Applying “Three True Outcomes” to a Team

Back in August 2000, Baseball Prospectus’ Rany Jazayerli wrote an article on introduced the sabermetric world to the concept of the “Three True Outcomes” (TTO)*.  TTO was the premise that there are three events in a plate appearance that cannot be impacted by the fielders, namely the strikeout, walk and homerun.

(* – After I initially published this, it was brought to my attention (and confirmed by my own Googling) that the concept had actually been bandied about on the usenet bulletin boards as early as the mid-1990s.)

Jazayerli colorfully writes of TTO:

Together, the Three True Outcomes distill the game to its essence, the battle of pitcher against hitter, free from the distractions of the defense, the distortion of foot speed or the corruption of managerial tactics like the bunt and his wicked brother, the hit-and-run.

He then went on to list some of the great TTO player seasons in history.  Players like Rob Deer, Russell Branyan and Gorman Thomas are feted for their unique abilities to either strike out, walk or go yard, pretty much to the exclusion of anything else.

I wondered what teams might best emulate a TTO attitude.  So I culled batting stats for each club from 1973-2011 (the DH era), and charted them against the league average TTO rate in each season.  (For reference sake, we are using the formula: TTO% = TTO/PA = (HR+BB+SO)/PA).

Let’s start by getting some overall context for TTO rates across the Majors.  The graph below clearly shows a rising TTO rate (check the trendline), with some blips along the way.  From its nadir at around 22% in the early 1980s, we finished 2011 around 29%.

With that as our foundation, let’s check which teams perfected their TTO skills.  In our first chart, we’re listing those teams that had at least one-third of their total plate appearances end as a TTO:

The 2010 Diamondbacks totally lapped the field in this regard, thanks in large part to a Major League record for strikeouts.  Nearly one out of every four plate appearances (24.7%) ended with the batter walking back to the dugout (the next highest mark was 22.8% by the 2001 Brewers.) Mark Reynolds eclipsed 200 Ks for the third straight year (211), and four teammates amassed 145 or more whiffs.  The D’backs finished with a .401 winning percentage, barely higher than their TTO percentage.

The only pre-2000 team on that list was the ’94 Tigers, who despite playing only 115 games in that abbreviated campaign had three guys hurdle the century mark in Ks, while hitting 161 homers (1.4 per game, 3.5% of all plate appearances).  They ended the season with a .461 winning percentage.

Now let’s flip the chart, and look at the lowest team TTO rates in the DH era:

The 1981 Texas Rangers were 12th in the AL in homers, 12th in walks and 13th in strikeouts.  Even accounting for the abbreviated season, its amazing that Buddy Bell led the squad in homers with all of 10.  The team only went yard 49 times in 105 games.  So they seemingly didn’t swing for the fences, which means they were less likely to get punched out, as they only K’ed in 10.0% of their PAs that season, the sixth-lowest figure since 1973.  Despite all of this, they ended the year with a .543 winning percentage.

Speaking of low K rates, the 1980 version of the Rangers have the lowest mark of all in the DH era (9.3% of all PAs).  That group had decent power throughout their lineup though, with six different players with at least ten homers.  Unlike their ’81 version, these guys finished under .500, at .472.

The next logical step is to see which teams had the highest TTO rate, relative to the overall percentage in MLB in that same year (YRTTO):

The 1991 Tigers featured two players with OPS+ of at least 140 (Mickey Tettleton and Lou Whitaker), and another with a mark of 133 (Cecil Fielder).  They also had one of the all-time great individual TTO seasons, Rob Deer’s .179 with 25 HRs, 175 Ks and 89 BBs in 539 plate appearances.  Fielder, Tettleton, Deer and Travis Fryman all struck out at least 131 times, and five players drew at least 79 walks.

1992′s Tiger squad was virtually the same in terms of who drove the TTO bus, while in ’93 Tony Phillips chipped in a bit more, surpassing 100 Ks and walks (as did Tettleton). 1994 saw Phillips and Tettleton nearly repeat the 100K/100BB feat, despite the shortened season.

Here is the flip side, the teams that had the lowest TTO rate, relative to the overall percentage in MLB in that same year (YRTTO):

The 2002 World Series champion Anaheim Angels head the list.  They finished tenth in the AL in homers, 11th in walks and dead last in strikeouts.  Troy Glaus was the only batter to walk more than 80 times or strike out more than 105 times.

The 1975 St. Louis Cardinals finished 11th in the NL in homers and last in both walks and strikeouts.  No one walked more than 63 times or struck out more than 64 times. Despite leading the NL in team batting average, they finished a mere 82-80 mainly due to a middling rotation.

The 2007 Seattle Mariners finished next to last in the AL in strikeouts despite Richie Sexson, Adrian Beltre and Jose Guillen all going over the 100 K mark.  They were dead last in walks with only one player drawing more than 60.  The 2008 version went 61-101 (after going 85-77 the prior year), but the TTO issues were the same.  They were 12th in the league in homers, 13th in walks and last in strikeouts.  Raul Ibanez led the team in walks (64) and strikeouts (110) and was second in homers (23).

As you can probably tell, a team’s TTO rate has very little impact on their overall record.  There have been winning and losing teams on both sides of the spectrum, as show in the graph below:

Finally, as a little bit of a side analysis, here is the correlation of each of the TTO attributes with the team’s winning percentage.  While the individual attributes are once again scattered all over the won/loss spectrum, there are definite trends apparent.  Walking more and striking out less are not surprisingly good for your chances of winning, while a team’s homer rate is of lesser importance.