35 Responses to “ROE 140+ Times Since 1919”

1. Mike L Says:
   August 3rd, 2011 at 11:19 am

   Re: Campy-maybe his speed played a role. The infielder feels rushed to get off the throw. Aparicio, Conception, and Ozzie Smith are on this list as well, and among his ten "most similar".

2. Matt Says:
   August 3rd, 2011 at 12:02 pm

   Seems a product of longevity more than anything else. These same guys are probably among the career leaders in grounding into double plays as well.

   What is the difference between the two highlighted columns??

3. jiffy Says:
   August 3rd, 2011 at 12:09 pm

   @ 1: Also Lou Brock, Rickey Henderson, and Willie McGee. Even Biggio, to an extent also.

   But how the hell did Gary Gaetti make this list?

4. Michael Fischer Says:
   August 3rd, 2011 at 12:11 pm

   @2: I believe the way that the Play Index returns results is that Times Matching is the number of individual games where the player has 1 or more ROE.

   So, for example, Pete Rose had 5 games where he reached on an error twice (210-205).

5. aweb Says:
   August 3rd, 2011 at 12:44 pm

   For the slow guys, there are more chances to make an error. For instance, if a fast guy hits a ball up the middle and it's stopped by the SS, they end up safe so no error will be given, even if they don't field it cleanly and/or make a good throw, as long as they don't throw it away or boot it to no mans' land.

   For Gaetti and his ilk, they have a decent shot to field it cleanly and make a throw to get him, so it's a few extra ways to get an error charged.

6. Raphy Says:
   August 3rd, 2011 at 12:48 pm

   It would seem from here: http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/FNo76
   that ROEs are only available from games with play-by play.
   Therefore the standard PBP disclaimer should apply.
   Complete since 1973, mostly complete 1950-1972, nothing before 1950.

7. Jim Says:
   August 3rd, 2011 at 12:54 pm

   From what I can tell, everyone on this list was an all star at least once, with a good slew of hall of famers. Is it possible that fielders got nervous when a superstar like Rose or Aaron got to the plate and caused them to make dubious errors?

8. Tristram Says:
   August 3rd, 2011 at 1:00 pm

   I see speed and/or hustle on this list. @7 Jim, I think as a counting stat, it is going to be players with long careers, which gets to more all stars and HOF. It would be great to see this a rate stat - ROE/PA. That would give a better sense of what drives ROEs.

9. Detroit Michael Says:
   August 3rd, 2011 at 1:03 pm

   I'm surprised that the OPS numbers are this high considering everyone has an 0 for 1 built into the selection criteria for these games.

   I'm pretty sure that guys who hit grounders are more likely to be on this list (in addition to the obvious longevity factor).

10. Tristram Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 1:05 pm

    The surprising thing on this list is how poorly everyone performed in these games. My initial thought was it was because ROE counts as an "out". But even taking the ROEs out of the ABs, the averages are still significantly below their norms. Can't figure out why that would be true.

11. DavidRF Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 1:21 pm

    There is an ROE component to WAR (rROE). Pete Rose is actually among the worst all time and not the best.

    There are the top career values of rROE (only through 2009 because I'm using Smith's data which he doesn't update anymore):

    Jimmy Wynn 36
    Derek Jeter 35
    Craig Biggio 32
    Robin Yount 30
    Hank Aaron 30
    Roy White 28
    Glenn Hubbard 28
    Sammy Sosa 27
    Johnny Bench 27
    Gene Tenace 26
    Mike Schmidt 26
    Jack Clark 26

    The Worst:
    Carl Yastrzemski -36
    Pete Rose -35
    Maury Wills -30
    Ron Fairly -23
    Billy Williams -23
    Tony Fernandez -21
    Boog Powell -21

12. James S Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 1:30 pm

    With all of the errors made in the 19th and early 20th centuries, I'm sure this list would be topped with names like Cap Anson, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner etc.

13. TheGoof Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 2:48 pm

    I've always thought ROE was undervalued. Great info, David.

14. Richard Chester Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 2:49 pm

    @10

    I also noticed the low BAs. Derek Jeter has the highest BA for this list, .271. It seems to me that reaching on an error should have very little to do with BA for those particular games. Can anyone out there offer a reason for the low BAs?

15. Doug B Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:02 pm

    for guys like Gaetti... I imagine right handed pull hitters hit quite a few to third base where the fielding percentage is much lower than the right side of the diamond.

