Double Play Susceptibility Rating/Characteristic?

[kq76]

Is there a rating or characteristic or a combination of them that you think is indicative of a player who is likely to ground out into a lot of double plays?

I'm seeing a lot lately and it's getting to me. I'm not saying the game is bugged with them. My team is losing a lot lately and I know that's just going to happen sometimes, but it just seems like we're grounding into double play after double play when I just don't think we should.

The first rating that comes to mind is speed. Of course a slow player is bound to ground into more DPs than others, but I don't think that's our only problem if it is one. I usually put a premium on speed, more so than most I'm sure, but while I usually have a faster team, 5 of our 9 typical vRHP lineup have 35/80 or worse speed right now and 2 more have speed in the 40s. Our typical vLHP lineup is a bit better, but not by much. Okay, so that might be a problem. I looked at the league-wide GIDP leaders and the leaders aren't all slow, but most of them are.

Next up I'd say are players who hit weak grounders. Now there's not really a rating that indicates "weak groundball hitter", but the batted ball profile does show either: line drive, normal, groundball, flyball. My guy who has into the most GIDPs is listed as a GB hitter and he only starts vs RHP so he's a bit of a problem, but the vast majority of my players are either listed as normal or line drive hitters. I look at the league-wide GIDP leaders and besides my guy, they're all listed as either normal or line drive. Huh. Not what I expected there.

The GB Tendency and FB Tendency characteristics say normal, pull, or spray. And I wonder, would any of them indicate a player who is more likely to GIDPs? I looked at the league-wide GIDP leaders and I don't see a commonality there.

Okay, so groundball hitters are probably bad, but what about the "weak" part? Would a bad BABIP be indicative of a weak hitting player? I again look at the league-wide GIDP leaders and I don't see a commonality there either. Most of them have a BABIP of 50/80 or greater. I'm surprised by this too, but then again, if you have a bad BABIP you're probably not getting a whole lot of PAs.

What about LHB or RHB? Well, I initially thought it might partly be a LHB issue as my typical vRHP lineup has 5 LHBs (and 1 SHB) and my team leader in GIDP is a LHB too, but then I thought that didn't make sense as I remembered a big part of Ichiro's hitting game was because he was a LHB he was closer to 1B. What about the league leaders again? Most are, as expected, RHB, but of course most players are so that's probably not it.

Looking at last year's leaders, I was surprised to see a lot of my roster near the top, but other than speed I didn't see anything common among them. Could it have to do with our coaches? Both our base coaches have average listed for in-game running. Our manager is listed as neutral for both aggressive running and hit and run while our bench coach is above average for both. None of those seem too far out there and I don't control the running while playing out games. EDIT: Could it possibly have to do with me playing out all my games whereas the rest of the games in the league are simmed?

What about IRL? Well I know Pujols is famous for hitting into the most GIDPs of all-time. And after him are Miguel Cabrera and Cal Ripken Jr. They all, of course, also played a lot of games. So what about GIDP/PA? Well of the career GIDP leaders, here's the GIDP/PA ranking. But I'm not the historical expert that a lot of you are so I ask you, is there anything in common with most of these players? I was surprised to see that I'm not that familiar with a lot of the players in that top 20 (I am with some of course, but not most) so I wonder if MLB has figured it out and weeds that type of player out now, if they don't bring a lot of value some other way that is. Note that none of the first 3 I mentioned are in the top 28 (Pujols is #29).

Is there a rating or characteristic I haven't mentioned that I should look at? How would you rank them? I really thought speed, GB type hitter, and low BABIP would all identify these players, but from what I'm seeing only speed really does. Should more?

[Rain King]

Hitting the ball hard, on the ground, and not striking out are the 3 main contributors IRL.

[kq76]

Huh, yeah, hitting the ball hard instead of hitting it weak as it gives the fielders more time to get both outs. If BABIP is the best indication of hitting it hard or weak though, I'm not really seeing it in OOTP looking at last year's batters. Yeah, they're all 45+/80, but I'd say most hitters with a lot of PA are. Comparing the GIDP leaders with the PA leaders, it looks like the PA leaders have slightly higher BABIP ratings.

And you're also right about avoiding Ks. I hadn't thought of that, but one would think it must be the case as they have more chance of getting out some other way. And looking at last year's leaders again I think I may see a pattern of high avoid K. There's the odd player with 40/80 avoidK among the leaders, but most are 50+. But again, comparing the GIDP leaders to the PA leaders, the PA leaders seem to have even better avoidK.

None of that is scientific, I'm just eyeballing it. I should do some regression analysis on this later.

I find it odd how few players have groundball hitter as their type. I get it, most IRL probably are "normal" or "line drive". I just thought I'd see more GB. FB seem to be the most rare though.

[Rain King]

OOTP doesn't have a hard/weak indicator. Players get rated on how often they get hits, not why.

BABIP isn't really an indicator of hard hits. Luis Arraez is a great example of that. I guess maybe the Gap rating could potentially be used for this purpose, but I doubt it currently is...and it has an elevation factor.

I'd like to see OOTP advance on this type of thing, getting more into launch angle, exit velocity, etc.

Those type of changes would be hard to implement for historical players, however, which becomes the rub for any modernization of the engine.

