Streaky Hitters Like Chris Davis

For a player like Crush who alternately collects HRs in historic bunches then disappears for weeks at a time, how does this extreme streakiness affect his value? Are all 40hr, 120rbi seasons effectively the same? Would you rather have a more consistent player with slightly worse numbers at the end of the season? And finally, is there some advanced metric to quantify this, like a stock volatility measurement? So many questions...

a) Is Chris Davis really more streaky than an average player, or does it just seem that way?

b) If he is, is it enough that you'd care?

c) I've long thought you'd be no worse off, and maybe better off, with an inconsistent player of equal season totals compared to a consistent player. You'd win more games with a pitcher who alternated allowing 0 runs and 8 runs in complete games, than you would with a player who allowed 4 every single game. You just might win more games having a dominant player part of the time and a fairly miserable player part of the time, rather than just an average player all the time.

a) Is Chris Davis really more streaky than an average player, or does it just seem that way?

Sure the degree of streakiness is subjective (unless some metric exists), but I think it's fairly clear that the delta between CDs highs and lows is among the largest in MLB.

b) If he is, is it enough that you'd care?

I'm firmly undecided how much it hurts the team, but when he's streaking he's a beautiful man to watch. Um, I'd like to amend my remarks...

c) I've long thought you'd be no worse off, and maybe better off, with an inconsistent player of equal season totals compared to a consistent player. You'd win more games with a pitcher who alternated allowing 0 runs and 8 runs in complete games, than you would with a player who allowed 4 every single game. You just might win more games having a dominant player part of the time and a fairly miserable player part of the time, rather than just an average player all the time.

Interesting. As a fan or a manager, I think I'd rather Steady Eddie giving up 4 runs every start, but I'm not sure. When applied to offense, this effect would be largely mitigated by the 8 other hitters. Also, while over a long season the difference might be negligible, I'd love to count on everybody to reliably contribute in a playoff series. October would be a bad time for Crush to go on a 3-32 schneid with 24Ks. (In case this makes you curious, he went 5-24 1BB 9K .478OPS in 2012)

I think one probably could devise a measure of streakiness, and Davis probably would be pretty high on it. For example, Manny Machado had an .861 OPS and the months were .804, .804, 1.046, .834, .752, .907. The total gap between his highest and lowest months was .294, and his average monthly deviation from the mean was .080. Davis had a .923 OPS and his months were .883, .765, .826, .859, .942, and 1.221. The gap between the high and low was .456 and the average monthly deviation from the mean was .113. So, it seems fair to say that Davis was more streaky than Manny.

I'm not sure that streakiness really affects the overall win/loss, though. Just the timing of when the wins and losses occur.

For what it's worth, Davis had a 1.187 OPS in games we won, and .648 in games we lost. Manny had a .932 OPS in games we won, and .785 in games we lost. So Davis tended to impact wins and losses more, but I don't think that means that if he had been more consistent the outcome would have been different.

I think one probably could devise a measure of streakiness,.

Standard deviation of weekly/monthly OPS. The trick would be to find a database that has everyone's OPS by week in a format that would allow easy figuring of standard deviation. Might involve the retrosheet data and some SQL. I'll leave that for the smart kids.

Interesting. As a fan or a manager, I think I'd rather Steady Eddie giving up 4 runs every start, but I'm not sure.

If you assume complete games (I know, but work with me) your team will win all (or essentially all) of the games where the pitcher gives up zero runs. But they'll also win 20% of the games where they allow eight runs (in a four run/game context). So if your starters all followed the consistent, four-runs-a-game model you're at .500. If you're inconsistent you win 97 games.

Another thought: standard deviation generally increases with the size of the thing you're measuring. Your standard deviation on random numbers will be higher on 0-50 than random numbers picked between 0-25. So you'd expect the most inconsistent players to be the ones with the highest performance levels. Chris Davis' OPS can vary between .650 and 1.100. But the worst player in MLB in a slump still won't usually OPS much below .500 over any reasonable period, and peak out at .650. I'd almost guarantee that the best players would be the most inconsistent, at least over a significant sampling of time to weed out the occasional Jimmy Paredes.

Another thought: standard deviation generally increases with the size of the thing you're measuring. Your standard deviation on random numbers will be higher on 0-50 than random numbers picked between 0-25. So you'd expect the most inconsistent players to be the ones with the highest performance levels. Chris Davis' OPS can vary between .650 and 1.100. But the worst player in MLB in a slump still won't usually OPS much below .500 over any reasonable period, and peak out at .650. I'd almost guarantee that the best players would be the most inconsistent, at least over a significant sampling of time to weed out the occasional Jimmy Paredes.

Just for fun, I looked at the three players above and below Chris Davis on the OPS list, and calculated the difference between their best and worst months and average monthly deviation from their season OPS:

Josh Donaldson (.939 OPS): .412, .101

Nelson Cruz (.936 OPS): .477, .173

Edwin Encarnacion (.929 OPS): .769, .180

Chris Davis (.923 OPS): .456, .113

David Ortiz (.913 OPS): .545, .156

Jose Bautista (.913 OPS): .286, .112

Anthony Rizzo (.899 OPS): .264, .067

So, Davis was more or less middle of the pack among that group in terms of the admittedly crude "streakiness" measures I used.

I know this won't mean much coming from my brain, but about two years ago Brian Kenny had some guy on from... I wanna say fangraphs, who was doing some studies on volatility. He said that for pitchers, more volatile would be better, just as drungo stated. But for hitters, the opposite is true. So take that for what it's worth.

I know this won't mean much coming from my brain, but about two years ago Brian Kenny had some guy on from... I wanna say fangraphs, who was doing some studies on volatility. He said that for pitchers, more volatile would be better, just as drungo stated. But for hitters, the opposite is true. So take that for what it's worth.

That does make some sense.

Is there any evidence to suggest that streaky hitters like Chris Davis any more than non-streaky hitters do? :wedge:

Is there any evidence to suggest that streaky hitters like Chris Davis any more than non-streaky hitters do? :wedge:

Missing a crucial verb!

Not much to add, but this is an interesting conversation. I'd assume the streaky player would be slightly more ideal.