Ed. Why did nobody inform me of FJM’s glorious return today at Deadspin? Especially before I wrote some poor imitation of an FJM article that was actually already written 10 hours earlier? Please return to your regular programming while I continue punching my groin in between reading new FJM. FML.

Well, it’s been way too long since we’ve made a post here. We’ve got a couple posts half finished that we’ve picked at and intended to finish up today, but then this came across the desk and jumped to the front of the queue. Without further ado, we present by way of Bleacher Report and J Panchina, baseball’s “10 Scrappiest Players“.

They may or may not play every day, but every time they step on the field you’re ensured that they’re giving it their all.

Whether it’s diving for out of reach grounders, running hard to first every time they make contact, or fearlessly tracking down flies headed straight toward the fence, these players make the most out of their time on the field.

Scrappiness and grittiness are pretty much interchangeable as far as baseball’s concerned, so we’re going to assume that J Panchina merely forgot about GRIT3, flipped a coin, and went with “scrappiest” in lieu of “grittiest.” Good to have you on board, J!

Although grinders usually go somewhat unnoticed not being as flashy and naturally talented as some of their teammates, these guys will always have a place in my heart. I love seeing players who maybe weren’t given the best physical attributes and natural talent (hey we weren’t all born with Mauer’s swing) who make the roster due to their sheer guts, determination, and effort.

Hear hear!

I also love watching players who aren’t very good at baseball. When I watch baseball, I pay attention to the worst player on the field. That way, I get to live vicariously through them and imagine what it’s like to be a real Major Leaguer.

Earlier this year, I saw the Twins play the Royals and had the complete and utter privilege to watch Nick Punto start at shortstop. Man, that guy is gritty! It was so great to watch him stumble around the baseball field on his undersized peg legs. He ended up going 0-4 (just like I would have done if nobody ever had the “good sense” to shatter my boyhood dreams at an early age).

After the game, I followed him back to the team’s hotel and watched him unload all of the Twins’ equipment from the bus.

What a life! He gets to handle Joe Mauer’s catching gear!

Later on, he sat in his hotel room and played Nintendo 64. He’s such a regular guy. Playing N64 is exactly what I would’ve been doing if I hadn’t been watching Nick Punto from a hotel fire escape at that moment.

Where were we?

So, here’s a list honoring the scrappiest players in the game.

Right. Let’s do it!

No. 10 Eric Byrnes, Diamondbacks

Byrnes can be found diving all around Chase Field, making spectacular plays. He’s fearless in the outfield, runs whenever he can, and slides hard every time there’s a close play.

Eric Byrnes gets a lot of acclaim as a gritty hustler extraordinaire. SportsCenter helps his cause because he falls around the outfield and makes shoestring catches. Baseball Reference even lists his nicknames as “Crash Test Dummy and Pigpen”.

Eric Byrnes is in the midst of his grittiest season since 2005. But this is because he’s never really been that gritty — at least not from an offensive standpoint. He hits for too much power and strikes out too often to really be gritty. And, he’s been hurt the last two years which is definitely not gritty. Gritty players play through injuries; they don’t succumb to them.

Eric Byrnes has shown time and time again, that he is talented enough to hit for extra bases. That’s not gritty.

No. 9 Nate McLouth, Braves

McLouth is always giving it his all. Even when he was on the Pirate’s he never seemed to care too much about the standings, he only cared about making the most of every at bat.

Okay, I have to take issue here again. Nate McLouth is also not gritty. Like Eric Byrnes, he gets mislabeled as “gritty” because he hustles. But a player who hustles successfully is simply talented. Look at McLouth’s stolen base numbers — the guy is 74 for 83 over his career. Last year, his GRIT3 was -15.69 and he’s shied away from stepping in to as many pitches this year.

Sorry, J, but you’re 0 for 2.

No. 8 Augie Ojeda, Diamondbacks

Listed at 5’8’’ 165, this little guy knows how to play the game. The scrappy shortstop can be seen hustling down the line on every ball he makes contact with. You gotta respect a player like that.

All right, now we’re talking!

This little bastard is most definitely gritty. He put up a very solid 8.05 GRIT3 last year and is above 5 on the current season. He’s a bit of a free swinger seeing only 3.72 pitches per PA over his career, but his short stature allows him to draw some walks. And his tiny frame keeps him from hitting for much power — only 7 home runs over his 1,115 lifetime PAs and a slugging average of .314.

