The distinction may not be meaningful, but baseball people used to take obvious pleasure declaring that someone “was not really a home run hitter, but a line drive hitter.” Meaningful or not, I have decided to have fun with this concept.
My goodness this was detailed and thorough. It had to be read in several installments, which hopefully explains why this comment comes so late. Forgive me.
Immediately contradicting myself, the analysis was interesting in how it tried to explain a very complicated phenomenon with just a few simple numbers. It reminds me of when I reinvented the NFL's passer rating statistic, except your version can go all the way back in time, whereas my reinvention was for the explicit purpose of rejuvenating an ancient statistic for the new century. This was an entirely different idea, trying to paint all players across all eras with the same brush. While it does produce some galling results (i.e. 2024), at least it's conceptually strong.
My main criticism was also your main criticism. Holding the batting average requirement constant across all eras does not seem like the correct approach, although I understand what we were looking for was absolute excellence in line drive hitting, not line drive hitting+, if you will. We're not really worried about performance relative to the league average here, as much as we're worried about performance against an absolute standard that's always the same and never changes. That's both a positive and a negative, and comes with advantages and disadvantages. I'm not sure I would feel comfortable conceptually with adjusting one of the requirements for the league average, and not the other. Perhaps that would require some more thought.
I do think it's humourous that Fenway Park being such an easy environment for left handed batters to hit doubles seems to have crowned a few champions here. Maybe if you were looking to be perfect with this (and not at all time efficient), that could merit some adjustments for the park's double factor, although I've never checked if such a thing exists as far back as 1920, so it may ruin the entire framework.
Perhaps this is because I read the opening passages several days ago, but I also wonder why Home Runs are used as the currency here. To me, this (in conjunction with the batting average requirement) seems to reward the skill of ensuring that as many fly balls as possible are Home Runs, and never hitting fly balls that aren't Home Runs, although there is a minimum number of fly balls necessary to actually be able to win. I thought of all this because as soon as I learned of the framework, I thought Joey Votto would crush this competition, but he only won a single time. A cursory look through his baseball reference reveals that he didn't hit as many doubles as I thought he did, and that's fine. I have no particular fondness for Joey Votto. He just strikes me as a line drive hitter that this system missed a little bit.
I have no suggestion for what a better currency would be, meaning your choice is probably the best one, but something feels off when using Home Runs (the result of a fly ball) to determine the winner of a line drive hitting competition.
Beyond all those relatively minor criticisms, I was enthralled by the remainder of the analysis. I'm not sure being a line drive hitter actually means anything, but it's fun to know who history's best were, and perhaps there is a greater statistical relevance that I (a casual baseball fan) cannot see.
Thanks so much for reading it all and for such thoughtful feedback. My "like" signifies that I agree with more of what you said than not, and with all of the time I spent with this, you absolutely thought of about three times I didn't and which could be helpful to me. At one point, you even supplied a good counterargument to one of your critiques that I wouldn't have, which is the following....I'm totally on board with making BA relative, but yes, the Line Drive definition is supposed to be constant over time, so it wouldn't feel necessarily right to say a Line Drive Hitter in 1935 was one with a HR/2B ratio under 0.5, while one in 2024 was one with a ratio under 1. I guess it would depend on whether one thinks, like with batting average change, that home runs are up today not just because players are stronger, but because the ball carries better and fences are closer. I do believe fences are closer. I think the argument could go both ways about whether to adjust that or not.
A Line Drive Hitter isn't about the whole picture the way that passer rating is supposed to be. There's no question I show my background, and indirectly my age, working with old timey stats as a first instinct. I am someone who read a ton of Bill James truly "back in the day," and he used these stats partly because they were what there was then. Beyond that, sometimes one is just trying to have fun with something, but then the 20,000 length suggests one is taking it more seriously than one is. It was originally an exploration, and when one explores, one doesn't worry about whether what one is doing is stupid, or more sophisticated stats could be used. A pitfall, I suppose, is crossing over from the very admirable passion to arguing overly for the exercise's merit.
No doubt. Like I said, I'm not sure being a line drive hitter is a particularly important skill, and therefore it will not make or break either of our lives if it is not quantified precisely properly, but if we're deep diving into a rather meaningless statistical exercise, let us go ahead and take it to its logical extreme.
We can all clearly see in my opinion that the playing field has tilted to favour Home Runs. Even dyed in the wool anti-launch angle hitters like Vladimir Guerrero Jr just hit 30 Home Runs last season. If that guy can do it, anybody can. I'm almost sure his 30 HRs with 44 2Bs led the 2024 AL, but I forget if you mentioned it specifically.
Perhaps this example, in contrast to the one in the National League, indicates that the approach taken here does have some merit to it, because when one thinks of hard hit balls that are not fly balls, the mind (at least my mind) immediately goes to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.. Since he can do it so easily, perhaps the interpretation ought not to be that the formula should be changed. Perhaps it should be that the National League doesn't have a single hitter that can meet the standards of the years gone by in this regard.
It's clearly still possible. Vladimir just had a 75th percentile (or better) season by this metric. There's just nobody in the NL that can (or desires to) do it.
My goodness this was detailed and thorough. It had to be read in several installments, which hopefully explains why this comment comes so late. Forgive me.
