This really is a follow up to the previous two posts which had to do with the lack of men on base and how teammates amplify each other’s skills.
Bill James sorts hitters into five categories, and the two he deals with in the study are contributing hitters and selfish hitters. Contributing hitters get on base without much power. Selfish hitters hit for power, but don’t do a good job of getting on base. James shows that over time that the ratio of contributing hitters to selfish hitters shrunk. Very early, contributing hitters dominated. Even the last 20 years of the 20th century, there were more contributing hitters than selfish hitters. That flipped in the 21st century, so there are now many more selfish than contributing hitters. Why is that important?
Replacing Tulowitzki with either Carew or Nelson Cruz has essentially the same effect. Either substitution would make the team about 22 runs better, moving them up to 761 runs scored. But suppose the team then makes a second similar substitution, replacing a second neutral-type hitter with a second on-base hitter (a second Rod Carew) versus a second power hitter (a second Nelson Cruz.) The second substitution to a Rod Carew type player, because there are more runners now on base, will have MORE effect than the first such substitution. But making a second substitution of a low-average power hitter into the lineup, because there are fewer runners now on base, will have LESS effect than did the first one. The Nelson Cruz type hitter improves the offense by driving in more runs, thus leaving fewer runners on base, but he reduces the number of runners on base in two different ways—first by driving them in, and second by not getting on base himself. The more times you substitute power for runners on base, the less effective the substitution becomes.
To be fully transparent here, as Joe Biden likes to say, this effect is trivial to negligible as long as we are talking about just one or two players. The more you do it, though, the more significant it becomes. There is a law of diminishing returns that applies.
BillJamesOnline.com
Getting on-base increases the offensive context for everyone else. The contributing hitters give the selfish hitters more chances to drive in runs. The selfish hitters take away PA from the people who get on base. Both type of hitters are important to teams, but the contributing hitters are the ones that amplify offense.
Sure, diminishing marginal returns from concentration. This is similar to a concept that exists in bulk electrical system design called Effective Load Carrying Capacity (ELCC). For the first incremental megawatt of solar power (for example) you add to the system to meet demand, the ELCC is very high. It goes down for each incremental MW because eventually the addition of solar power shifts the timing of net peak demand, and solar relies on the sun. You can increase the ELCC again by adding battery storage. Diversification is quantifiably important across a host of applications, so it’s not surprising the same applies to baseball lineup construction.
It seems to me that what you’re saying is what everyone in baseball knew up until a few years ago–you want balance in your lineup. You want some guys at the top of the lineup who are good at getting on base, and then you want some guys in the middle of your lineup who can hit for power and drive them in. That formula worked for a hundred years, and it seems to me that it still works now.