Ojeda’s probably not someone I’d put in the top 10, but at least we’re headed in the right direction.

No. 7 Aaron Rowand, Giants

His face first catch into the fence was enough to get him on this list. Always putting the game first, and his body second, he’s as scrappy as outfielders come.

Like Ojeda, Rowand’s probably not someone I’d put in the top 10, but he deserves consideration. Since his coming out party with the White Sox’ championship team in 2005, Rowand has notched positive GRIT3 in each season no matter where he’s gone. His 2005 total of 17.13 was good for 7th in the Majors and he posted 8.56, 3.80, and 7.08 over the next three seasons with the Phillies and Giants. Rowand seems to get off on pain whether it’s at the plate, in the field, and probably off the field. As such, he’s consistently been among the league leaders in HBP.

Gritty? Oh yeah. Top 10 Gritty? Maybe.

No. 6 Reed Johnson, Cubs

Reed is one of my favorite players because he’s such a grinder. He struggles to find an outfield spot on the Cubs, but he really gives maximum effort when he’s on the field. He bunts, runs, and dives for balls. This all out effort has taken a toll on his body, and he’s had a few stints on the DL this season, but hopefully he’ll be healthy next year, and the Cubs can use him next season to bring a spark into their line up.

No arguments here. The man wears a merkin on his chin and was in gymnastics as a child. If you want to live a non-gritty life that’s free from childhood ridicule, participating in gymnastics as a kid is just about the worst way to go about making it happen.

His fearless catches are well-known, but he puts up very good GRIT3 numbers by showing the same fearlessness at the plate. Coming in to this season, Johnson was plunked once every 29.9 plate appearances. Among players to debut after 1900, only 6 have been plunked at a faster rate:

Player	HBP	PA	Rate
F.P. Santangelo	83	2073	24.98
Ron Hunt	243	6158	25.34
Craig Wilson	90	2311	25.68
Carlos Quentin	39	1023	26.23
Sal Fasano	47	1245	26.49
Jason LaRue	102	2928	28.71
Reed Johnson	92	2676	29.09
Fernando Vina	157	4742	30.20
Charlie Babb	45	1376	30.58
Bert Daniels	72	2236	31.06

No. 5 David Eckstein, Padres

Back in his prime, the 2006 Wold Series MVP was the epitome of a scrappy player. The 5’7’’ second baseman-shortstop continues to make the most of his limited ability and physic. He’ll do anything to get on base, and he’s not afraid to lean into a pitch if necessary.

Lil’ Davey’s #1 in my book. He should be #1 in your book, too. Unless we’re reading different books. I’m reading George Will’s Bunts; is that what you’re reading?

Whatever. Eckstein’s number one. End of story. I don’t care if he sucks at the hard sciences.

No. 4 Chone Figgins, Angels

The 5’8’’ utility man will play whenever and where ever he can. He’s extremely scrappy and truly makes the most out of his limited physique.

I’m not going to argue this. J’s clearly done his homework. After coming on strong with a 2008 GRITTY earning 8.46, Figgins has continued to hang near the top of the GRIT3 leaderboard in 2009. He’s currently sitting at 8.11 which puts him at 17th in the Majors.

What’s his secret? A complete and total revulsion to the idea of hitting for extra-bases. His career ISO of .096 and OMS of -0.025 prove that Chone knows that, to be truly gritty, you should earn each and every base one at a time.

No. 3 Brett Gardner, Yankees

It’s got to be tough when you’re on arguably the most talented team in baseball, full of sluggers, and you’ve got to prove yourself with your wheels and defense. That is just what Gardner is doing. Every day he’s playing he’s legging out hits, laying down bunts, and improving the team.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the author is being victimized by the cognitive bias known as the “Contrast effect“. With GRIT3 totals of 0.43 and 0.68 during 2008 and 2009 respectively, Gardner is barely above average in terms of his grittiness.

Gardner’s probably viewed as being “very gritty” for two reasons. First, nobody else on the Yankees is gritty. Only Jose Molina (0.79) has a higher GRIT3 during this year for New York. Combine that with the fact that New York is neck-and-neck with Texas for the least grittiest of all teams, and Gardner comes across as gritty. This unwarranted praise is likely multiplied by the extensive media coverage which the Yankees receive.

