to third or second to home on a single, or first to home on a double, is offensive baseball. The ball is affected by the ram and the base runner, but in the aggregate, taking the extra base, is a small ball art. (Baseball Reference, Batting, Baserunning/Misc tab)
- Turned balls outside: Defensive efficiency ratio is the percentage of balls on the play coming from outside. (Baseball Reference, Fielding, Standard Fielding tab)
- Productive points: This stat, created by Elia and ESPN, measures how many times each ball hits a runner, hits no points or makes a move when the second out of an inning hits. (Baseball Reference, Batting, PR/HR/Situation Hitting tab)
For each statistic, I calculated a z-score, which is the number of standard deviations of the mean. For example, this year the average Defensive Efficiency Ratio was .699, with a standard deviation of .013. The radius of .723, in the major improvements, was 1.82 standard deviations higher than the mean. Their ALCS opponent Cleveland was .691, a z-score of -0.62.
To calculate the index of the small ball, I simply sum all the z-scores. Here are the results: