Team Contact Percentage

A request was made at brewerfan.net to look at teams' contact rate to runs scored. I had looked at this at the individual level a few months a ago but I'm going to use a different definition of "contact percentage" this time. Last time I looked BIP per PA, which unfairly penalizes players/teams that walk a alot. Instead, I'll treat walks, HBP and SH as a neutral even and use this for contact percent:

CONT% = (AB + SF - K)/AB

For 2006 so far:

TEAM           CONT%   R/GM
Chicago Sox    82.5%   5.66
NY Yankees     83.2%   5.56
Cleveland      81.0%   5.52
Boston         83.0%   5.51
Toronto        85.7%   5.39
Atlanta        79.4%   5.39
NY Mets        81.4%   5.37
Detroit        80.2%   5.25
St. Louis      85.3%   5.01
Minnesota      85.4%   5.01
Cincinnati     80.1%   5.01
Texas          81.9%   4.96
Arizona        84.4%   4.95
Philadelphia   79.4%   4.95
LA Dodgers     83.9%   4.94
Baltimore      85.4%   4.83
Seattle        84.2%   4.79
LA Angels      84.2%   4.75
San Francisco  85.2%   4.75
Colorado       81.1%   4.74
Milwaukee      78.3%   4.72
Florida        77.4%   4.64
San Diego      81.0%   4.61
Washington     81.0%   4.60
Pittsburgh     80.6%   4.55
Kansas City    82.4%   4.52
Houston        81.7%   4.52
Oakland        82.5%   4.45
Tampa Bay      80.5%   4.33
Chicago Cubs   84.7%   4.12

So, while the Brewers have the second worst CONT%, there are 9 teams that scored less runs per game than them (including the team with the worst contact percentage).

To get a clearer picture of how contact percentage might affect runs scored, let's see how well they coorelate to each other:



There's simply no simple, statistical connection between the two. Of course that just tells us two things that we already know:

1. Most players who strikeout a lot make up for it in other ways. If they didn't they wouldn't be in the league.

2. In the long run, a strikeout realy isn't much worse than any other kind of out.