If you assert that Mark Teixeira is gritty frequently enough, it will eventually become gospel. Mark Teixeira isn’t gritty, and neither is Brett Gardner.

No. 2 Shane Victorino, Phillies

This guy is amazing. He was an integral player on last year’s World Championship Phillies team. This guy does it all; he sprints down the line, he takes great routes, hustles in the outfield, and can lay down a bunt. If you want a championship team, you need at least one player like Victorino on the roster.

You’re totally right. Shane Victorino runs well. And he can bunt. That makes him invaluable. And gritty!

Seriously, Victorino’s gritty. He’s far from being the second grittiest, but at this point I think it’s apparent that J’s not ordering these correctly.

NEEEEEEXT

No. 1 Dustin Pedroia, Red Sox

Dustin Pedroia is the definition of a grinder. The little second baseman does whatever he can to improve the team, and he’s the reason for much of the Sox’s success over the last few years. He certainly brings a fire to the lineup, and invigorates his teammates.

I’m a bit conflicted here. In 2007, Pedroia put up a healthy GRIT3 of 8.31 on his way to winning the AL ROY on Boston’s championship squad. That was solid enough to land him 18th place in the Majors despite seeing less action than many of those ahead of him. However, last year, Pedroia’s grittiness took a nosedive to -3.01 — 904th out of 1026 players. Pedroia’s not the grittiest player in the Majors.

Whether or not he merits consideration for a top 10 list depends on which is the real Dustin Pedroia.

That’s all for this week. Make sure to check back in a few for some more PDG and our next Hall of GRIT induction.

On this week’s Public Display of GRIT, we check out this post that some poor guy at Crabapple made about the failings of the 2009 Mets. Considering the Mets’ season, it’s a bit shocking that the post is so short. But Pseubermetrics was born out of an abusive relationship with the Cubs, so we can empathize with the writer’s plight. Your club fields the best group of players that $140 million can buy (or something close to it, hopefully). Then you, Joe Average Fan, invest in that group of millionaires.

You invest your hopes. You invest your dreams. You invest your $5 hot dog habit.

And then, what do those good-for-nothings do in return? They piss it all away. Lose two of three to a bunch of bums from some third world country that make a fraction of what your guys make. It’s an unhealthy relationship dynamic, but what are you going to do? These are the Mets. You can’t outsource the Mets!

We digress from that digression.

Each week we send out the Pseubermetrics web crawler. He’s a cute little guy that looks for “grit.” Well, we sent him out earlier this week and he comes waddling up to the door with this Crabapple post in his mouth. He dropped it on our doorstep like a present. Sometimes he thinks he’s people. It’s adorable. What got his attention?

Hitters…ugh. They need a new 1st baseman, a new catcher, a new left fielder, and maybe even trade Carlos Beltran. The Mets have always worked best with grit. Beltran has no grit. Reyes has grit. Can’t wait for that guy to return to form next season.

Well, the writer is technically correct in that the Mets have very little grit this year. As of August 21st, the Mets had a team GRIT3 total of 0.82. However, 0.82 is actually a pretty sizable amount as far as team GRIT3 totals go. So sizable, in fact, that the Mets are actually third at present.

Regarding Reyes and Beltran, Crabapple has the basic ontology correct, but they forget that GRIT3 can also be negative. Consequently, Beltran doesn’t have “no grit.” He has negative grit. Per the Ongoing Player Totals table, Beltran is the most non-gritty player on the team this year with a GRIT3 of -7.83. A cursory glance at the same table shows that Reyes only “has grit” when compared relative to Beltran’s negative grit. Since going down with injury in May, Reyes has hovered right around 0 for a good part of this season, finding himself with a GRIT3 of -0.44 as of our latest calculation.

So, who does have grit?

For starters, the loss of Reyes provided the Mets with a 2009 NL All-Gritter at shortstop in Alex Cora. He’s sporting a very solid 6.16 as of August 21st. On the flipside of the keystone, Luis Castillo (5.17) has enjoyed a very gritty season in his own right and his pairing with Cora gives the Mets one of the grittier double-play duos in all of baseball.

When you throw in Fernando Tatis (2.96), Daniel Murphy (.85), and Brian Schneider (.59) the Mets — as they did as recently as August 11 — can field an infield entirely of plus-gritty players.

