Oh's homers

We've got part of the breakdown up now. It can be found at http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/ohshrs.htm

Jball Jim

I really enjoyed that article, Jim, and I agree that Oh deserves a plaque in Cooperstown.

Speaking of Giants' sluggers, there have been many Hideki Matsui discussions on this forum -- all over the Internet, really. If he decides to cross the Pacific, can you project how many homers Godzilla should hit per year in the Majors using a similiar method?

Thanks. In order to do Hideki Matsui's future stats, I'd not only have to project his past data, but would have to then use something like the Brock2 system to project it into the future. In order to do that, I'd have to project his entire batting line. The work in doing only Oh's homers was enough, so I won't be doing that. Even to do Matsui's past homers would face serious difficulty.

The biggest problem is that home/road data are not generally available, even (according to my compatriot Rob Fitts) if one actually goes to the Japanese Hall of Fame. Thus you'd cut out one key element of the analysis.

Another concern is how many matched at bats I'd get on Matsui's much shorter career. I think that one would be OK, but I'd sure want to watch that there wasn't somebody who seriously skewed the data. If I could get the data, or at least some data on home runs in Giant home games or in the Tokyo Dome as opposed to other sites (with at bats in the latter case), I'd be able to do a reasonable job of it. Given the apparent difficulties in getting it, I'd say I probably won't even try to do it unless he definitely decides to come over, and then I'd see if it was practical to accomplish. You could get probably get a decent estimate of his season by season totals without the home/road data using my methods, but I can't be sure that there isn't some home park effect that would cause serious problems.

Also, if he comes to the States, I'd like to model his numbers to the park he's going to, since I'm putting myself on record in a way that will be compared to the actual results. A generic neutral park assessment could be way low in Enron, Coors, Fenway, or Wrigley, but might be high in other more pitcher friendly parks.

At this point, I guess the answer is there won't be such an article before the end of the season, at the very earliest, and then only if he comes over and I can get what I need to make it work.

I really enjoyed that article, Jim, and I agree that Oh deserves a plaque in Cooperstown.

Before someone accuses me of being a hypocrite, I need to rescind that comment. All of the Oh research is excellent and thoroughly enjoyable. However, after doing some research of my own, I no longer believe that Oh should be inducted into Cooperstown. My reasoning can be found here.

I disagree. Oh would only have hit 533 home runs in the U.S. He did not do bad against American players and with time, he would have adapted and overcome them as he did in Japan. Noting he would not have hit 40 homers once in the U.S. is funny too. This guy hit homers consistently year after year, not in a 15 year spurt or with major fluctuations. He simply hit the ball, and a lot more often than anyone else has, over the wall. 10.8 at bats. No one was close. He would have easily hit 5 to 10 more home runs a year than suggested. He had 25% more home runs than second place. That says a lot.