A Heavy Dose of Thought

I listen to too much am sports radio when I am in my car and at home. I'll readily admit that listening to that much sports radio can drive a person slightly insane (unless they're already at that point) because all of the disparate opinions that are voiced possess so little thought. I'm not asking for much out of callers except half of a brain cell. Callers should have a basic understanding of the sport they are calling about, as well as passing knowledge of some of the governing rules inherent in the business side of the sport. For example, nothing annoys me more than a caller telling the host that the Bucks should trade Mo Williams (price: $7.75 million) for Chauncey Billups (price: $10 million). The salary cap prevents a straight up trade such as that, so why bother making the call into the station if you can't understand the basics of NBA trading?

Currently, my new annoyance (and most things eventually annoy me) is this need for callers to complain about the Brewers offense and how "one dimensional" it is, and to fix the offense the Brewers should steal more and play small-ball. And the really annoying thing is that the hosts seem to agree with the callers, talking about how the Brewers should get moving on the basepaths, lay down more sacrifice bunts and flies, and generally waste outs left and right. So I thought I would educate the average Brewers fan with the basics of offense and what works and doesn't work from a statistical and historical perspective. But before I get to that, three minor points that have nothing to do with offense:
1. Can we play or trade Tony Gwynn Jr already? Like I have posted earlier, you can't keep Gwynn on the major league roster and never play him if you want to trade him, and if you're grooming him for a future in center field, then why did you move Matt LaPorta to left field in the minors? I don't understand these moves. If LaPorta is the future in right field (his listed position in Huntsville), which he seems to be since his offense is great, and Braun is the present and future in left, where does that leave Corey Hart? If Hart is good enough to play center field everyday, then why the Bill Hall Experience last season or the Cameron deal this season? If Hart is not good enough to be an everyday center fielder, then the Brewers have a logjam of young talent at the corner outfield spots, and who plays center field? If it's Gwynn, then why aren't we platooning Cameron and Gwynn in center field? The way I see it, the Brewers have Gwynn, Hart, LaPorta, and Braun (with Matt Gamel possibly moving to outfield is his 3B defense doesn't hold up) all slated to be in the outfield, with only two available outfield spots (Braun is in left), which won't be good later on and isn't good now when there are several holes to be filled on the roster.
2. When is Doug Melvin going to start getting some blame for what's going on this season in Milwaukee? Just wondering when all the Ned Yost haters turn their ire onto the man who not only hired and extended Yost, but hasn't signed an impact free agent and screwed around with this team way too much over the past few years.
3. The New York Mets have to be the most classless organization in sports. They fired Willie Randolph at 3 eastern today, 3 AM eastern. Wow. I have nothing more to say than Willie Randolph should be the next manager of the Milwaukee Brewers.
Now, on to baseball offense.

Baseball offense is the most straightforward thing in the world, though I have no idea how it has become so convoluted and confusing. Simply put, a baseball offense is successful if it outscores its opponent in a game, and unsuccessful if it does not. Taking this concept one step further, a team's offense is successful if it scores more runs than allowed, and is a failure if it does not score more runs than allowed (though there are some exceptions like the Arizona Diamondbacks who were outscored, but still managed to win the NL West). Adding one more step, a team's offense should be measured against the league relative to only one statistic, runs scored. Understanding this simple fact is the basis of understanding a baseball offense and how it should work.

If the point of the offense is to score runs, then players should be judged by their actions relative to the goal of scoring runs. Any action that takes away from a run scoring opportunity should be viewed as a negative, and any action that adds to a run scoring opportunity should be viewed as a positive. But is goes merely beyond this simple definition and into a slightly more complex attitude. Outs, in any form, are bad for an offense, and those things to prevent outs, in any form are good for an offense. Immediately, proponents of small ball style baseball are up in arms, saying that sacrifice bunts and flies are not bad for an offense, as they put players in scoring position and score runs. To that I give a simple example:

Team A leads off the inning with a single. The player on first steals second, and advances to third on a sacrifice bunt. The player then scores on a sacrifice fly. Team A leads 1-0 with two outs. Team A batter strikes out to end the inning.
Small ball proponents say that the "manufacturing" of the run proves that an offense can be driven by sacrifices and small ball tactics. To that I return to the example. The lead off hitter gets on with a single. The stolen base attempt is a possible waste of an out (strictly speaking, a steal needs to be successful 80% of the time to positively effect an offense, more often than not a stolen base is an event that neither positively nor negatively effects an offense), but is successful. The batter at the plate wastes an out bunting the runner to third, when a single or any extra base hit would possibly score the runner, as well as a walk being beneficial by adding another base runner. The third hitter hits a sacrifice fly to score the man from third wastes an extremely important out. Picture in your mind the example scenario, but instead of generic names, go with Corey Hart singles and steals second. JJ Hardy sacrifices Hart to third, then Ryan Braun (!) hits a sacrifice fly to score Hart. In a million years would you ever expect the goal of Braun to be to hit the ball in the air to right field moderately deep? Small ball promotes wasted opportunities for the players who are being paid enormously large sums of money to produce multiple runs for the team.

Back to the main point, outs, in any form are bad for an offense. But the worst out, the absolute worst out possible is a strike out. Much as there are infinite possibilities for an offense with one out remaining in an inning, there are infinite possibilities for a ball put into play. A strike out robs the offense of these possibilities, robs the offense of its ability to correctly "put pressure on the defense." A good offense puts pressure on a defense by putting multiple balls into play throughout an inning, especially with men on base. A bad offense doesn't put balls in play, doesn't have men on base, and doesn't hoard outs like a precious commodity. Which brings me to the most important statistic of all, on base percentage.

I cannot stress the importance of on base percentage enough. Teams with a high obp tend to win more games then teams with a low obp. Teams that score a ton of runs have higher obp than teams with a low obp. Simply put obp is the ability of a player to avoid getting an out. To demonstrate the incredible power and importance of obp, let's go through a thought exercise. In the above example with Team A, in that inning Team A hit .500 (1 hit, two ABs), had a slugging percentage of .500 (1 TB, 2 ABs), and had a .250 obp (1 hit, 4 PA). Team A managed to score 1 run that inning. Team B comes up to bat and manages a perfect obp, 1.000. What is the amount of runs that Team B would score: infinite. Team B would never get an out, and never end their inning. That's how important obp, its striving for perfection, moving towards the unattainable. The closer your offense is to perfection, the more runs you score; the more runs you score, the more games you win.

So people, the Brewers don't need to steal more bases, they need to take more walks, not conceded so many outs.