The Wheelhouse: Wasted Opportunities

Without asking her out, Peter Gibbons never would have hooked up with Joanna in Office Space.

Let's face it, courtship usually requires a leap of faith beyond throwing a dart in the direction of the unusually hot waitress at a bad restaurant. At least give yourself a chance. You can probably count the times that girl has asked you out on the real fingers of Roy Munson's right hand.

It's all about creating opportunities. Without that, there won't be results.

That's the extent of my dating advice.

I have been thinking a lot about wasted opportunities lately, and the most relevant application for our purposes applies to hitters. Over the years, we have come to accept that some players are reliably of the Three True Outcomes variety (home runs, strikeouts and walks). We're looking at you, Adam Dunn.

Most of our energy is expended trying to figure out the inner workings of guys who put the ball in play more often. How many fantasy players and industry types were thinking about batting average on balls in play five years ago, or 10? Even now, our collective understanding of it seems to be misguided as BABIP is often cited as a normalized rate that should be nearly equal for all hitters. It doesn't work that way - for hitters, or pitchers, for a variety of reasons that have been detailed at various times on RotoWire and in other places over the years.

This piece is an argument that we are missing something from the Three True Outcomes. Since reading a piece from Mike Salfino last summer looking at the quality of contact that pitchers allow, I have been thinking more about the applications of batted ball data. As Chris Liss concluded (during an interview with Salfino on the XM show, I believe) an infield flyball is a strikeout, in terms of outcome.

Think about it. How many infield flyballs are hits league wide over the course of a year? How many infield flyballs generate an RBI? Of course by nature, it can't be a home run. In most leagues, we care about hits, runs, home runs, RBI and stolen bases. An infield flyball is essentially a zero across the board in your five hitting categories, just like a strikeout.

Despite this, we seem to be looking past the fact that some hitters are better at avoiding infield flyballs than others. I consider it to be a skill on the same level as making contact in general. A good hitter won't be fooled as often, and therefore, won't make a terrible mistake and pop up a ball in the infield. This is the obligatory Joey Votto for Prime Minister mention.

Just as you should not target or avoid players solely because of their ability to maintain a particular BABIP, this data is not intended to be the primary focus of analyzing a player's skill set. Instead, it's just another piece of the puzzle that may have been previously overlooked or forgotten about.

We certainly care about strikeouts - and tend to avoid or significantly reduce what we are willing to pay for someone who does it too much. My proposal is to modify the strikeouts element of Three True Outcomes to Wasted Plate Appearances (or in a more relevant light for rotisserie, Wasted At-Bats). Just add infield flyballs to strikeouts, and carry on.

A full table of data from the 2012 season is available here.

There are a couple of ways to slice the data.

First, let's take a look at guys who are putting an extremely high number of balls into play.

Not surprisingly, this group is full of players who have typically been a steady source of batting average throughout their respective careers, while there is also a decent number of speedsters throughout the group with Ben Revere, Jose Reyes, Juan Pierre, Norichika Aoki and Jose Altuve all stealing 30 or more bases a season ago. Subsequently many players in this group have been used as tablesetters for their respective teams at some point, providing plenty of added value in runs scored as well.

Perhaps the most intriguing from the high volume balls in play group are the guys who show power. Check out the relative ISO (isolate power, slugging - batting average) standouts with Troy Tulowitzki (.199), Yadier Molina (.186), Nick Markakis (.174), Salvador Perez (.170) and Dustin Pedroia (.160). To a lesser extent, Reyes (.146), Aoki (.144), Omar Infante (.144) and Martin Prado (.136) are noteworthy here as well, especially with Reyes and Prado heading to more hitter-friendly home parks this season. Not surprisingly, most of those players carry a premium as five-category rotisserie darlings, but a few are somewhat overlooked or at least presently undervalued.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the group wasting a significant portion of their at-bats:

This group offers much more power across the board, as it encompasses the Three True Outcomes types described earlier. Of course, we already knew that Adam Dunn gives away a lot of potential RBI chances with his strikeouts, so the more important step is to look at the free-swingers who also hit a high number of infield flyballs. Thus, the next group represents the hitters with the greatest increase in wasted at-bat percentage with the inclusion of IFFB.

At the other end of the spectrum, we can look at players who are the least affected by the inclusion of infield flyball rate. My position would be that their contact is typically very good, at least, when they put the bat on the ball. That is to say, they are very rarely cheated.

Count me among those who never realized that Ryan Howard is elite in terms of avoiding infield flyballs. He's hit 19 in his entire big league career. By comparison, Jose Bautista had 20 last season alone, and that was in 92 games. Revere doesn't strike out or hit infield flyballs - pretty much ideal for a speedster that you're leaning on to put the ball in play and pressure opposing teams with his legs. It's little wonder that the Phillies acquired him from the Twins rather than pay Michael Bourn $52 million as a free agent, especially when you factor in the age difference and Bourn's significantly higher strikeout rate.

Draft day is all about exploiting market inefficiencies that are unique to your league, and there are a lot of ways you can interpret and manipulate the above data.

On the surface, the most useful way to apply this information is to supplement what we already know about these players.

The power hitters from the very first group above -- particularly the aforementioned undervalued middle round options -- should become more of a priority to target.

Conversely, the high infield flyball rate, high strikeout rate types that may have otherwise been rebound candidates such as Dan Uggla, might become players to simply pass on entirely.

Follow me on Twitter @DerekVanRiper.