FanPost

On Dinger Dependence: an analysis of offensive performance in dong-free games

Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

The most recent narrative to capture my interest has been the idea that the Yankees are dependent on homeruns and cannot score runs or win games without them. I can understand the temptation to say this - the Yankees hit dingers at a record pace, after all, so it's especially noticeable when they lose a game in which they don't hit any. But on its own, it's a fallacy to think this way - there is no inherent relationship between scoring lots of runs via homeruns and not being able to score runs by other means. This is another one of those eye test situations that are subject to various possible biases. But, as always, just because a statement might be biased or based on a fallacious premise, that does not mean it isn't ultimately true. So I have compiled some data to put this idea to the test and I'd like to share my findings.

The obvious place to begin is to look at each team's record in games in which they did not hit a homerun. I had expected this to be easy, but it turns out that nobody publicly records this data, so I had to compile it myself, which is annoying. But I did it, so let's have a look at the dong-free standings, ordered by winning percentage:

Team W L PCT
BOS 21 26 0.447
CHC 21 29 0.420
TBR 25 35 0.417
SEA 20 28 0.417
LAD 15 25 0.375
PIT 22 37 0.373
SFG 21 36 0.368
LAA 14 24 0.368
HOU 14 24 0.368
NYY 10 18 0.357
COL 13 25 0.342
OAK 13 25 0.342
CLE 14 27 0.341
ARI 19 39 0.328
NYM 18 37 0.327
PHI 14 29 0.326
MIA 20 42 0.323
MIL 14 31 0.311
MIN 14 33 0.298
ATL 13 32 0.289
CIN 13 35 0.271
WSN 13 35 0.271
DET 15 45 0.250
SDP 13 40 0.245
CHW 11 35 0.239
TEX 11 36 0.234
STL 8 31 0.205
KCR 8 44 0.154
TOR 4 33 0.108
BAL 4 43 0.085

A few things immediately catch my eye. First, the Orioles really are terrible. Second, every team has a losing record in these games, and while the Yankees aren't amazing here, they're not bad either. Third, the Yankees have by far the lowest number of dong-free games (28, with the next lowest being the Blue Jays at 37). In other words, the Yankees are far and away the best team in baseball at avoiding these games in which every single team has a losing record. That's a very good thing. And, even when they do find themselves in that predicament, they at least don't embarrass themselves relative to the rest of the league.

Here's the problem: if we're trying to measure the impact that failing to hit homeruns has on their offense, this is actually a really bad analysis. We have failed to remove an enormous variable, which is pitching performance and runs allowed. I shared it because it's interesting and because it provided some context for the discussion, but what we really need to do next is look at runs scored. So here's Exhibit B, which is the runs per game for each team in dong-free games:

Team R/G
NYY 3.25
COL 3.03
ATL 2.96
BOS 2.89
TEX 2.87
CIN 2.83
ARI 2.76
TBR 2.75
PIT 2.75
SEA 2.69
SFG 2.68
CHC 2.66
CLE 2.63
CHW 2.63
OAK 2.61
LAA 2.58
NYM 2.56
DET 2.53
HOU 2.50
KCR 2.46
LAD 2.40
SDP 2.40
MIA 2.39
MIN 2.36
MIL 2.36
PHI 2.23
WSN 2.23
TOR 2.22
STL 2.15
BAL 1.60

Cool! The Orioles are still terrible, and the Yankees have the best offense in baseball in dong-free games. Here's an interesting fact: part of what's helping them mitigate the loss of homeruns in these games is their high sacrifice fly rate (0.43 per game, compared to the league's 0.25) and their low GIDP rate (0.64 per game, compared to the league's 0.78). From these stats alone, they have scored 5 additional runs from sac flies and avoided 4 additional outs from GIDP compared to the average team over the same number of games. Say what you will about strikeouts and launch angles, but the swing-for-the-fences approach sometimes helps the team even when it fails to achieve its primary intended outcome.

Now I'd like to take this analysis one step further (and if you're not interested in a little math, you might want to stop right here). Scoring more than other teams obviously speaks well of the team's offense in these games, but I'd really like to specifically measure the impact of not hitting homeruns. To do this, we could look at the difference between runs/game and runs/game in dong-free games. That would show in absolute terms how much each team was impacted by not hitting homeruns in those games. But the values will be skewed because teams that score more are capable of having larger differences. So, what I'd like to use instead is the relative difference, which is a measure (expressed as a percentage) of the difference between two values while controlling for the sizes of the things being measured. A lower relative difference would show that the impact of not hitting homeruns was lower, meaning the team showed less dependency on homeruns in those games. A higher relative difference would show a higher dependency. For our purposes, let's call it the Dinger Dependence Quotient (DDQ). To calculate it, you just take the absolute difference of the two values (runs/game minus runs/dong-free-game) and divide it by the mean of the two values. So for the Yankees it would be (5.13-3.25)/((5.13+3.25)/2) = 44.87%. To put this into context, I calculated it for all of the teams and here they are:

Team DDQ
SFG 36.43%
SEA 41.85%
COL 43.12%
DET 43.46%
KCR 43.50%
MIA 43.65%
PIT 44.12%
TBR 44.19%
NYY 44.87%
CHW 45.05%
ARI 45.43%
CIN 45.67%
ATL 45.98%
SDP 46.06%
NYM 47.03%
TEX 50.05%
LAA 54.69%
CHC 57.75%
OAK 59.65%
MIN 60.50%
BOS 60.78%
PHI 62.45%
CLE 62.70%
MIL 63.16%
LAD 64.98%
HOU 66.13%
TOR 67.02%
WSN 70.00%
STL 72.81%
BAL 83.22%

Wow, the Orioles. Also, from one of my previous posts you may recall that the Nationals were the most inconsistent team in the majors, and here they appear again as one of the most dinger-dependent teams. It's not relevant but I thought it was interesting. More relevant is that the Yankees are in a really close pack of teams near the top of the list, so even after accounting for the fact that they have the second-best offense in baseball with dingers, they still show a healthy amount of dinger-independence by this metric.

So, here are my major takeaways:

1) Everyone sucks when they don't hit dongs, so building an offense that hits lots of them is good.

2) The Yankees avoid dong-free games better than anyone by a large margin.

3) Even when they don't hit any dongs, the Yankees still out-score every team in that scenario.

4) All offenses depend on dongs, but the Yankees are not dependent on dongs relative to other teams.

5) The Orioles are uniquely terrible at baseball.

Next time the Yankees lose a game in which they didn't homer, I hope we can all see through the red and take some solace in this Fanpost.

FanPosts are user-created content and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Pinstripe Alley writing staff or SB Nation.