Talkin' about the undervalued base on balls, with Bill James (cont.)

Joe: The funny part is that from the first day of little league, coaches will tell you that "A walk is as good as a hit." Few grownups in the game seem to believe it, but it's absolutely true. This year teams that walk zero or one time win about one third of their games. If they walk two to three times it jumps up to about 45 percent. If they walk four or five times they win about 57 percent of the time. And if they walk six times or more their winning percentage is .646.

Those numbers have stayed remarkably consistent for decades now. Everyone seems to understand how devastating walks are for the pitcher. I remember at Riverfront Stadium they would put up this cheesy looking ghost on the scoreboard when a Reds player would walk and the words "Walks will haunt!" But, for many, those same feelings don't seem to transfer over to the offensive side of the game.

My theory: I think this goes back to the fact that people see baseball (more than any other sport) through their own playing experiences. And when you're young, walks ARE mostly a reflection on the pitcher. The pitcher can't throw strikes. The pitcher is afraid of a hitter. And so on. But that's not how it works in the big leagues.

One more Big Red Machine story to make the point: Joe Morgan led the league in walks four times in his career and walked 100 times every year but one from 1969 through '77. He did this because he was a great hitter, but several times a year, every year, he would either have to answer a dumb question or a read an article suggesting that the reason he walked so much was because he was only 5-foot-7. This had pretty much nothing to do with it, but that's how we think about baseball: Hey shorter guy, smaller strike zone, that must be why he walks a lot.

(For the record: There have been 28 every-day players since World War II who were 5-foot-8 or less. Joe Morgan has eight of the top nine walk years among those players).

Bill: Back when I was a young wannabe sportswriter I sat in the press box for a game: Aug. 12, 1989. The Royals and Orioles are tied 3-3 going into the bottom of the ninth. ... It's first-and-third, two out, George Brett at the plate. Scottie McGregor is on the mound. McGregor and Brett were high school teammates, but McGregor was the kind of pitcher who gave Brett fits -- a lefty who throws off-speed stuff; Brett in his career was 12 for 54 against McGregor, .222, and he didn't hit anybody LIKE that very well.

But McGregor has pitched 8 2/3 innings and is weakening, so Earl Weaver replaces McGregor with Tim Stoddard, and Brett is hitting around .400 (I think he was still over .400 at the time) ... so Weaver intentionally walks Brett, bringing up Amos Otis with the bases loaded.

Stoddard's first two pitches miss, and it's 2-0. From that moment on, Amos Otis was GOING to walk. A walk wins the game; Stoddard has poor control, Amos is up 2-0. ... he's taking a walk. A long, long battle ensues, Otis fouling off pitch after pitch, the crowd roaring on every pitch. Must have been 9, 10 pitches. It's what makes baseball, baseball. Finally Stoddard misses outside, and the Royals win the game.

So I'm driving home, and, being a young wannabe sportswriter, I'm think how I would write up this classic confrontation ... should I start off by second-guessing Weaver's strategy in making the game rest on Stoddard-vs.-Otis, in a situation in which a walk will win the game, rather than McGregor vs. Brett in a situation in which it won't? Or should I talk about the heart-pounding drama of it?

So you know what the lead was in the morning paper? "Amos Otis won a game for the Royals for the Royals Tuesday night by doing nothing more than the 34,913 fans who paid to watch the contest." WHAT? WHAT?

But you see ... that's the way people were trained to think in that era; the walk was something the pitcher did; the batter just happened to be standing there when he did it. And saying that batters walk because pitchers are afraid of their power is a vestige of that belief.

Joe: One of the most amazing things I've ever seen on a baseball field began with one of those walks. That was Carlos Beltran back in 2003, he was also playing for the Royals, and he was facing Arizona's Matt Mantei, who was throwing serious gas that day. The Royals trailed by one and Beltran fully realized that there was no way he was going to actually get a hit off Mantei, but he had to do something. So he just fouled off pitch after pitch after pitch. And finally, he got the walk, stole second, stole third and scored the tying run on a fly ball that was so shallow the second baseman could have caught it.

Funny that both walk stories involve Kansas City Royals, considering that's a team that doesn't walk. Last year the Royals had 30 games in which they did not walk, by far the most in baseball. This year, during their recent 5-20 slide, they had five games in which they didn't walk.

Bill: In reality, the batter has more to do with when a walk occurs than does the pitcher. Walks are a very complex phenomenon -- much more complex than power. They involve ...

1) Selectivity or patience. ...that is, trying to get the pitch you want.

2) The desire to get on base by walk.

3) Fear of the hitter.

4) Batting eye (ability to read the pitch).

5) (Maybe the largest element) Bat control.

Anybody that walks a lot has to be able to foul off pitches. You look at any of our guys (Red Sox) who walk a lot. ... Jason Bay, Kevin Youkilis, J.D. Drew, Dustin Pedroia ... they foul off a huge number of pitches. They're not trying to walk (except Pedroia sometimes); they're trying to force the pitcher to throw them something they can hit.

Different hitters walk for different reasons, which is unlike power, or speed, or even hitting for average. Oakland's Jack Cust walks because he has a very small plane where he can hit the ball 400 feet, and if the ball isn't on that plane, he's not interested. Jason Bay walks because he's not going to chase a pitch down and you can't get a fastball by him up; if it's too high to hit he'll foul it off. Kansas City's Coco Crisp walks because he is trying to get on base any way he can.

Joe: I think this is why one of my favorite players in baseball is Washington's Adam Dunn. Every year he hits you 40 home runs (exactly 40 -- he hit 40 homers in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008) and every year he walks about 110 times (he might walk 109 times this year since an old umpire friend of mine, Tim Timmons, called him out on ball four in the Randy Johnson 300th-victory game). Basically, that's what he offers. Power and walks.

Dunn gets knocked a lot -- for his low batting average, for not being aggressive enough, for not being a good defensive player, for not loving baseball enough or whatever. But to me he knows exactly what he can do, he plays to his strengths and he makes pitchers throw him strikes. That might be baseball's rarest skill. People just don't appreciate it enough.