Jay Bruce’s Oddity
Young players in baseball are always expected to improve. If a player falters from year one to year two, then the phenomenon is labeled a “sophomore slump” rather than what it likely is; a regression towards the player’s true talent level. For an example of what people think of as the textbook definition of a young player improving, take a certain member of the Reds. This is Jay Bruce’s third big league season. He improved from year one to year two and has since improved even more from year two to year three. At age 23, he seems to be on the right track towards projected stardom.
The most glaring improvement for Bruce is his offense. His wOBA in 2008 was .328 and in 2009 he raised that by a single point. In 2010, though, he’s up to .338. In large part because of a BABIP that sits .102 points higher than last season. Think about that for a moment: 10.2% more of Bruce’s balls in play are turning into hits. What a silly thought and reality.
Bruce appears to be a good fielder too. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of his game is on the basepaths. No, he’s not much of a basestealer. In 2006 he stole 19 bases in 117 games. Since then, he’s stolen 30 in nearly 500 games spanning multiple levels. That’s not the surprising part. Instead it’s Bruce’s ability to take the extra base. Baseball-Reference tracks this measure and the definition of what constitutes and extra base is pretty simple: it’s any advancement where the lead runner isn’t forced by the player behind him. Say Bruce is on first base when a single is hit into right field, if Bruce takes second and third during the run of play, he’s credited with an extra base taken.
Take the speediest runners; guys like Carl Crawford (47%), B.J. Upton (53%), and Ichiro Suzuki (42%) and they don’t compare to Bruce’s season. Take the most heads-up baserunners; like Scott Rolen (51%), J.D. Drew (46%), and even Pete Rose (49%) and they don’t compare. That’s because Bruce is taking the extra base 70% of the time this season. Incredulously Bruce only ranks fourth in the majors of players with at least 150 plate appearances to date behind Cameron Maybin, Seth Smith, and Alexis Rios (and just ahead of Chase Utley).
Baseball Prospectus keeps track of similar numbers and offers a run value of 2.1 (eighth best in the bigs) on Bruce’s hit advancement plays. All told, Bruce’s baserunning is valued at a little under a run because of a huge penalty in other areas of advancing; such as running after a ball is caught by an outfielder or scoring from third on a sac fly attempt. Given his ability advance otherwise I checked the rest of the Reds’ numbers to see if this might be a team-wide philosophy (i.e. don’t risk getting doubled up on one play) but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
So Bruce is good when it comes to taking an extra base on hits, but awful when it comes to taking a base on outs. Unless he has no confidence in his ability to accelerate (which makes no sense given his other numbers) or he’s getting a heavier than expected distribution of easy-to-advance on hits I really can’t think of an explanation.
What have the Reds fans in the crowd noticed?
He isn’t tagging up?
I’m not sure. I know the Reds radio guys have made a big deal about the Reds as a whole being among the best in the league at taking extra bases, especially earlier in the season. I’m not sure if that is a “team-wide philosophy” or if Bruce is skewing the numbers. In any case, it doesn’t explain why he’s not better about taking the extra base on outs.
What about park effects though? GABP is small. Perhaps the kinds of long fly balls that runners tend to advance on are home runs in their home park?
Diddnt you see Brandon Phillips Mic’d up in the ASG when Rolen took the extra base? Phillips said “Thats what we do in Cincinnati! We go first to third!”
must be a team philosophy :)
At the expense of being a nit-picking asshole:
“Incredulously Bruce only ranks fourth in the majors…” is a misuse of “incredulously.”
“Incredulously” describes a person’s attitude, not an event toward which they have an attitude. “Incredibly” is closer to what you’re looking for.
Incredible events merit incredulity.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incredulous
usage Sense 2 (using the word to mean “incredible”) was revived in the 20th century after a couple of centuries of disuse. Although it is a sense with good literary precedent—among others Shakespeare used it—many people think it is a result of confusion with incredible, which is still the usual word in this sen
“incredible” as in “hard to believe”, though, right?
U put the dic in dictionary.
Philosofool was simply discussing the intricacies of the language, not trying to pick on Anderson.
Oh, and you have two spelling mistakes in your post, yep.
I would say it definitely is a team philosophy to take the extra base. I also think the difference between taking the extra base on hits vs. outs is probably still a sample size issue. A half-season’s worth of data is small enough for there to be weird stuff happening. Just thinking off the top of my head, there have been plenty of times guys have been on 2nd or 3rd needing to be sac’d over and the batter didn’t get it done, usually by hitting a pop fly to shallow.
It may be partly that they aren’t letting him tag up. If they perceive him as not being the greatest base runner, they will put up the stop sign when he otherwise would have made it.
After all, nothing is ever Jay Bruce’s fault, so we might as well pin this on the third base coach.
What? How would that make him look like a good base runner?
It would make him look bad at tagging up. Seeing as they wouldn’t be letting him tag up.
Going first to third involves picking up the ball yourself more often than not, whereas on a sac fly you are sitting on third waiting for the “go” from the third base coach.
Christian, to your second comment:
In my coaching experience(albeit not MLB caliber, of course), the runner on third is responsible for tagging up when he sees fit.
The idea is that it takes a fraction of a second for the coach to see the catch, say “Go!”, the player to hear that, and then react. As I’ve seen it done, the player simply judges his speed and the depth of the ball and tags as soon as he sees the ball hit the glove.
While I don’t know what the Reds do, obviously, I’m willing to bet the same.
