Joe Bolonga suggests a new baseball statistic, SAB, successful at bats. Batters would get credit for an SAB in the traditional ways, walks, hits, hbp, but also when they did something that would help the teams. So a sacrifice, but or fly, would be an SAB.
Let’s say he led off the game grounding out weakly to the mound. But, before he grounded out, he consistently fouled off potential strikes and forced the pitcher to throw 10 or 15 pitches. Thus, not only causing the opponents’ starting pitcher to make so many extra throws, but affording the hitters behind the batter the ability to see the starting pitcher’s array of stuff. Would that not be considered a successful at-bat? His manager and teammates even might consider it his most successful at-bat.
There seems to be a subjective nature to this idea, but if you make any 10+ pitch at bat an SAB, you might get a decent number. I’ll see what I can come up with.
I had been thinking about the concept of a productive plate appearance. I guess anything that increased the probability of scoring could be the metric. So would a ground out that moved a runner from second to third be counted? Only if it’s the first out?
it’s like productive out percentage (POP) on steroids.
You may have been alluding to this in the post, but the number of pitches is really only helpful vs. a starter (and actually, only one that’s having a good night). Suppose Prince Fielder comes to the plate for the Brewers in the 8th inning of a tie game with a runner on 2nd and 2 outs. Atlanta brings in Johnnie Venters. Prince works the count full and then proceeds to foul off 7 pitches before taking a mighty swing and coming up empty. Strike three, inning over. Sure he forced Venters to throw 12 pitches and got to see his entire reprtoire, but he’s a short-term middle reliver who was going to exit the game anyways. Hardly anything productive about that at-bat, I would think.
I suppose this could be along the lines of the quality start for a pitcher. I like the idea of better quantifying an at bat.
But, I agree with you, REA, that it might not be applicable across the board to batters in every situation. Maybe it could be normalized in an objective manner? Without thinking about it at length, I’m not sure how/if this can be done.