Baseball is definitely a game of strategies, and most of the time, the team with the better strategy wins the game. When I say strategy I don’t mean just bunting, ordering a hit and run, squeeze play, etc. The strategy begins with assembling the team. If you don’t put a good team on the field you’re not going to win.

Also, by putting a team on the field I’m not talking about spending huge amounts of cash. I’m talking about analyzing what you have on your team, what you need, and optimizing your players’ best attributes in order to win ballgames. And that last part of the strategy is what were going to take a look at.

Usually later in games, managers face the decision on whether to use a pinch-hitter, or not, in order to potentially score runs. There’s no way to know beforehand if a hitter is going to get a hit, double, home run or if he’s going to strike out when you send him up to the plate as a pinch hitter. Even if you have a guy who is 10-10 against a specific pitcher that doesn’t mean he’s going to be 11-11 after that particular AB. It only means that the odds are in his favor, but after all they are odds.

Now, there are managers and General Managers that have embraced this new philosophy about advanced stats (sabermetrics), and are using them to gain an edge in the competition. When I mean edge, I don’t mean they are always going to win, I just mean that the odds will favor them slightly more. After all they are statistics, not facts.

If I were a manager, I would use all the information available to gain an edge over my opponent. It doesn’t matter what kind of information, every piece of information can be useful, and pinch-hitting is no different. For example, to maximize the use of a pinch-hitter you could use stats, unless you want to go with the player with the hot streak, or the one with better overall numbers.

Stats that could be used for pinch-hitting could variate depending on what you’re looking for. If you want your pinch hitter to reach base at the beginning of an inning go with the player with highest OBP, but if you’re trying to drive in a run there are a number of advanced stats that might come in handy.

Baseball Prospectus presents a stat called OBI% (Others Batted In Percentage), that is “the fraction of runners on base who were driven in during a batter’s plate appearances.” This stat won’t credit a hitter when hitting a home run (OBI = RBI – HR). With this stat you know how effective a player is when driving in runs.

Now, the guys from Baseball Prospectus take this stat a little bit further to give us the R1BI%, R2BI% and R3BI%. Each one of this stats measure the percentage of runs batted in from the different bases. This stat makes a ton of sense. For example, players with high R1BI% are all sluggers, players able to drive runners from first base.

Among the leaders in this department we have Curtis Granderson, Evan Longoria, Mark Teixeira and Adrian Beltre. To understand a little bit more this stats, I’m going to compare Granderson with Victor Martinez using 2011 data.

Granderson has a career .495 SLG and Martinez .469, also Granderson has 30 home runs more than Martinez in 598 less AB’s. Martinez has 533 career strikeouts in 4,279 AB’s while Granderson has 917 strikeouts in 3,681 AB’s. Martinez has also a higher career OBP (.370) than Granderson (.345). What you can take away from these stats is that Granderson is a better slugger than Martinez, but not as versatile as him.

That’s why Granderson is more likely to drive in a runner from first base (11.2%) than Martinez (6.5%), but when you analyze the percentage of runners driven home from second base Martinez (25%) is better than Granderson (17%), and when you compare them again in R3BI% the difference between them is even bigger, 54.9% for Martinez and 39.7% for Granderson.

Now, what does this tells you as a manager? It tells me that depending on where the runner is located I would go for a slugger with a chance to bring him home from first base with one swing, or a more versatile hitter that is more likely to bring him home from second or third base. Again, this is not a fact, this is just information being used in order to maximize the use of your resources, or, using stats to unfold a better strategy.

Lastly, the make-up of a player is very important for a pinch hitter as some younger players have a hard time waiting around all game and staying ready for potentially one at bat towards the end of the game. This is why most successful bench players are older player that have been around for a bit.

Image by Keith Allison under the Creative Commons License.