Why We Love to Hate, or Hate to Love the Bat Flip (By: Adam W. Littlefield)

Although it is merely a simple gesture of achievement, nothing seems to incite a pitcher, or fan’s, rage more than the bat flip. Chris Archer kisses his bicep; Fernando Rodney shoots an arrow, and Jose Valverde goes generally nuts, but yet, we never get upset at pitcher’s who celebrate recording that crucial out. Strikeout or groundout, the pitcher celebration is, for some unknown reason, more socially acceptable among fans and analysts alike. They celebrate getting out of a jam, getting the last out of a monotonous inning, and pretty much anytime something goes their way, fist pump or otherwise.

Earlier this week David Ortiz, hereafter referred to as Papi, reignited a stagnate beef between the Red Sox and Rays with a throw of the bat and a nonchalant jaunt around the base paths. Slightly more inflammatory than some of his other post-hit activities, this was obviously a calculated act in the wake of David Price’s “bigger than the game comments” by one of the ultimate head gamers in today’s game. A little whiny, definitely brash, always entertaining, Papi loves his role as the big bat. Yelling at umpires, official scorers, and journalists, his opinions are rarely a cause for speculation and he obviously wanted Archer (that day’s pitcher) and the Rays to know how he felt.

But why is it such an upsetting act? Yes, over the top, but it’s a mere toss of the bat. Was it the casual stroll after the fact or the initial throw? In any case, as fans we tend to side with the pitchers. The bat-flip shows lack of respect for the game, for the opponent, and pretending something done about five thousand times a year is special seems to be a bit much to most.

I however, don’t share this opinion. If I could step to the plate against someone throwing mid to high 90’s heat and turn it into a souvenir, I’d probably toss the bat into the air while singing “God Bless America”, cartwheel around 1^st, crab walk to second, and skip to third followed by a brief tea party at home plate catered by some well-reputed steak house and mouth kiss the cute blonde sitting above the dugout, or not. Either way, that was fun to ponder.

Yasiel Puig has also become known for his own shenanigans, but his problem is that he’s too young. For the most part there isn’t a pitcher willing to throw at the average veteran player after a small show-up. Likely a colossal pain in the ass (ex: showing up late, speeding tickets, etc.), Puig has survived defection, and turned into one of the rising stars in a league that has lost a lot in the last few years. This back story, coupled with transcendent talent, says to me the dude deserves a fair amount of levity, not a shared opinion by any stretch. He’s a five-tool player that plays hard, plays flashy, and regularly wows even the most avid fan, but yet, we can’t stop hating him for something so trivial.

Like the Dodgers metaphorically tea-bagging the Diamondback’s pool, we will forget Papi’s shenanigans… kind of, if YouTube ceases to exist, but until that day, we hate. Like all great things, we need a villain. We need to hate so we can love, enjoy the venom of truly despising one’s minor transgressions, and eventually forgive. Hate is the only emotion stronger than love in the sport’s fans arsenal and nothing brings it out more clearly than a well-timed bat flip.

I’m pretty old school for the most part, I loathe that we legislated out the home plate collision and won’t allow pitchers to throw at players to protect their own, but I just don’t see why a bat flip followed by a reasonably paced trot is such a crime. A home run is a beautiful thing… unless you’re behind. Act like you’ve been there before is probably the most important statement any player can be reminded of. If you hit a game-tying, lead taking, or game winning bomb then you get to do what you want. If you hit one that tacks on an extra run or two in a 6-2 game, just toss the bat near the bat boy, waltz around the bases graciously and don’t show up your opponent, please, or else I’ll blog you to death, mostly because I can’t stand 24 hours of ESPN talking about it.

A Possible Relation between Offensive and Defensive Statistics

During my playing days, my father would always tell me that "Walks (defensively speaking) and Errors will kill you".  Of course, he said this in reference to the outcome of a game.  With consideration of his past advice and my forward statistical thinking, I decided to tamper with some current statistics in an attempt to correlate a players offensive and defensive abilities.  Keep in mind that none of my statistics are perfected, but are in beta (development) per say.  In my research, I constructed a statistic, which I refer to as Net Runs (NR).  Net Runs is based off of Bill James' statistic, Runs Created.  Runs Created is a statistic used to estimate the amount of runs a player or team created (http://sabr.org/sabermetrics/statistics).  The equation is as follows:

Runs Created= (((Total Bases) * (Hits + Walks))/(At-Bats + Walks))

Taking Runs Created into consideration, I sought to incorporate an additional concept factoring in the estimated amount of runs that a player costs his team on defense.  I figured that typically with a fielding error, the amount of bases the defense concedes is one.  Thus, four errors should equate to one run.  All of the proceeding aspects being taken in consideration, the equation for Net Runs is as follows:

Net Runs= Runs Created - (Errors/ 4)

Now, I am going to analyze this statistic with current players.  For my data set, I will use the top 50 offensive players in the MLB, as ranked by their Runs Created statistic, from this 2014 season.  The first column of the chart shows the players Runs Created rank.  The second column of the chart shows the players Net Runs rank.

