Is a philosophy our manager seems to take seriously.
Dunn batting second in front of Beltran and Wright would make me very happy. But that might be too many “statistical people” for Jerry to handle.

even the number eight batter walking with two outs is not ideal but far from bad, clearing the pitcher spot to start the next inning without an close to automatic out is pretty good.

Simply because we are so prone to judging each PA on the events that happen afterward. If there are 2nd and 3rd and 1 out and player A draws a walk, it’s kind of a neutral situation. If the next batter hits a home run, we love player A because helped add run. If the batter grounds into a DP, we are pissed at him but also question why player A didn’t swing the bat when even making an out could have produced one run.

If I were building a team, I would obviously like to have guys who make fewer outs (even if that means walks in key situations) than guys who make more outs (even if that means fewer “situational runs”). Unfortunately, this is not a philosophy that the Mets seem to employ organizationally.

Where I think some of the “high walk” guys get a bad reputation is that they are perceived as always “looking for a walk”, even when the situation might make a walk less valuable. I would rather have a guy like that on my team since you can’t predict situations. They will likely be in more situations where walks are more valuable then balls in play anyway.

and let’s bear in mind, it’s not Adam Dunn drawing a walk in the 8 hole in front of the pitcher we’re talking about, it’s somebody like Schneider or Castillo or OurAnus. Looking just at 2008, our 8th-place hitters had a BABIP of .260. So if Schcastareyes swings the bat, he’s got a 26% chance of driving in one or both runs, but also a 74% chance of ending the inning with the #9 hitter leading off the next.

On the other hand, if he takes a walk (if we were to posit that it’s entirely the batter’s decision to do so), our #9 hitters had a .233 OBP, meaning a 23.3% chance of driving in at least the lead runner and bringing Reyes up with runners on base. Worst case scenario, 76.7% of the time you have Reyes leading off the next inning. (To be fair, the .233 OBP is for all #9 hitters, including PH etc.; the OBP for our pitchers was .172, but in this generic scenario where we don’t know what inning is, I don’t think you can discount the possibility of a PH coming up if Schcastareyes draws the walk.)

Now, I guess if you really wanted to look into this further, what you’d have to know is the run expectancy of Reyes leading off the next inning vs. the pitcher leading off. I.e., how many runs is clearing the pitcher actually worth?

The fact that I feel the need to slam my head against my desk after reading that that’s what Omar is inclined to do is what makes my head hurt.

you beat my qualifier by seconds…yea, I’m down with that, I’m just offering some of the “negatives” to walks.

I don’t disagree with this. Like I said, most hitters have fluky BA’s – but some guys (Gwynn, Ichiro, Pujols, Ted Williams, etc.) ALWAYS have high averages. Obviously they are in a separate class from the majority of players, I was merely using that as an example of how walks have become overrated. Someone saying Tony Gwynn wasn’t really that good was like a slap to my face, since he was my favorite non-Met growing up (he gave hope to hefty kids around the world!).

Also, if you go by my analysis, Ted Williams and Babe Ruth are clearly the two best batters in ML history (well, natural batters anyway), b/c they got all of the positive outcomes a lot of the time. They both walked a ton, but they also got a ton of hits, and a large percentage of those were for doubles and home runs. I don’t think there’s too many people who would disagree with that sentiment.

I guess my main point is basically that walks are good, hits are better, but walks + hits = best. Well, technically walks + hits + power = bestest, but you get the point.

but that works too.

I like it…

But I’ll still prefer the walk to an out.