Rounding Third: Lindy Stats

Last April when the sports world was still shut down, Scott Jenstad and I had a series of guests on the Sunday night podcast. One of my favorite episodes was when we had NFBC all-time great player Lindy Hinkelman with us. He's won over $500,000 in the NFBC, including two Main Event overall titles. When digging into the secrets of success, one question we asked was "what were his favorite stats" when researching players? His answer may come as a bit of a surprise - he's not against using many of the new analytical tools at our disposal, but he liked two relatively simple stats for hitters and two for pitchers. For the hitters, RBI + Runs, as well as (RBI + R)/Plate Appearances. For the pitchers, K:BB and K%-BB%. I thought I'd take a brief look at the leaders of each category from last season as well as 2019, because last season was so brief.

RBI + R

Two of our five hitting categories are the so-called counting stats - who compiled the most runs and RBI last season? First, let's look at the top 26 from the 2020 season. I went to 26 just to not leave off Brandon Lowe, who was tied with that last group.

You're probably not surprised by the first three names on the list, and maybe not even Marcell Ozuna as the fourth player. But there are a few surprises on the list, beginning with Luke Voit fifth and Dansby Swanson 11th. Scroll down a little farther and you see Kyle Seager and Kole Calhoun, two players well below this group in ADP.

But 2020 was a small sample, it could just be that a few of these players ran hot for a couple of months. Who were in the leaders in 2019?

While it seems as if Rafael Devers had a bad 2020 season, maybe we are only looking at it that way because he was so great in 2019? There's a lot of repeat customers on this list. But though this is interesting, I'm setting some pretty some arbitrary cutoffs, and of course there's Survivor Bias - those who didn't play a full season are obviously going to fall short, and those that play a full schedule get a compiler's advantage. So let's normalize it over plate appearances.

(RBI + R)/PA

To weed out those part time players, especially those with a minimal sample, I set the floor to only include those with 40+ combined runs and RBI. I'll repeat - this is a quick and dirty look at the stat, and not a rigorous study. Perhaps I could have instead set a minimum number of plate appearances.

It looks like I need to get a little more Jared Walsh in my life, or at the very least, the Angels need to get more of him in their life, at the expense of Albert Pujols at first base. Note that there are a lot of corner infielders on this list, and very few middle infielders. 

How about in 2019?

Because I was working with a full season's worth of stats, I doubled the floor to qualify for this list to a combined 80 Runs and RBI. I'm not certain I set it high enough. It does make me sad to see Mitch Garver right at the top of the list, after his disastrous 2020. Again, this list tends to reward corner infielders above other positions.

I have to say, while interesting, so far these lists do more to illustrate who had good seasons rather than suggesting predictive value. Perhaps that's a function of my methodology - after all, these are leaderboards, rather than comprehensive lists. I need to improve my statistical chops to find some signal in here, instead of just more noise. I want to emphasize that's more of my failing, and not a critique of the metric and certainly not of Lindy's usage.

K:BB

A pitcher's K:BB ratio typically measures both his dominance and his control, though as I think you can see here, it heavily favors those pitchers with superior control above all else, given the walk rate as a denominator.

I set the minimum innings at 40 to qualify for this list - that should include most starting pitchers on the list, and allow for those that missed a few starts. Even still, we're still dealing with a sample size problem. So let's take a look at the 2019 leaders.

For 2019, I set the minimum at 100 innings, which allows for some pitchers that missed time due to injury or were monitored a bit with their usage, like Brandon Woodruff. There's not too many surprises on this list, many of them are the elite starters. A couple of the outliers are there, however. You can see why there's still a subset of drafters that can't quit Matthew Boyd, or Ryan Yarbrough for that matter.

Also note that the extra months of the season lowers some extremes at the top, but by the time we get to #25, we end up at the same place, with a 4.2 K/BB ratio.

K%-BB%

I think I like this stat the best of the four, as it focuses upon pure dominance. It doesn't fully punish the higher walk guys like Corbin Burnes and Tyler Glasnow, both of whom fell just short of the other list. It does eliminate the Carlos Silva / Bob Tewksbury types that make leaderboards o the sheer merit of never walking anyone at all.

Once again, I set the innings minimum for 2020 at 40 IP. Alas, three of my favorites - Zac Gallen, Kyle Hendricks and Marco Gonzales just barely missed list, Gonzales and Gallen by one and three respectively. Look at the names on this list - there's a pretty strong correlation with your top 150-players ADP being drafted in the NFBC. Gausman and Eflin are helium guys compared to where they were last year, and you can see why so many drafters want to get Gonsolin in the Dodgers' starting rotation.

Too small of a sample, or too weird of a season for you? Here are the 2019 leaders:

I'm on Team Never Robbie Ray, but he's there for you if you want to buy into the spring training stats and added velocity. Again, you can see why Matthew Boyd will have his partisans.

I was able to add Tony Gonsolin, Kevin Gausman and Marco Gonzales in today's NFBC May Event, plus a late dart on David Price. It wasn't a comprehensive cornering of this metric, but a nice plus factor. I'll have the write-up on my two Main Events soon.