[Garlon]

Remember that GIDP is also a function of hitting with a runner on first base with less than 2 outs, so a player like Pujols is going to have a ton of those opportunities batting 3rd and 4th in his career. Whereas a player who bats leadoff will automatically have no opportunity to hit into a GIDP leading off the game, and therefore more than 20% of their PA automatically have no opportunity for a GIDP, and couple that with the low OBP of the 7-8-9 batters who hit in front of the leadoff hitter and those players really have substantially fewer opportunities.

You also need to consider the league average rate of GIDP too.

Pujols hit into a GIDP 14.7% of his opportunities to do so and the league average in his career was 10.7%. Per 162 games he would average 152 DP opportunities and have 22 GIDP, whereas the league average player would have hit into 16 given those same opportunities over 162 games.

So how much worse was Pujols than average? About 1 GIDP per month.



What if we do the same process for Rickey Henderson?

Henderson DP opportunities per 162 games: 95
Henderson GIDP per 162 games: 9
League Average GIDP based on same opportunities: 10

Think about that. Rickey Henderson saved 1 GIDP per 162 games compared to the league average batter, while Pujols hit into 6 more than the league average batter.

There is simply nothing very interesting here.

You may be hitting into a lot of GIDP because your team has a good OBP and is generating more opportunities. You could also just be having a tough stretch of games.

[eauhomme]

The primary determinant of double plays is generally the number of baserunners.

Good hitting teams almost always have higher double play totals than bad hitting teams, and good pitching teams almost always turn fewer double plays than bad ones. The league leader in double plays hit into is generally over .500, and the league leader in double plays turned is generally under .500.

Some fast guys will still hit into a lot of double plays. Smack a ground ball to the shortstop with a runner on first and it doesn't matter if you're Usain Bolt. You're probably getting doubled up. I remember being surprised at how many DPs Willie Randolph would hit into batting #2 behind Rickey Henderson. Henderson still led the league in runs, and Don Mattingly hitting #3 would lead in RBIs.

Big, slow power guys who hit a lot of ground balls are the ones that will do 30+ DPs in a year. Albert Pujols holds the record, followed by Miguel Cabrera, Cal Ripken, Ivan Rodriguez, and Hank Aaron. Julio Franco at #10 is the first guy who doesn't fit that mold.

But there are big power guys who rarely hit ground balls who will have very low DP totals as a result. Joey Gallo, for example, has hit into a career total of 16 in 10 years.

[AdequateRandomGaming]

I would have to think, anecdotally speaking of course, that a combo of low eye/high avoid K would be a good contributor to hitting into a DP. Those players won't strike out often but their low eye rating will make them hit at bad pitches.

Anywho, I don't think there is one true way to determine for sure. As it has already pointed out, the first factor first and foremost is having the opportunity in the first place.

[Leo_The_Lip]

My tips, which work in real OOTP and in fantasy PT, also, are to follow Casey Stengels's advice.

1) don't have to slow RHitters back to back in your lineup. .

2) Do the run-and-hit, not the hit-and-run.

Bill James wrote Stengel was more aware of the double play than any other manager in history. He has a great article about this:

3) Read that article.

4) Use the "Casey Stengel" team strategy settings that are included in the game.

Stengel's Yankees had the beat pitching--allowed the fewest base runners and turned the most DPs several times in the 1950's. As he said, "You can look it up."

In a nutshell, the Stengel strategy is to only play the infield in when that run scoring would instantly lose the game for you. Otherwise turning two and cutting off a potential big rally is the way to go.

I try to turn more DPs than any other team. With the Stengel way, I almost always do.

If your team still hits into a lot of DPs, make the other teams hit into more.

BTW, in my recent promotion to Gold season in PT, I had top 3 pitching and still turned 35 or so more DPs the anyone else.

[Syd Thrift]

Yeah, to echo what others have said, hitting into lots of DPs is primarily a function of these things in order:

- Having a runner on at first when a player bats a lot
- Not striking out
- Hitting ground balls
- Having a lower BABIP / speed (it's the BABIP that's used, I'm sure, but I'm pretty sure that there are plays that could be outs or hits and once that "roll" is made they could then become GIDPs)

To some degree having a guy with a high GIDP number isn't necessarily a bad thing: it means he's putting the ball in play with runners on base and for the most part the net result of that is positive. A Bill Buckner type might not be an overall positive with all of those but I think that's reflected in his other stats (the lack of huge power and the fact that the high contact rate also comes with a very low walk rate) moreso than GIDPs themselves.

[MathBandit]

As a few others have said, to me a high number of GIDP is almost a goal for my hitters, certainly not something I worry about avoiding.

As a quick example, I just pulled a list of all Qualified individual player-seasons since 2000, of the 3,682 player-seasons 30 had 27+ GIDP (30 entries fit on the first page on Fangraphs and happens to be a clean cutoff so going with it lol). Their wRC+ are, in order (from most to least GDP): 115, 90, 133, 147, 104, 95, 110, 147, 104, 125, 125, 155, 166, 117, 123, 100, 125, 89, 109, 88, 109, 123, 107, 123, 155, 130, 111, 129, 106, 132.

That's obviously a jumble of numbers, but just posting them to show the clear trend that these are mostly good to very good hitters; only 4 were below-average while a full 15/30 have wRC+ over 120, and 5 (Miggy, AGon, Pujols, Holliday, and Pujols again) are even above 145 wRC+!