16. Kahuna Tuna Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:18 pm

    Top ROE/PA among the 600 top ROE players (standard disclaimers apply):

    1. Mickey Stanley, 2.15% (118 ROE in 5477 PA)
    2. Bob Horner, 2.04% (86 ROE in 4213 PA)
    3. Manny Mota, 1.92% (81 / 4227)
    4. Bobby Richardson, 1.90% (110 / 5783)
    5. Jim Busby, 1.89% (88 / 4655)
    6. Chico Carrasquel, 1.88% (99 / 5259)
    7. Ted Uhlaender, 1.88% (60 / 3191)
    8. Otis Nixon, 1.88% (109 / 5800)
    9. Julián Javier, 1.86% (115 / 6179)
    10. José Pagán, 1.86% (75 / 4032)

    Huh. Make of this what you will. No one on the list has more PAs than Javier's 6179 (Clemente and Campaneris, tied for 15th, have 10,212 and 9625, respectively). Mota and the middle infielders on the list struck out very infrequently; could placement and "bat control" have factored in for them? Horner hit line drives, Nixon squibbed the ball but could fly. I agree with Doug B's comment in #15. Hard to draw any firm conclusions.

    The bottom five in ROE/PA include Stan Musial and Red Schoendienst, whom we have to drop because so much ROE data is missing from the early part of their careers. We're left with the following bottom three:

    3. Rafael Palmeiro, 0.70% (84 ROE in 12,046 PA)
    2. Frank Thomas the Younger, 0.68% (69 / 10,074)
    1. Jim Thome, 0.68% (68 / 9986)

    Top ten in ratio of ROE to GDP:

    1. Brett Butler, 2.210 (137 ROE to 62 GDP)
    2. Mickey Rivers, 2.205 (97 / 44)
    3. Ichiro!, 2.120 (106 / 50)
    4. Don Blasingame, 2.093 (90 / 43)
    5. Don Buford, 1.971 (67 / 34)
    6. César Tovar, 1.931 (112 / 58)
    7. Ted Uhlaender, 1.818 (60 / 33)
    8. Vic Davalillo, 1.744 (75 / 43)
    9. Bert Campaneris, 1.667 (175 / 105)
    10. Vince Coleman, 1.578 (71 / 45)

    Here are some speedsters (with the notable exceptions of Tovar, who certainly wasn't slow, Blasingame, Uhlaender, and Davalillo). Nos. 11-20 include Bill North, Otis Nixon, Omar Moreno, Lou Brock, and Richie Ashburn, but also Del Unser, Albie Pearson, Johnny Damon, Jim Gilliam, and Corey Patterson. I think we can conclude that the players who rank high on this list probably, though need not, have good footspeed, while players who rank low definitely do not emphasize reaching base at the expense of hitting the ball hard.

    Bottom five in ratio of ROE to GDP, again dropping Musial:

    5. Frank Thomas the Younger, 0.305 (69 ROE / 226 GDP)
    4. Tino Martinez, 0.305 (58 / 190)
    3. Magglio Ordóñez, 0.304 (72 / 237)
    2. Manny Ramirez, 0.300 (73 / 243)
    1. Paul Konerko, 0.249 (60 / 241)

17. Johnny Twisto Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:24 pm

    even taking the ROEs out of the ABs, the averages are still significantly below their norms.

    I don't think that's true. I threw all the numbers in Excel and then calculated the stats for all PA other than the ROE. The total for the 31 players is .299/.364/.458. Eyeballing it, that's gotta be within shouting distance of their composite career totals, right?

18. Mike L Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:29 pm

    @14. It's not uniform. Some do very well in their other at bats-Clemente would have hit .333 if you eliminated the ROE, Winfield does well, and others are at their norms.

19. Richard Chester Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:35 pm

    @17

    Look at it this way. Pete Rose played in 3562 games with a .303 BA. Suppose you select 205 games at random and computed his BA. Shouldn't it be very close to .303?
    And suppose you happened to select the 205 games where he reached on error?

20. statboy Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:37 pm

    Perhaps someone could make a similar list of number of games with 1+ *HRs* and see how high those batting averages are. If they are really high, then it would probably make sense that the ROE batting average games are really low.

21. Mike L Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:41 pm

    @16 Kahuna, for ROE per PA, the bottom three are Thomas, Thome and Palmeiro. Slow guys who hit hard. Infielders are playing back, giving them more time to react to the ball, and no reason to hurry.

22. Johnny Twisto Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:43 pm

    Richard, I don't really understand your last question, especially in connection with posts 14 and 17. The reason these averages are low is because we've preselected games in which we know they had at least one AB which does not count as a hit. If you remove the ROE, Rose's BA is .284. I guess whether that's "close" to .303 is up to you. I'm sure a statistician could tell us how likely he is to bat 20 points under his career average over 5% of his career AB.

23. Johnny Twisto Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:44 pm

    Statboy/20, I'm sure they will be.

24. Mike L Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 3:47 pm

    One more variation to think about. It's hard to say what percentage of those ROE's are absolutely errors, but it's likely that at least a few of them would have turned up as hits with a different scorer. ROE's are not like home runs-they do involve a scorer's judgement.

