Helping O’s Fans Feel Better about the Baltimore Orioles
The Baltimore Orioles have given their fans a number of reasons for concern over the first portion of spring training. There is the issue of the won/loss record, and the extended hitless streak by presumed starting outfielder Hyun Soo Kim.
Even so, there is reason for hope, and no, it is not simply because the Orioles finally won a spring training game on the 13th attempt.
In recent days, our friends at FanGraphs have written two articles of interest for Baltimore fans: one that addresses the issue of spring training records versus regular season results, and another that analyzes the 0-for-23 slump that marked the beginning of Kim’s American MLB experience. And nobody can give more detailed statistical analysis for everything than can the FanGraphs people.
Looking first at the issue of the predictive nature of spring training results, an article by Owen Watson mentions the Orioles and a couple of other struggling clubs in the early going. The writer then did a 10-year analysis, along with a graph of the findings.
Simply stated, there is not a great deal of direct correlation between spring records and regular season results. The one general corresponding connection, however, is that teams that do either exceedingly well in the spring, or horribly awful, also tend to repeat those patterns for the whole year. The qualifying numbers associated with these outlying extremes are those of spring win or loss totals of over 70% of games in either direction.
The writer gives an excellent summary statement about why spring training results are not terribly predictive …
"“Overall, most of what we see on the team level is pretty meaningless for predicting the outcomes of the regular season. Rosters are different, playing time is uneven, and the predictive usefulness of most of the team stats are muddied by the very reasons for having spring training — to shake the rust off, to try out players we won’t get a chance to see during the regular season, and to be able to make mistakes and have it be inconsequential.”"
That is a decent overall description of spring training.
Regarding Hyun Soo Kim, an article by August Fagerstrom takes on the issue of the Korean player opening the spring with an 0-for-23. He did get a walk and hit on the day this writer was putting together his analysis.
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While acknowledging that such a streak is pretty long for just about any MLB player (and in fact would have been the 12th-longest of the season last year), it happens. He illustrated this by noting that Jose Bautista had an 0-for-25 during the 2015 season.
The article is quite detailed, containing also six video clips. These are helpful, since most of us have seen very little of this new addition.
The writer goes into quite a bit of analysis on how Kim is getting the bat on the ball and hitting an extraordinary number of foul balls while working deep counts. And he has had some bad luck, hitting a number of balls quite hard right at someone (three of videos). Of course, any long hitless streak is going to feature some of this.
In summary, the writer says …
"“…we can gather this about Hyun-soo Kim, thus far: despite the lack of walks, he’s controlled the strike zone quite well, making contact at an elite rate while keeping himself alive with two-strike fouls on close pitches and laying off others for balls. The batted ball authority hasn’t been great, but he’s hit into some tough outs, and he’s rarely looked overmatched. Sounds… kind of exactly like the guy we expected to see.”"
Next: Home runs and strikeout records
So, don’t you feel better now? Now you can deal with crankiness from losing an hour of sleep by worrying about the elbow pain of Matt Wieters or Chris Tillman’s hip. There is always something to fret over.