During the ninth inning of Tuesday's 7-2 loss to the Rangers, NESN's Dave O'Brien said:
Nothing good ever happens from a leadoff walk.
What prompted that bit of commentary was the fact that Craig Kimbrel had walked the first Rangers batter in the top of the ninth and Texas had quickly scored four runs.
Of course, had O'Brien looked down at his scorecard, he would have seen that only
four innings earlier, in the bottom of the fifth, the Red Sox's leadoff man had walked. Three groundouts later, Hanley Ramirez was stranded at third base and a "0" went up on the scoreboard for Boston.
In November 2010, I asked the question: "
Do Leadoff Walks Lead To More Runs?" (I also wanted to know if leadoff walks score more frequently than, say, a leadoff single or reaching first on an error. Because O'Brien's insistence on the evil of leadoff walks (it wasn't the first time this season he has said something similar), I'm re-posting the information.
Tim McCarver, during a playoff game in 2002:
The one thing I would tell a young pitcher is never walk the leadoff man. He always scores; he always scores.
David Smith, the man who started and runs
Retrosheet, thought he would check that out (though, obviously, a leadoff batter who walks does not
always score). Smith looked at 29 years (1974-2002) worth of data: 61,365 games, 1,101,019 half-innings, more than 4.5 million plate appearances.
Reached Scored Frequency
BB 82,637 33,002 39.9%
1B 183,468 72,841 39.7%
2B 48,364 30,961 64.0%
3B 6,573 5,753 87.5%
HR 27,205 27,205 100.0%
HBP 6,217 2,543 40.9%
E 12,105 5,298 43.8%
A leadoff batter who walks does not score at a significantly higher rate (statistically speaking) than a leadoff hitter who singles.
In August 2006, McCarver
said:
There is nothing that opens up big innings any more than a leadoff walk. Leadoff home runs don't do it.* Leadoff singles, maybe. But a leadoff walk. It changes the mindset of a pitcher. Since he walked the first hitter, now all of a sudden he wants to find the fatter part of the plate with the succeeding hitters. And that could make for a big inning.
* -
Sorry, Tim.
Leadoff 0R 1R 2R 3R 4R 5R 6+R
1B 183,468 104,074 35,868 22,726 11,329 5,375 2,415 1,681
BB 82,637 46,794 15,837 10,481 5,167 2,503 1,100 755
The percentages for that chart:
Leadoff 0R 1R 2R 3R 4R 5R 6+R
1B 183,468 56.7 19.6 12.4 6.1 2.9 1.3 0.9
BB 82,637 56.6 19.2 12.7 6.2 3.0 1.3 0.9
Whether a leadoff batter singles or walks has no correlation with how many runs his team will eventually score in that inning.
Smith, from The Baseball Research Journal 35 (2006):
[A]necdotal observations and gut feelings are just that and have no inherent credibility, no matter what the source. Since we can now check these opinions with evidence, and McCarver definitely has at his disposal the talents of people who can do such checking, then we should expect him and other announcers to get it right.
It is not only McCarver. In May 2008, Blue Jays announcer Rance Mulliniks
estimated that a leadoff walk comes around to score 60-65% of the time. But why estimate when the
facts are available with a little bit of effort (even as little as asking an assistant to do some research)?
More recently, plen had a
similar post at Fangraphs in September. Looking at the data from 1952-2009:
Leadoff Scored Frequency
1B 325,455 122,662 37.69%
BB 150,570 57,189 37.98%
HBP 11,865 4,600 38.77%
E 19,260 7,270 37.74%
Again, leadoff singles and leadoff walks come around to score at the exact same rate, statistically speaking.