As for the assertion that the Mets “always worked best with grit,” well we checked that out as well. If “worked best” is meant to be interpreted as “won a lot of baseball games”, then the evidence isn’t there to support the conclusion. The Mets haven’t always worked best with grit. In fact, they’ve worked pretty damn awfully when they’ve had grit. Data?

Here’s a table of every Mets season since 1962

As you can see, the more successful years have almost exclusively occurred when the Mets have been non-gritty. This table of summary statistics best illustrates the point.

GRIT3 Range	Seasons	Wins	Losses	Win%
Below -10	29	2404	2214	.521
Between -10 and 10	10	672	891	.430
Above 10	8	509	784	.394

During “gritty” seasons, the Mets would have averaged a record of 64-98 over 162 games. Even during seasons when their grittiness ran from moderately gritty to moderately non-gritty, the Mets didn’t fare much better, averaging a record of 70-92. However, in the years when the Mets showed signs of serious non-grittiness, they flashed an average record of 84-78. If you were to drill down and divide the seasons into quartiles, you’d find an even more discernible pattern as the least gritty seasons intersect with some of the most successful. And before you go and argue that the 1969 Miracle Mets won a World Series in spite of their grittiness, keep in mind that that team wasn’t winning games thanks to its high-powered offense. A bigger portion of that team’s success was due to its lights-out pitching staff.

The lesson here? Grittiness doesn’t pay. At least not in terms of baseball success. For that, you’d be better served getting some honest to goodness talent. Or pitching.

If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that we went dark for about a week. No posts. No updates. Nada. And while this furlough was unfortunate, it’s not without several good reasons. Lots of changes are underway here. Here’s a list of them.

First, the home office was moved from the sabermetric hotbed of Iowa City to Madison, Wisconsin. While Iowa City was home to Sean Forman (baseballreference) and Dan Brooks (Brooks Baseball PitchFX tool) among others, it was time to venture out in to the brutal winter abyss of the north for an intense Rocky IV-esque training montage. Actually, this move is intended to reduce the costs of providing comprehensive coverage of Jason Kendall. Actually, that’s a lie too. Whatever the reason, transporting the GRIT mainframes, slide rules, and laptop baseball simulators in to Wisconsin came with the unfortunate side effect of preventing our staff from providing you, our reader, with the gritty updates you know and love. We got drunk on beer, ate a bunch of deep-fried cheese curds, and got lazy for a week. For that, we’re sorry. No we’re not. Those curds were delicious. But, we’re back and more Wisconsinny than ever. To prove it: “Fuck Brett.” That’s Wisconsinese for “hello again, good sir.”

But, like we said, there are lots of changes underway. With all of the changes, we’ve taken the opportunity to set up a satellite office in Kansas City. What, you might be asking, is the purpose of a satellite office in Kansas City? To research pitching, obviously. It also provides a solid hookup for delicious barbecue sauce to go along with our new stockade of cheese and beer. We’re venturing forward in an effort to analyze pitching as well as hitting. How awesome is that? If hunger was a game of Risk, we just surged outward from Australia and ran roughshod across Asia. Yes, that’s right. The establishment of the Grit Baseball Pitching Research Arm will hopefully provide Grit Baseball’s readership with the absolute best quality of baseball analysis. We’ve hired a director for this satellite office. We’re not ready to reveal his identity, but you’ll be hearing from him in the near future.

And while we’re on the subject of the Grit Baseball Pitching Research Arm. About that name. That’s also probably going to have to go. Since GRIT is exclusively concerned with offensive production, there’s little sense in throwing our pitching research under one poor fitting mantle of “Grit Baseball.” So, we’re proud to announce that, after careful deliberation, Grit Baseball is officially changing its name to “Pseübermetrics“. the gritbaseball.com domain will still work, we’re just going by a different, more awesome name.

What does Pseübermetrics mean? Well, Pseübermetrics is that valuable piece of real estate that lies at the nexus of pseudoscience, sabermetrics, and über-awesomeness. To go back to that poorly envisioned Risk analogy, Pseübermetrics is akin to the unholy trifecta of strategic Eurasian choke points: the Middle East, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.

That’s right. We’ve got those. All three of them. And we’ve got a set of cards. And, since we’re being nice, we’ll just tell you right now that we’re going to cash those cards in to fortify Ukraine for the impending European invasion.

So, hold on to your hats. And while you’re at it, update your bookmarks.

