Should Barry Bonds Be Intentionally Walked? Part 1

Should Barry Bonds Be
Intentionally Walked? Part 1
by Martell

I think Barry Bonds gets intentionally walked too much. I don't mean this as a fan of Bonds, which I am not. Nor do I mean it as a fan of the Giants, which I also am not. I don't even mean it as a general baseball fan, which I actually am. No, I simply mean it as someone interested in strategy and tactics. I think putting Barry Bonds on base nearly once a game is a tactical error, and I also think this can be proven mathematically. This is what I hope to do.

It seems obvious to me that the intentional base on balls (IBB) is somehow not being used correctly. Some numbers: Bonds has more IBBs (79) than any other team. The next closest player in IBBs is Jim Thome, and he has only 19. Is Bonds four times as dangerous as Thome? I certainly don't think so. The only active player with a higher slugging percentage than Bonds--Colorado's Todd Helton--has only 10 IBBs this year. Is Bonds eight times as dangerous as Helton? Absolutely not. Clearly something is wrong here. Either Barry Bonds is being walked too much or a bunch of other players are being walked too little. You already know what I think--let's see what we can find out.

First, I decided to try something simple, to see if I was on the right track. I compared the average number of bases Bonds gets when he's allowed to hit with the average number of bases he gets when he's intentionally walked. For those familiar with statistics or with professional gambling, those would also be called his "expected" bases. Here are his stats through Monday, July 26, along with some arithmetic:

40    Singles
15    Doubles
0      Triples
25    Home Runs
66    Non-intentional Walks
141 Outs

(40 x 1) + (15 x 2) + (25 x 4) + (66 x 1)/(40 + 15 + 25 + 66 + 141) = 236/287

The arithmetic tells us that for each time Bonds has a chance to hit, his "expectation" is .822 of one base. Of course, each time he gets an IBB, he gets one full base. From this information, it looks like Bonds provides less value when he actually has to swing the bat. So far, so good. Still, this method seemed a little simplistic to me, so I decided to try something more sophisticated.

My next step was to compare IBBs with non-IBBs using something called Extrapolated Runs (XR). XR can be calculated using an equation developed by Jim Furtado (the equation can be viewed here--don't ask me how he derived it, it involves too much math, even for someone like me). Basically, it's a way to give an expected run value to everything a batter does, regardless of whether a particular event produces any actual runs. For instance, in the XR equation, a home run has a value of 1.440 runs. Of course, any random home run can score anywhere from one to four runs, depending on the number of people on base. But over the long run, the expectation is that a home run will be worth 1.440 runs. Along these same lines, everything else has expected values as well.

Here are Bonds numbers again, along with the respective XR values:

40    Singles--(.50)
15    Doubles--(.72)
0      Triples--(1.04)
25    Home Runs--(1.44)
66    Non-IBBs--(.34)
79   IBBs--(.25)
141 Outs--(-.09)

And here's another bit of arithmetic:

(40 x .50) + (15 x .72) + (25 x 1.44) + (66 x .34) - (141 x .09)/(40 + 15 + 25 + 66 + 141) = 76.55/287

That means his XR per non-IBB plate appearance is .267, while his XR for an IBB is .25; in other words, according to this info, Bonds provides slightly MORE value when he has to swing the bat. Of course, if you looked at Furtado's equation you saw there were a few other things to consider--strikeouts, sacrifice flies and grounding into double plays--but overall they had a minimal effect on Bonds' final numbers, so I left them out. You know, just to keep things simple.

Since I ended up with conflicting results, I decided that the best solution was to set up a distribution table of all possible scenarios. Then I could see what would actually happen if Bonds was walked vs. what would happen if he was allowed to hit. Next time, I will describe my methodology, as well as take you through one specific scenario: 9th inning, two outs, nobody on base. Should Bonds be walked? Tune in to find out.

Martell can be reached at martell@babblog.com.