I just found out that the Phillies and a soccer team called the Union that is embarking on its second season in Philadelphia both have players named Carlos Ruiz. Both were born in the same year, 1979.

Being right-handed, fast, and a ground ball hitter will all help. Derek Jeter has led the league in ROE five times. I think it is definitely a skill.

However, I believe that the Season Finder is currently not picking up times reached on error. I ran the 2011 Season Finder for TOB with errors >= 10, and I got only 15 results, not the 18 shown above; my results are missing Votto, Polanco and Ichiro. When I lowered the threshold, the results showed Votto and Polanco with 9 and Ichiro with 8; for each player, those totals are reached entirely on hits+walks.

Also, I ran the search for TOB without errors -- and got the exact same results.

Unfortunately, the Season Finder does not allow searching directly on ROE.

1. The phrase "times on base" is most commonly used in the sense of reaching base safely, which explicitly excludes errors.

2. Although no stat is a pure reflection of the batter's merit, and although the batter does deserve at least a bit of credit for putting the ball in play, the fact is that today's standard for assessing errors is such that the vast majority of them are routine plays. I have seen no evidence that any particular hitter, or type of hitter, generates more fielding errors; so if two batters with similar contact rates have a wide difference in the number of times they reach on error in a given season, I believe that is almost all luck. If we're trying to measure the batter's merit, we should weed out luck as much as we can.

3. I don't view intentional walks as evidence of luck, in general. True, the batter didn't do anything in that time up to earn his way on base. But more often than not, that IBB is given because of what the batter has done in the past -- the threat he presents. The opposing team would rather put him on than let him hit. Look at the top IBB recipients in 2010: 25 players got at least 10 IBBs; that group's median OPS+ was 134, and all but 5 were at 112 or higher.

Yes, a good chunk of IBBs go to NL #8 hitters, because the pitcher hits next. Still, #8 hitters drew just 19% of all IBBs last year, while #3-4 hitters combined drew 37% of the IBBs.

And some IBBs are motivated as much by setting up a DP as by fear of the batter. Yet, 58% of all IBBs came with 2 out, i.e., not for DP purposes.

Since it's clear that a sizeable chunk of IBBs are motivated by fear of the batter; and since, regardless of his merit, the IBB does deprive the hitter of a chance to reach base more honorably; I therefore prefer to treat all IBBs as legitimate times on base.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2011-baserunning-batting.shtml

... I guess you can't give away everything for free. 🙂

This is a recurring theme in these tables, but you should remove the TOB_roe > 1 qualification for each game. The inclusion of "oh-fer" games skews all the rate stats. Alex Gordon's had a great start but two hitless games are missing so his numbers look more amazing than they should.

Also Kendrick and Abreu each had decent days today and are now at 15 apiece.