Big ups to Aaron Castellan over at Points in Case for making a truly gritty post yesterday on the state of the nation’s pastime. Aaron dutifully captured the essence of everything that’s presently wrong with the game by comparing it to the idyllic strawman baseball from days of yore — we never experienced it, but George Will said it was amazing. Head on over there to check out Aaron as he lambasts those good for nothing steroid abusers for taking shortcuts. If you’re running less than 360′ around the bases, you ain’ gritty, son! Here’s an excerpt:

The world we live in is full of quick fixes. You know what quick fixes are? They’re loser talk for cheating. We should not tolerate the use of said fixes in our national pastime, Major League Baseball. The severity of crimes these dirty, stinky cheaters perpetrated on fans and American society cannot be overstated.

It has been shown to the people time and time again that baseball has been corrupted for years. We know this from players making statements, Congressional testimony, personal stories, checks and orders for supplements. For years we have heard Bud Selig insist there is not a drug problem in baseball, only to have George Mitchell come out with a report that essentially calls him a douche, a liar, and a big, dumb nerd. We have the evidence we need. We know people have tested positive for steroids. Alex Rodriguez hits a bunch of home runs but we all know they come in a needle package, wrapped in cheater wrapping paper and topped with a bow of disrespect for the game.

We couldn’t have said it any better ourselves if we had deep-fried our keyboard in readability oil. For this, Aaron Castellan just earned himself one golden star sticker and the respect of everybody here at Grit Baseball.

This week’s Public Display of GRIT comes by way of The Onion for Selfless Jason Kendall Sacrifices Bunt, Self For Good Of Team, Advancement Of Runners. We made an effort to pull just one excerpt, but doing so would have prevented our readers from enjoying everything that this has to offer.

MILWAUKEE – In an act of selflessness not often seen amongst ego-driven American athletes, who typically look only to further their own personal agendas, hero Milwaukee Brewers player Jason Kendall placed a bunted ball back to the pitcher Tuesday with full knowledge that he himself would be eliminated from scoring contention for the duration of the contest’s fifth inning. Receiving upon his return to the dugout a mere smattering of high fives from his ignorant teammates and but one hand-clap from the staff of coaching elders, Kendall was not properly greeted as a hero responsible for the very 90-foot advancement of teammates Mat Gamel and J.J. Hardy to second and third base respectively. Due to his undying devotion to the singular cause of winning, even at the cost of his own personal downfall, Jason Kendall is the greatest player to ever play the game of baseball.

Some very valid questions from readers prompted me to take a second glance at my second version of GRIT. As I mentioned before, GRIT is a bit of a work in progress that I pick at it whenever I get some time. With the holidays granting me some freedom from responsibility, I decided to do a bit of a revision that consists of two major changes.

• The Elimination of Eligibility Requirements
• The Discontinuation of Opportunity Normalization

Now, the following article discusses these changes to earlier versions of GRIT and why they needed to happen. To reduce confusion, I’m going to differentiate between these earlier versions of GRIT, by appending version numbers (e.g. GRIT1, GRIT2, and GRIT3).

1. The Elimination of Eligibility Requirements

Under the GRIT1 formulation, I used 81 games and 100 ABs as the cut-off points for an eligible season (technically, player-season-stintÑmore on that in a bit). These requirements were used for two reasons:

A. To prevent Excel from shitting bricks.

Excel really, really, really hates running rather complex formulas across tens of thousands of rows of data. I’ve since moved everything in to Access, so keeping these thresholds in place is unnecessary. Nonetheless, I thoughtlessly carried over the eligibility requirements to GRIT2 last week.

B. To prevent pitchers from biasing the standard deviations and averages of the components.

After a little experimentation, I discovered this second concern really turned out to be unfounded. I’ll spare you an in-depth treatment of why this is so. Just take my word on it.

Right? Right.

In light of this, GRIT3 scores are now determined for every player-season-stint so long as they featured at least one (1) AB.

What’s a player-season-stint, you ask?

A player-season-stint is the period of time any given player spends during any given season with any given team (i.e. Felipe Lopez’s stint with the Nationals in 2006). This is different from a player-season, or the sum of every player-season-stint for a given player during a given season (i.e. Felipe Lopez’s 2006 season).