If anything, this appears to just be an indication that Bruce isn’t very confident in his speed. Not to mention, there are a number of strong armed right and center fielders in his division
It’s worth noting that the BABIP change is likely not ridiculous. His BABIP was ABSURDLY low last year. He was due for a major turn around there.
Also, based on everything I’ve seen as a Reds fan, taking the extra base is a team philosophy.
“10.2% more of Bruce’s balls in play are turning into hits.” Not exactly:
Bruce’s BABIB in 2009: 0.221
Bruce’s BABIB in 2010: 0.323
0.323 – 0.221 = 0.102 = 10.2 PERCENTAGE POINT increase
(0.323 – 0.221) / 0.221 = 0.462 = 46.2 PERCENT increase.
Sorry to be nit-picky, but there is a difference. And if you thought 10.2 percent was a lot, then 46.2 should blow you out of the water. Each of Bruce’s balls in play is nearly half again as likely to land for a hit this year compared to last year. Not bad.
Actually, I think he was right in the first place. It’s a semantic thing, but 10.2 percent more of the BALLS IN PLAY are turning into hits. If you wanted to, you could say that his BABIP increased by 46.2 percent.
It’s 10.02%, not 10.2%, just fyi. :)
It’s much easier to go from first to third when a ball is hit to right field, especially if it’s a bloop from a contact hitter. Granted, Drew Stubbs, who normally hits right behind Bruce, is by no means a contact hitter. However, behind Stubbs is either going to be Ryan Hanigan or Ramon Hernandez, who are both contact hitters that love to hit to the opposite field. In fact, the entire Reds team just happens to be really good at playing small ball and hitting the ball the other way when the opportunity calls for it. I think a lot more of the Reds’ success can be attributed to their smart base-running than most publications are willing to recognize. This article might just be the tip of the iceberg.
Small sample size and variance should almost certainly be part of the explanation, here. According the Baseball Reference Bruce has been on first when a single or double has been hit 20 times and on second when a single has been hit 13 times. So we’re talking about only 33 instances where the extra base is even going to come into play. He took that extra base 23 times which gets us that 70% number but how many of those times weren’t a measure of skill but were balls that any runner would have advanced on? I’m not saying that he’s not a skilled baserunner but with such a small sample size the normal variance that could be in play could easily account for the large percentage.
There are factors beyond a baserunner’s control that can affect his taking the extra base on a hit:
1. Where it’s hit- all things being equal there’s a better chance on going 1st to 3rd on a hit to right than to left. And on one in the gap than on one hit directly at.
2. How deep the outfielders are playing- the deeper they’re playing the longer the required throw is.
3. How hard the ball is hit- a harder hit ball or liner gets to the outfield faster than a groundball hit does.
4. The number of outs- you generally get a better jump with 2 outs.
5. The size of the park- Outfielders in general have to play deeper at Coors than at Wrigley for example; which reverts back to number 2.
6. The hitter’s ability to turn a long single into a double-if the hitter is good at that then that reduces the number of singles the runner is advancing on.
Well with his LD% jumping some ~7% from last year, the BABIP increase seems appropriate.
To add on to the Hernandez/Hanigan thing: Both those guys are slow. So is it possible that Bruce gets credit for advancing an “extra” base on the catchers’ “long singles,” when he wouldn’t get the same credit if, for example, Stubbs was doubling on the same ball?
This is the type of situation where guys like Keith Hernandez earned reputations as being good baserunners without being speedsters.
Others have made good points on aspects that could create the appearance if being a smart baserunner, when the actual situation is that the average runner would advance on those times.
2 things from a former player (a pitcher that would be used as late-game runner and right field defensive sub) …
(1) Runners at 3rd don’t wait for a “go” from the coach, nor do they wait to see the ball in the glove. They anticipate the timing of the catch. It works out because once the body gets ready to move, the actual catch is made.
(2) The easiest balls to advance first to third are soft liners over the 2B. They are easy to read and the runner on 1st has a great view. You sometimes have to hesitate on liners, but on ground balls to the right side, you’re running like mad trying to take away a force at 2B and this is where the 3rd base coach comes into play. Ground balls up the middle are even better. The runner gets a great jump, and he can see everything (ball and CF) right in front of him. The only time a runner might not advance is if the CF was shading toward RF and was charging hard with his momentum going toward 3B. Any time the OF’s mo is taking him “away from the play” , the runner will go.
One of the little things worth watching is how a RF will trot after a base hit in front of him, baiting the runner to try and advance. I’ve seen younger Vlad and JUpton do this. It works because you can either throw the guy out at 3rd or hit the cutoff man who can try and catch the trail runner rounding the bag with 1B trailing him.
I’m not really familiar with the stats, but if the added value is in scoring from second and the negative value is in not tagging from second to third, it might just be that he’s more aggressive on questionable fly balls/pop-ups to the outfield; e.g. not coming back to tag up on balls that may or may not be caught.
This would make sense to me since it would seem that the decision to tag from third is generally pretty straight forward.
I also want to add that Dusty loves to hit-and-run. It wouldn’t surprised me if he called for a hit-and-run at a higher rate than any other manager in baseball.
To reference the early part of the article, does anyone else legitimately believe that Bruce is “on the right track towards projected stardom” based on this year’s numbers? A 0.334 wOBA does not get me THAT excited. Where is the 0.400 wOBA he put up as he tore through every level of the minors? With this being his 3rd year at the show, I really expected he would at least have made a more significant improvement (~15%+) in wOBA versus his ’08 season.