Batting Excitement Factor (BEF) Explained

There are a lot of statistics out there that have been adopted in recent years to help compare MLB players against each other. Whether we're talking about RC/G, OPS, adjusted OPS, or btWins, a lot of these statistics are confusing and are really only used by baseball insiders and people who take their Fantasy a little too seriously. To be honest, it has actually gotten so out of control that many season-ending awards are now judged on the basis of statistical formulas instead of gut feel. This is probably the most frustrating result of what I like to call the Statistical Renaissance.

As a result, it must seem rather odd that I have written an article that adds another statistic to the mix. So let me be clear on the intent behind the creation of the BEF. Quite simply, I wanted to create a tool that can fairly accurately predict whose plate appearances are worth standing in front of the TV for that extra minute during the course of the 162-game season. Even more importantly, which players are worth the cost of a bleacher ticket, two hot dogs, a stadium beer, and parking.

I do not claim to be a statistical analysis whiz. Nor do I claim that the weighting used by the BEF is indisputable. But what I do know is that the final formula is a pretty good indicator of which batters provide the kind of excitement on a per-at-bat basis that fans love.

To create this formula, I played with different weights on the 2008 stats of the top ten hitters in the AL & NL MVP race only using offensive categories that require a player to do things on his own to generate excitement. Thus, runs are not included at all in this formula since they are so heavily dependent on a teammate's actions once a player reaches base. Other arbitrary figures that deal with randomness and opposing team decisions, like IBB and HBP, were not used for similar reasons (although IBB is reflected somewhat in the more general BB category). Finally, I avoided the use of any percentage categories (SLG, BA, OBP) since I wanted to attribute new values to the different types of hits a player gets.

After numerous iterations, I came up with the following formula:

(20/11)*{[1(H-2B-3B-HR)]+[.5(K)+1.5(2B)+1(RBI-HRRBI)+2(3B)+1.5(CS)+2.5(SB)+5(HR)]-[.25(BB)+-1.5(GDP)+.25(SF+SH)]}/Plate Appearances

Going thru the formula from the end to the beginning....

1. I used plate appearances instead of at-bats since I needed to justify the relevance of walks and sacrifices in the equation.
2. I attributed three categories as being negative in terms of excitement: walks, sacrifices, and double plays grounded into. Walks and sacrifices slow down the game and provide no joy that can be attributed to the player that executes them. While they are seen as positives in the course of the game itself and for contractual purposes, they take the bat out of the player's hands and are almost always boring. However they are nowhere near as boring as a guy that grounds into a double play. That is the worst possible outcome in my mind and has a negative excitement quotient roughly equivalent to the positive you experience when someone hits a double.
3. As you saw above, there are some good baseball fundamentals that are boring (BB, SF). There are also a couple of items that are negative for the player's career that are still positive to your excitement level. Namely, when someone strikes out or gets caught stealing, he is adding energy to what is otherwise a slow-moving game. By setting the value of a single at the baseline level of 1, it was my opinion that a K is about half as exciting as a single (although a swinging K is really more interesting than a called K), whereas a guy who gets caught stealing has just done something that is about as exciting as a double, but not quite as interesting as a triple or a SB.
4. A HR is the ultimate outcome for a hitter in baseball and should be rewarded as such. While I personally find SBs to be more exciting in this day and age, they involve other factors (like pitchers with slow moves, catchers with poor throwing arms, etc) and cannot be valued the highest in my mind. After playing with the numbers, I decided that HRs are worth about 5 times the energy of a single.
5. Some might argue that a triple is the most exciting play in baseball, but I have seen my fair share of triples and would argue that they usually are the result of ball placement and men-on-base situations rather than blazing speed and excitement.
6. RBIs are a dicey situation since they depend so much on your teammates getting on before you. At the end of the day, I decided that a single and an RBI feel about the same and should be weighted as much. However, I don't believe that HR hitters (who get an extra RBI for the HR) should be overly rewarded in my equation. Thus, I subtract the number of HR from the RBIs to come up with a number that is a more accurate measure of clutchness.
7. Lastly, I multiply the result by 20/11 (ie- 1.8182) in order to make the numbers easier to deal with. You'll see why I chose that fraction in a second.

Essentially, anyone that hits above the 1.00 mark is an exciting player to watch and anyone who sports a BEF of over 1.25 should definitely not be missed.

So, just to reiterate, I am literally making numbers up for the weights! But I think the end result is a very strong indicator of who is just plain, old-fashioned, interesting to watch. Let's look at last year's top ten MVP candidates in each league and then assess their performances from a qualitative standpoint. Starting with the NL....

Player BEF Ryan Howard 1.364 Ryan Braun 1.349 Hanley Ramirez 1.309 Manny Ramirez 1.266 Lance Berkman 1.237 Albert Pujols 1.228 David Wright 1.213 Carlos Delgado 1.140 Aramis Ramirez 1.101 Chipper Jones 1.061

It's no surprise that Ryan Howard provides the highest BEF -- he hits HRs, Ks a lot, and knocks in a lot of runs. Just because he only hit .251 doesn't mean that the 3 out of 4 times he comes to the plate and doesn't get a hit aren't exciting! What was surprising was that Ryan Braun was #2 in BEF in the NL MVP race. He quietly put together a year where he stole a few bases, got a lot of XBH, and struck out without walking a ton. Nice work, Ryan! Consensus Fantasy #1 for 2009, Hanley Ramirez, is almost as exciting to watch as a regular fan as he is for whoever has him on their team in Fantasy Baseball. Meanwhile, the actual MVP, Albert Pujols, landed sixth here. Why? Because he walks way more than he strikes out -- which is good for him, but boring for us.