2. The Discontinuation of Opportunity Normalization

In the earlier formulations, I normalized plate appearances. After a bit of consideration, I realized that there’s no good reason to do this. However, the new addition of a large number of very brief player-season-stints will negatively skew the distribution of plate appearances by season stint. This, alone, is probably a good enough reason to not normalize the Opportunity values. As a result, Opportunity is now calculated by dividing Plate Appearances by 100.

The effect of these two changes makes GRIT3, bar none, the best metric for all of your grit quantification needs. They also enable some serious statistical analysis. Specifically, it allows us to answer an extremely important question.

Where’s my Lil’ Davey Eckstein? Why can’t I find him?

Many readers looked through the Top 50 Grittiest Players of 2008 and were left pondering this glaring omission. Now, a lazy gritistician might take the easy way and tell you to simply check all the customary places where David Eckstein gets misplaced (e.g. between couch cushions, behind your headboard, the back of your junk drawer, etc.) but not me. As Eckstein was the impetus for GRIT1, any grit quantification metric that doesn’t include a full accounting of his intangible contributions is certainly useless. No, no, no. Now is not the time for half-assery. I got to the bottom of the issue and came up with a solution.

With 324 at bats in 94 games during 2008, Eckstein’s player-season ostensibly met the eligibility requirements. However, Eckstein divided his time between the Blue Jays and the Diamondbacks. This gave him two separate player-season-stints for 2008, both of which fell short of meeting the 81G/100AB requirement.

Eckstein’s omission in the Top 50 of 2008 table was thus due to GRIT2’s use of player-season-stints instead of player-seasons.

So, Eckstein never even received a 2008 GRIT2 score. By removing the eligibility requirements, Eckstein’s 2008 player-season now has a GRIT2 score of 7.427. This is rather balmy compared to his career averages, but still puts him at 27th for 2008. Had he received his pre-2008 average of 609 plate appearances, he would have put up a 12.029, a solid 9th place finish.

About a year ago, I posted an article to Flotsam Media that introduced GRIT to the world of sabermetrics. GRIT had a nice night and said it was going to call the world of sabermetrics back in a few days, but it never did because it’s a good for nothing loser with a one-track mind. Flotsam is now defunct, so I’ve posted the article here for posterity’s sake. I also spent a few days in my laptop science lair working on an update. That’s what this post is about.

Just as a refresher, here’s the idea behind GRIT laid out in the original article.

Gritty players are those who are determined to win or succeed at baseball, but due to a lack of natural skill or talent, are forced to do so through the least efficient means possible. This inefficient play results in excessive dirt on their uniform.

If this hypothesis is true and dirt, determination and talent can be reasonably quantified, then it should follow that each of these three components can be plugged in to a formula to determine a given player’s grittiness (GRIT).

GRIT’s a bit of a work in progress, but I hope to continue to refine it and serve up lots of pseudo-statistics about your favorite baseball players–unless your favorite player happens to be Cesar Izturis. In that case, you’re welcome to leave.

CHANGE LOG

There are three major changes since last year’s article.

1. The Acronym

Originally, GRIT was comprised of some simple criteria that gritty players seemed to have in common. Thus, it made sense way back then that the acronym stood for ÒGeneral Requirements of Intangible TalentÓ, but not anymore. ÒGeneral Rating of Intangible TalentÓ is probably the most logical name, so I’m going with that. Sweet!

2. The Dirt Formula

I capitulated to public opinion and overhauled the Dirt component pretty substantially. Dirt changed from:

DIRT = HBP – IBB + ((CS +1)*CS))/(SB + CS + 1))

to

DIRT = HBP – IBB – (HR/2) + ((SB*-.3)+(CS*.6))

What’s the rationale for the addition of (HR/2)? You can pick one or both of two explanations.

• Home runs are a way of avoiding dirt since you get to trot around the bases like a pony. Ponies aren’t gritty. Burros? Gritty. Ponies? Not gritty.
• Because Don Baylor was ranked really high in last year’s rankings. I’m not dumb enough to call Don Baylor a pony. That said, he wasn’t gritty.

And the stolen base stuff? Well, the new statistic is a fairly rough estimate for the number of runs that a player costs his team with his (lack of) base-stealing ability. This link explains the logic behind valuating stolen bases. I didn’t feel like manually pulling the data for each individual year from BP’s website, so I used some unscientific estimates.

3. Normalization Methodology

Another change is the way the component values are normalized. I’ve switched to using averages and standard deviations grouped by year. This has the benefit of keeping the GRIT score of a given player-season consistent because it’s only dependent upon other players’ component scores from the same year.

