Baltimore Orioles: The Importance of On-Base Percentage

With the re-signing of Chris Davis and the addition of Mark Trumbo, along with the continued presence of Adam Jones and Manny Machado, the Baltimore Orioles have plenty of power again on the roster. But will there be runners on base for them to drive in?

Only a handful of MLB teams could consider themselves to be in the same league as the Orioles in terms of home run hitting ability over the past three to four years. But the O’s have not excelled in the important category of on-base percentage, and thus the power statistics are not as valuable as they might otherwise be.

Let’s take a look at the past year and at some of these on-base numbers, and then ask if this coming year might be at all different.

In 2015, the Baltimore Orioles were very much near the bottom of the American League in on-base percentage. The O’s OBP was .307, and only the White Sox (.306) and Twins (.305) were worse. The league average was .318, with the Blue Jays having the best OBP at .340. Not surprisingly, they also scored the most runs per game … by far.

Every year the Orioles talk about improving their on-base percentage, but so far that has been difficult to obtain successfully. Leading the Orioles in OBP (other than Jason Garcia’s 1.000 on a walk in his only plate appearance) were Chris Davis (.361), Manny Machado (.359), Nolan Reimold (.344) and Matt Wieters (.319).  All other Orioles hitters were under the league average, many of them well under (like J.J. Hardy at .253).

Essentially, other than Reimold, the best OBP guys were also the two top home run hitters. This value that Reimold does bring to the Orioles is why here on The Baltimore Wire we do not subscribe to a common view that Nolan is not worth a regular place in lineup, let alone on the roster.

A critical matter for the 2016 Orioles will be to see what sort of OBP that newly acquired Hyeon-soo Kim might bring as he transfers to American MLB. He certainly excelled in this category in the KBO, with a career .406 and a .438 in 2015. Those numbers are surely not going to be replicable in MLB, but I believe there is reason to hope he can do better than anyone else the O’s have right now.

My hope is that he can hit at the top of the order, followed by Reimold, or perhaps the other way around. Machado can bat third, being likely now as the best all-around hitter on the team. Davis can hit clean-up with Jones as fifth, and Trumbo, Wieters, Schoop and Hardy to round out the bottom of the lineup.

The additional benefit of runners on base ahead of power-hitting middle-of-the-order batters is that those power hitters not only have baserunners to score, but they are going to also see better pitches to hit.

Here are some numbers of anticipated middle-of-the-order hitters for the Orioles, looking first at their average with the bases empty, and then with runners on base …

The one number above that is upside-down is that of Trumbo. And even worse is a .195 average in RISP situations in 2015. However, over his career, those numbers are relatively even.

Showalter was quoted just days ago speaking to this issue of getting on base, referencing Chris Davis …

"He wants to have that type of year where he doesn’t kind of disappear for a little while. But we’ve got to do as good a job as possible of putting guys on base in front of him.More from Baltimore SportsBaltimore Ravens: Will this be Breshad Perriman’s last game as a Raven?Orioles Josh Rogers Expectations in his Major League DebutFormer Baltimore Orioles closer Zach Britton returns to Oriole ParkBaltimore Ravens have to make a decision on resting key offensive playersThe Baltimore Orioles Have a Pitching Development Issue"

We do want to see that happen as well. It really has not been a strength of this team in recent years. If two or three batters ahead of Davis could post high numbers in OBP, with Davis protected by power threats following him, it could be an amazing season for the Orioles offense.

But all to say: there is significant value in on-base percentage. If it is true of the lottery that you’ve got to play to win, in baseball, you’ve got to get on base to score runs … and win.