(Don't) make outs

Correlation between win%
and opponents' OBP

Don't get me wrong, I loved Moneyball as a book and (slightly less so, but still to a good amount) a movie. But as an actual concept, it's something that I (surprisingly) haven't given an incredible amount of thought to. The main premise of Moneyball was to not make outs. Get on base, and don't make outs. Sure, the execution of that particular notion, while at the same time keeping budget low, was much more complicated. But go back to that simple idea - get on base, and don't make outs. This is entirely viewed at from a hitting perspective, but that's only half the game. To win, you need to get the other team to make 27 outs, and the book doesn't really go into that too much. Sure, the 2002 Oakland Athletics had the 7th-highest on-base percentage in the MLB, but their pitching staff had the 8th-lowest OBP against them, largely in part because the A's gave up the 7th-fewest walks in the MLB. So there's definitely something, right off the bat (no pun intended), to keeping opposing batters off the basepaths. In fact, the correlation between team winning percentage and opponents' on-base percentage has been generally strong since 2002 (see table). In fact, a little more than 38% of the variation in won-loss records can be attributed to this statistic, this opponents' on-base percentage. So it's a fairly telling statistic as far as this goes - the magic number as far as percent variation is concerned is 50%, so it's at least close to a statistically significant correlation. All this post is right here is a little reminder that there is a little more to Moneyball (the concept, not the book) than people may think. Scoring runs is only half the battle - you still have to limit the other team to scoring, as well.