Graphic Value: Offense

This off season, one of the things I've got planned is a break down of the components of each aspect of the game as they relate to the Tigers players. My plan is separate as many components apart and graph them to make them easier to understand. I've never had a problem looking at a set of numbers and picking out what part of that player's game drives most of their value. This will be a series I'll be calling Graphic Value because, well, I'm not that creative when it comes to names.

First up, we've got offense. My offensive statistic of choice is Weighted On Base Average (wOBA), as created by Tom Tango in The Book. You can find the formula here. What's great about this, is that it's based in Linear Weights which has proven to be the most accurate way to measure offense. It is scaled to mirror On Base Percentage (OBP), so .335 is right around average, .360 is good, .380 is great and .400+ is elite level offensive ability. wOBA properly weights the ability to get on base with the ability to hit for power.

After some help from Steve over at STL Sports Scene, where I first saw these graphs and got the idea from, I've got a stacked bar graph displaying the value of each component as they relate to each player. Click the graph to enlarge.

Here we see all of the components that go into the wOBA formula and how much each player gets out of their skill set. These are only players with 100+ plate appearances with the Tigers, except for Alex Avila who had just 72 PA's. I knew someone would probably inquire about him so I've included him despite the incredibly small sample, of which, you can't fully conclude anything.

wOBA rewards the home run as the best hit (and event) that a hitter can have. Therefore, they're mostly the biggest component of a players offensive value.

Some quick hits about the graph:

-Look how big the 1B (singles) bar is in Magglio Ordonez's graph is. He was a singles machine. Unfortunately, his HR section is just about as big as Placido Polanco's.

-Alex Avila's bar is just 72 PA's, but his incredibly limited sampling showed a well-rounded offensive game. However, I don't expect that to be his true talent level at all.

-In case you didn't notice, these are all summed and the top of each bar is the total wOBA of each player. Aubrey Huff is in last, and that is only his wOBA from his time in Detroit. To be positive about a trade I did not like, Huff walked at a decent clip. So, there's that.

-There are some players that provided negative value with the stolen base, however these were very, very small. They were Raburn, Thames, Guillen, Inge and Santiago. The most negative value from the stolen base of the players I've looked at was Guillen at -0.004. To say it's a tiny impact is an understatement. The best, by the way, was Josh Anderson at 0.012.