As an example, under the old methodology, Hank Aaron’s TALENT score from 1965 could change if Ryan Howard put up an extremely high TALENT score in 2008. While the effect would be negligible, the new method ensures consistency from year to year. This modification resulted in slight changes to the GRIT scores for all player-seasons and, consequently, there has been a slight reordering of the all-time GRIT leaders.

Republished below is the original GRIT article as published by Flotsam Media. The GRIT formula has since changed, so this article is only displayed for the sake of posterity.

After Tim McCarver’s month-long David Eckstein sploogefest that was October 2006, a serious investigation in to grit was long overdue. Despite the penchant of sportswriters and broadcasters to throw the term around willy-nilly, I was hard-pressed to locate a firm definition of grit in the baseball sense. Using lots of laptop science stuff, I think I’ve at least improved the definition, which isn’t really saying much, since there wasn’t one to begin with.

First, some definitions to help us focus in on what exactly this ‘grit’ stuff is.

Grittiness

• The quality of being gritty.

Gritty

• Containing, covered with, or resembling grit.
• Showing resolution and fortitude; plucky (e.g. Biggio’s gritty 12 pitch at-bat ultimately resulted in a routine 6-3 groundout).

In keeping with those definitions I’m proposing a new composite statistic: General Requirements of Intangible Talent (GRIT). GRIT incorporates four basic components which a colleague, DH, derived from the initial research. Those four components are: dirt, determination, talent, and opportunity.

DATA

I used a modified version of the Sean Lahman dataset that includes player statistics from 1871-2006. My dataset includes player-seasons starting in 1955, the first year for which statistical data for intentional walks and GIDP was available. To chop the dataset down to a manageable size, I limited the number of eligible players to those who have at least 100 plate appearances and 81 games played. This removes pitchers from consideration, but also ensures that an adequate indication of a player’s abilities during each season is evident. Statistics for 2007 were compiled from ESPN.

The resulting dataset includes 13,249 player-seasons with 2,385 unique players represented.

HYPOTHESIS

I hold that gritty players are those who sincerely want to win or succeed at baseball (determination), but due to a lack of natural skill talent, are forced to do so through the least efficient means possible, resulting in an excessive amount of dirt on their uniform.

DH also put together some statistics to quantify each of the four basic components. After some additional tinkering, I’ve somewhat modified his statistics to those shown below:

DIRT

The most important factor in determining a player’s GRIT is his uniform. A player who is “containing, covered with, or resembling grit” will show visible signs of his grittiness on his uniform. Dirty uniforms are good; bloody uniforms are better. A true team player, the gritty player is prepared to sacrifice his body at all costs. This is one of the few ways gritty players are efficient, since they probably aren’t as well compensated as their genuinely talented teammates.

Formula:

Elements:

• HBP A hit batter produce minimal gains (one base) with relatively high costs in terms of potential bodily injury. The official colors of gritty players may well be black and blue. And red. And maybe some brown with a little purple and some yellow around the edges, depending on the severity of the bruising.
• IBB Next to home runs, intentional walks are probably the most anti-gritty statistic. Intentional walks are indicative that a player has so much talent that the pitcher would rather give him first base than risk an extra-base hit. Gritty players have to earn every base through hard-knocks, moxie, and a heaping helping of some good ol’ fashioned hustle.
• CS/SB stuff (SBINEFF) This is a statistic I call Stolen Base Inefficiency (SBINEFF). This looks for players who like to attempt lots of steals but are largely unsuccessful. Stealing bases produces minimal gains (one base) but comes with greater potential costs by raising the likelihood of being thrown out. Base-stealers (successful or not) also have dirty uniforms from sliding.

DID YOU KNOW: Harold Reynolds holds the single-season record for SBINEFF with a stunning 13.385? Harold’s 1988 season saw him tally 35 steals while being caught 29 times. He broke the record set by Will Clark (13.304) during the previous season when Mr. Eyeblack went 5 for 22 on steal attempts. WOW!

DETERMINATION

Gritty players want to succeed. They just happen to not have the talent to actually do so. This results in inefficient baseball plays. For example, Jerry Hairston is gritty. He slides head-first into first base. A true sign of someone gritty enough to want to get to first base, but shitty enough to actually get there efficiently.