Now onto the AL MVP race from 2008 (batters only)...

Player BEF Alex Rodriguez 1.362 Evan Longoria 1.283 Josh Hamilton 1.279 Grady Sizemore 1.265 Kevin Youkilis 1.260 Carlos Quentin 1.217 Carlos Pena 1.143 Justin Morneau 1.034 Dustin Pedroia 1.031 Joe Mauer 0.807

This race is a perfect illustration of what stat geeks have done to the game. The MVP vote had two Twins and two Red Sox in the top 4, which really shouldn't happen. A valuable player carries his team or is just so much better than the other players on his own team that it isn't even funny. While no one really carried their team last year (I guess Sizemore would be the closest thing), ARod, Josh Hamilton, and Evan Longoria (when he was not injured) were far more entertaining than the people who actually finished in the top 5 of the MVP voting. According to the BEF Pedroia, Morneau, and especially Mauer shouldn't have even been in the top 10, let alone the top four. Look at Mauer: he is one of the few catchers who hits for a high average, sure, but he does not run and makes a lot of powerless contact, often into double plays. And few people outside of Minnesota are lining up to buy Mauer jerseys after he gets his 100th single of the season. He's a good guy to have on your team, just not on your TV.

What does this all show? It shows that two players most people would pay to see, Ryan Howard and ARod are the highest scorers in the BEF world (among the sample set). So we can't be that far off.

Now let's look at the projected starting lineup of the worst team in baseball last year and see who is worth watching. That team, the Washington Nationals, gets a lot of bad press for the lineup they have assembled, and next to no TV time out-of-market, despite having what is now a pretty decent BEF team slated for 2009. Check it out....

Player BEF Elijah Dukes 1.176 Adam Dunn 1.116 Jesus Flores 1.096 Ronnie Belliard 1.057 Lastings Milledge 1.045 Josh Willingham 1.000 Christian Guzman 0.940 Ryan Zimmerman 0.935 Interesting reserves BEF Willie Harris 0.984 Wily Mo Pena 0.655

According to the chart above, Elijah Dukes is more interesting to watch than Adam Dunn. I would not have expected this, but it makes sense when you see that he singles, doubles and triples at a higher rate than Dunn, steals more bases and only really trails in HR power per plate appearance. The face of the franchise, Ryan Zimmerman, had an abnormally boring year probably due to injury, or more correctly, trying to play through an injury. The beauty of BEF is that it doesn't punish someone who misses half of the year due to injury. Of course, it is slightly unfair to players whose numbers drop significantly because they try to play through an injury that should have landed them on the DL. But when you think about it, the injury makes them less exciting, so it really is not a monkey wrench in the formula at all.

You will also notice above that Josh Willingham is the prototypical median excitement player in the BEF world, with a score of 1.000. He strikes out more than he walks, has some power and a little speed, and grounds into too many DPs. In other words, you would be fine flipping a coin to decide whether you should watch his at-bat or go to the kitchen to make a snack. Meanwhile, his new teammate and backup Wily Mo Pena was a guaranteed bet to disappoint you last year, despite his impressive physique and tools. I included Willie Harris because he had a breakout season last year, but it appears that despite a few memorable highlights, he was not totally exciting over the whole year.

As a final experiment, let's test the BEF against some of the most memorable individual seasons in history to make sure that these All-Century performances are duly appreciated by the BEF....

Player BEF
Rickey Henderson '82 SB 1.768
Babe Ruth '21 R 1.703
Hack Wilson '30 RBI 1.562
Barry Bonds '01 HR 1.537
Curtis Granderson '07 3B 1.312
Jim Rice '84 GDP 1.037

You would think Barry's HR title would best Rickey's modern SB crown, but the numbers make it clear that event though HRs are the most exciting thing in baseball for most people, they don't unfairly reward sluggers. You'll see that because Bonds walked so many times and had such a high percentage of RBIs from his own HRs, that while he was much more exciting in 2001 than the best hitters of 2008, he wasn't nearly as magical as Henderson in 1982. Bonds' season was more on par with Hack Wilson's mind-boggling 191 RBI season from 1930 (which isn't precise since CS and GDP was not tracked that year, but should not affect the BEF too much because those missing numbers would virtually cancel each other out I'm betting since they have the same weight). The second best number on this list actually belongs to Babe Ruth's signature season, 1921. In this year, he had his best or second-best year for runs, hits, 2Bs, 3Bs, HRs, SBs, and his 177 runs is a modern-record. Just for fun, look at how big a drag Jim Rice's GDP record year of 1984 was on his BEF in an otherwise All-Star and MVP-votes worthy year. Also, check out how Curtis Granderson's recent high-triples year (some people's most exciting play in baseball) translates into a really great year, but not legendary.

So there you have it. That is the proof. As of right now, the stat only measures excitement expectation against the player's previous year statistics. In time we hope to create an HBEF (Historical BEF) across a player's major league career and a current-season model that measures player's BEF on a weekly basis (WBEF). Feel free to plug your favorite player into a spreadsheet with this equation and see whether or not he is worthy of all your adulation. Or just wait for my upcoming posts on every 2009 team, coming soon!

Source: All stats provided by baseball-reference.com. Thank you baseball-reference.com.
Source: Projected starting lineup for Washington Nationals was predicted by me.