Immediately contradicting myself, the analysis was interesting in how it tried to explain a very complicated phenomenon with just a few simple numbers. It reminds me of when I reinvented the NFL's passer rating statistic, except your version can go all the way back in time, whereas my reinvention was for the explicit purpose of rejuvenating an ancient statistic for the new century. This was an entirely different idea, trying to paint all players across all eras with the same brush. While it does produce some galling results (i.e. 2024), at least it's conceptually strong.
My main criticism was also your main criticism. Holding the batting average requirement constant across all eras does not seem like the correct approach, although I understand what we were looking for was absolute excellence in line drive hitting, not line drive hitting+, if you will. We're not really worried about performance relative to the league average here, as much as we're worried about performance against an absolute standard that's always the same and never changes. That's both a positive and a negative, and comes with advantages and disadvantages. I'm not sure I would feel comfortable conceptually with adjusting one of the requirements for the league average, and not the other. Perhaps that would require some more thought.
I do think it's humourous that Fenway Park being such an easy environment for left handed batters to hit doubles seems to have crowned a few champions here. Maybe if you were looking to be perfect with this (and not at all time efficient), that could merit some adjustments for the park's double factor, although I've never checked if such a thing exists as far back as 1920, so it may ruin the entire framework.
Perhaps this is because I read the opening passages several days ago, but I also wonder why Home Runs are used as the currency here. To me, this (in conjunction with the batting average requirement) seems to reward the skill of ensuring that as many fly balls as possible are Home Runs, and never hitting fly balls that aren't Home Runs, although there is a minimum number of fly balls necessary to actually be able to win. I thought of all this because as soon as I learned of the framework, I thought Joey Votto would crush this competition, but he only won a single time. A cursory look through his baseball reference reveals that he didn't hit as many doubles as I thought he did, and that's fine. I have no particular fondness for Joey Votto. He just strikes me as a line drive hitter that this system missed a little bit.
I have no suggestion for what a better currency would be, meaning your choice is probably the best one, but something feels off when using Home Runs (the result of a fly ball) to determine the winner of a line drive hitting competition.
Beyond all those relatively minor criticisms, I was enthralled by the remainder of the analysis. I'm not sure being a line drive hitter actually means anything, but it's fun to know who history's best were, and perhaps there is a greater statistical relevance that I (a casual baseball fan) cannot see.
Robbie,
Thanks so much for reading it all and for such thoughtful feedback. My "like" signifies that I agree with more of what you said than not, and with all of the time I spent with this, you absolutely thought of about three times I didn't and which could be helpful to me. At one point, you even supplied a good counterargument to one of your critiques that I wouldn't have, which is the following....I'm totally on board with making BA relative, but yes, the Line Drive definition is supposed to be constant over time, so it wouldn't feel necessarily right to say a Line Drive Hitter in 1935 was one with a HR/2B ratio under 0.5, while one in 2024 was one with a ratio under 1. I guess it would depend on whether one thinks, like with batting average change, that home runs are up today not just because players are stronger, but because the ball carries better and fences are closer. I do believe fences are closer. I think the argument could go both ways about whether to adjust that or not.
A Line Drive Hitter isn't about the whole picture the way that passer rating is supposed to be. There's no question I show my background, and indirectly my age, working with old timey stats as a first instinct. I am someone who read a ton of Bill James truly "back in the day," and he used these stats partly because they were what there was then. Beyond that, sometimes one is just trying to have fun with something, but then the 20,000 length suggests one is taking it more seriously than one is. It was originally an exploration, and when one explores, one doesn't worry about whether what one is doing is stupid, or more sophisticated stats could be used. A pitfall, I suppose, is crossing over from the very admirable passion to arguing overly for the exercise's merit.
dsdd
No doubt. Like I said, I'm not sure being a line drive hitter is a particularly important skill, and therefore it will not make or break either of our lives if it is not quantified precisely properly, but if we're deep diving into a rather meaningless statistical exercise, let us go ahead and take it to its logical extreme.
We can all clearly see in my opinion that the playing field has tilted to favour Home Runs. Even dyed in the wool anti-launch angle hitters like Vladimir Guerrero Jr just hit 30 Home Runs last season. If that guy can do it, anybody can. I'm almost sure his 30 HRs with 44 2Bs led the 2024 AL, but I forget if you mentioned it specifically.
Perhaps this example, in contrast to the one in the National League, indicates that the approach taken here does have some merit to it, because when one thinks of hard hit balls that are not fly balls, the mind (at least my mind) immediately goes to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.. Since he can do it so easily, perhaps the interpretation ought not to be that the formula should be changed. Perhaps it should be that the National League doesn't have a single hitter that can meet the standards of the years gone by in this regard.
It's clearly still possible. Vladimir just had a 75th percentile (or better) season by this metric. There's just nobody in the NL that can (or desires to) do it.
Bobby Witt Jr. was AL Line Drive Hitter of the Year for 2024. He hit 32 home runs. You are right that Vlad Jr. qualified.
Alright David. Lesson learned about calling you Shirley.
I don't think it changes the general hypothesis though. The AL has at least two solid line drive hitters, compared to virtually none for the NL.