RC Rank	NR Rank	Player	RC	Errors	Err./4	Net Runs
1	1	Troy Tulowitzki	70	2	0.5	69.5
2	2	Andrew McCutchen	63	4	1	62
3	3	Jose Bautista	61	2	0.5	60.5
4	4	Giancarlo Stanton	59	3	0.75	58.25
6	5	Yasiel Puig	56	0	0	56
5	6	Paul Goldschmidt	56	6	1.5	54.5
7	7	Mike Trout	55	2	0.5	54.5
8	8	Nelson Cruz	53	0	0	53
9	9	Carlos Gomez	52	2	0.5	51.5
10	10	Michael Brantley	50	1	0.25	49.75
13	11	Victor Martinez	49	3	0.75	48.25
11	12	Miguel Cabrera	49	4	1	48
12	13	Edwin Encarnacion	49	6	1.5	47.5
14	14	Jonathan Lucroy	48	2	0.5	47.5
15	15	Anthony Rizzo	48	4	1	47
17	16	Hunter Pence	47	3	0.75	46.25
18	17	Justin Upton	47	4	1	46
20	18	Melky Cabrera	46	0	0	46
19	19	Jose Altuve	46	2	0.5	45.5
16	20	Lonnie Chisenhall	47	9	2.25	44.75
23	21	Brandon Moss	45	2	0.5	44.5
22	22	Brian Dozier	45	4	1	44
24	23	Charlie Blackmon	44	2	0.5	43.5
26	24	Chase Utley	44	4	1	43
25	25	Todd Frazier	44	6	1.5	42.5
28	26	Freddie Freeman	43	3	0.75	42.25
30	27	Nick Markakis	42	0	0	42
31	28	David Ortiz	42	0	0	42
21	29	Josh Donaldson	45	13	3.25	41.75
29	30	Daniel Murphy	43	7	1.75	41.25
27	31	Matt Carpenter	43	8	2	41
32	32	Alex Gordon	41	0	0	41
33	33	Adam Jones	41	3	0.75	40.25
34	34	Jayson Werth	41	4	1	40
36	35	Jacoby Ellsbury	40	1	0.25	39.75
39	36	Mike Morse	40	1	0.25	39.75
35	37	Robinson Cano	40	3	0.75	39.25
37	38	Dexter Fowler	40	3	0.75	39.25
38	39	Justin Morneau	40	3	0.75	39.25
46	40	Neil Walker	39	1	0.25	38.75
47	41	Christian Yelich	39	2	0.5	38.5
40	42	Jose Abreu	39	3	0.75	38.25
42	43	Shin-Soo Choo	39	3	0.75	38.25
49	44	Seth Smith	38	0	0	38
41	45	Xander Bogaerts	39	6	1.5	37.5
43	46	Alexei Ramirez	39	6	1.5	37.5
45	47	Anthony Rendon	39	7	1.75	37.25
48	48	Adam LaRoche	38	3	0.75	37.25
50	49	Brett Gardner	37	0	0	37
44	50	Hanley Ramirez	39	9	2.25	36.75

I took the liberty of highlighting the players that have the largest gaps between their RC and NR ranks.  For the players with large positive changes (rank movement of at least 3 places), their names are highlighted in green.  Then for the players with large negative changes, their names are highlighted in red.  The greatest positive movement belongs to Christian Yelich, an outfielder for the Miami Marlins.  Yelich moved up a total of 6 spots.  Now, looking at the converse situation, Josh Donaldson, Third Baseman for the Oakland Athletics, owns the largest skid.  Donaldson descended a total of 8 spots.

I understand that the probability of committing errors varies with each position.  I also acknowledge that some of these players are designated hitters and have no risk of committing errors.  This statistic is just an attempt to try to combine the offensive and defensive statistics of a player.  I will work to try and refine this statistic for the future.  A factor which I wish to consider for Net Runs in the future is figuring out the exact amount of bases that a defensive players error actually yields.  I could even make the statistic more efficient through adjusting the equation so that the equation would produce the players net runs per game.

Net Runs Per Game= (Runs Created - (Errors/ 4)) / Games Played

*NOTE THAT ALL OF THE STATISTICS, WITH THE EXCLUSION OF NET RUNS, ARE NOT MINE.  THEY BELONG TO THEIR RIGHTFUL CREATORS.  ALL DATA I USED TO PERFORM MY CALCULATIONS IS COMPILED FROM BASEBALL-REFERENCE.COM.*