25. Kahuna Tuna Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 4:10 pm

    Kahuna, for ROE per PA, the bottom three are Thomas, Thome and Palmeiro. Slow guys who hit hard. Infielders are playing back, giving them more time to react to the ball, and no reason to hurry.

    I agree with you wholeheartedly, Mike. I neglected to call them "slow," which they are, and you're right to add that the infielders can play back on them. And you can say exactly the same things about the bottom five ROE/GDP guys.

26. Jesse Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 4:13 pm

    its quite obvious why these BA's are low, every one of these players starts off at 0-1 or 0-2 in each game.

    if you count the RoE's as non AB the averages of the top five look like this:

    Rose 284 vs career 303
    Aaron 318 vs 305
    Apparicio 289 vs 260
    Yount 280 vs 285
    Celmente 332 vs 300

    those all look well within the varition expected with the sample size

27. Kahuna Tuna Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 5:03 pm

    Cumulative slash lines for the games in which the ROE top 600 reached on one or more errors:

    .216 BA / .273 OBP / .329 SLG / .601 OPS

    Remove the ROEs as plate appearances and the cumulative slash lines look like this:

    .291 BA / .357 OBP / .443 SLG / .800 OPS

    The ROEs account for 26% of at-bats, 23% of plate appearances, all with zero hits and zero credit in OBP. (By contrast, ROEs average 1.05% of all ABs and 0.93% of all PAs, respectively, in all games during the period 1950-2011.) The statistical effect of the ROEs in these lists is huge.

28. Kahuna Tuna Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 5:24 pm

    Fun stat: Top ten batting averages among top 600 players in times reaching on error, ROEs removed as plate appearances:

    1. Manny Ramirez, 71 G, .415 BA (career 154 OPS+)
    2. Bobby Bonilla, 72 G, .389 BA (career 124 OPS+)
    3. Edgardo Alfonzo, 71 G, .379 BA (career 104 OPS+)
    4. Wade Boggs, 127 G, .373 BA (career 130 OPS+)
    5. Nomar Garciaparra, 62 G, .370 BA (career 124 OPS+)
    6. Tony Gwynn, 135 G, .369 BA (career 132 OPS+)
    7. Danny O'Connell, 60 G, .366 BA (career 85 OPS+)
    8. Ichiro Suzuki, 105 G, .365 BA (career 115 OPS+)
    9. Tony Phillips, 91 G, .361 BA (career 109 OPS+)
    10. Rod Carew, 150 G, .360 BA (career 131 OPS+)

29. JDV Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 5:49 pm

    I, as well, believe that ROE is underrated. This came up briefly during the "Vizquel - HOF" discussion. My point from then is not supported here as Vizquel doesn't show up on these lists, but several similar players do. Most ML infielders will concede that they speed up their processes for fast or aggressive base-runners and that naturally affects their margin for error. Someone made the point here also that a bobble with Gaetti running may result in an error, while the same bobble with Aparicio running might be recorded as a hit.

30. MichaelPat Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 7:07 pm

    On the lower batting averages:

    There is another impact at work here, besides the fact the player is starting out 0 for 1
    All the perfect days, the 1 for 1s, 2 for 2s, 3 for 3s, four for fours, are pre-selected out of the mix of games being considered. Losing all those days from the players career will mean a lot of lost hits.

    A true BA-ROE comparison would look at BA in games in which the player made at least one out... and that BA is obviously going to be lower than his career BA.

31. MichaelPat Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 7:20 pm

    Back of envelope calculation on Bautista this season only:

    In all games he's hit .324. He has two 3 for 3 days; remove those, and his BA falls to .312 for the season. A similar effect is at work in the sample above.

    (Incidentally, he has 5 ROE in five different games. In those games his BA comes out to .305. Remove those outs, and it climbs to .388. )

32. Richard Chester Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 8:04 pm

    @17,22,26,30

    I researched Derek Jeter's 1999 game log, a year in which he batted .349. He had 9 ROE in a span covering 8 games. He had 11 hits in 31 AB for those games, a BA of .355, 6 points higher than his seasonal BA. So it is possible to have a higher BA for ROE games only than for all games, your ROE has to come in games with one or more hits, preferably more. If you think I am wrong then please say so.

33. Johnny Twisto Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 10:30 pm

    Richard, of course it's possible. It's just unlikely, especially as you look at bigger sets of games.

    And Jeter '99 breaks all rules. During the first half of that season he played about as well as a player can.

34. Thom Says:
    August 3rd, 2011 at 11:48 pm

    And number one on the list isn't even in the HoF.

35. JD Says:
    August 4th, 2011 at 4:37 am

    Three from the Big Red Machine. Interesting. They must have intimidated people into some shoddy D.