Formula:

Elements:

• (Outs – SO) As short in stature as they are on talent, gritty players are determined to put the ball in play at all costs. Additionally, the ball looks gigantic to their tiny, elfin eyes and thus they’re less prone to striking out.
• (BB+SH+SF) With their microscopic strike zones, gritty players generate walks (the unintentional ones) at a superhuman rate. Sacrificing oneself is an inefficient (read: gritty) method of moving runners along.
• GIDP Double plays are produced by well-struck balls that are able to cut through the infield grass. Aside from a bottle of hard liquor (eh, Mr. Furcal?) gritty players rarely hit anything well.

DID YOU KNOW: 2007 NL MVP Jimmy Rollins produced the sixth-highest season total of outs since 1955? He probably owes a fair share of his award to a trail-blazing fellow Phillie middle-infielder who set a precedent. Juan Samuel, in 1984, produced the second highest number of outs on his way to earning a tie for 21st place in the MVP voting and 2nd in the NL ROY. HOOCHIEMAMA!

DID YOU ALSO KNOW: Pete Rose has only the second highest season total of determination. The real “Charlie Hustle” is actually a “Dick.” Dick Howser, that is. Howser’s 1964 season slightly edges out Pete’s numbers from 1974. CRACKER JACK!

WHATCHUKNOWABOUTTHISHERE: Dick Howser’s phone listing reads as “Howser, Dick.” This tidbit is worth a few laughs given the right delivery, set-up, and audience. SHABANG!

TALENT

It is my contention that “grittiness” is a subset of talent that cannot translate well statistically. Two players may very well have the same raw amount of grit, but one player may have more tangible talent, making him appear less gritty because the grit is too diluted. Gritty players are those who have the largest concentration of grit. As such, to find the grittiest players, we should look for players who have as little tangible talent as possible.

Formula:

Elements:

• XBH Extra base hits are uber-efficient ways of getting multiple bases.
• RBI Gritty players move runners over, but aren’t talented enough to drive them in.
• TB Total bases is an additional means of counting the overall ability of a player.
• (OMS*1000) OMS (OBP minus SLG) is a proprietary statistic I developed for use in GRIT. It rewards players who reach base, but deprecates players who have the talent to get extra bases.

OPPORTUNITY

In order for a player to become gritty, they first need to be on the field. In the words of Ted Williams, Nobody ever became a .400 hitter without taking the bat off their shoulder. To apply the quote more appropriately here, one might attribute it to Willams’ quasi-gritty teammate, Milt Bolling, and change it to read Nobody ever became a .250 hitter by getting splinters in their ass. We simply use plate appearances as a representation of opportunity.

NORMALIZATION

Each component has a different scale relative to the other components, so I normalized the values. This was done for each of the basic components across all player-seasons. The rationale for normalizing the data is to remove as much bias as possible from the process. As each of the four components creates a different range of values, some sort of weighting would be necessary to produce a meaningful list. Normalization automatically weights the components by determining how far a given player-season is above or below the average of all player-seasons.

Formula:

THE GRIT FORMULA

After calculating the four GRIT component values for each player-season, the resulting values are then plugged in to this equation:

GRIT = (zDirt + zDetermination – zTalent) * zOpportunity

Note: Normalization will obviously result in some players having negative zOpportunity values. A negative value would reverse the sign of the first portion of the formula and obfuscate its explanatory value. To account for this, zOpportunity values are offset so that the minimum value is 1.

RESULTS

Across 13,249 player-seasons, the data appears to have a relatively normal distribution. The data shows a range of about -50 to +50 with one outlier at -90.011 (see below), and a mean and median extremely close to 0. These numbers are promising for the prospects of GRIT as a statistic, as they suggest that the average player is neither extremely gritty, nor extremely talented. The tails in the extreme positive end of the distribution should show the grittiest players, while talented players should appear in the negative tail.

Enough talk; bring on the numbers …

The Top 50 Grittiest Seasons

Rank	Year	Player	Team	GRIT
1	1971	Ron Hunt	MON	52.06
2	2002	David Eckstein	ANA	35.96
3	1968	Ron Hunt	SFN	34.90
4	1998	Fernando Vina	MIL	33.30
5	1996	Craig Biggio	HOU	32.25
6	1997	Craig Biggio	HOU	27.96
7	2002	Fernando Vina	SLN	27.69
8	2005	Jason Kendall	OAK	27.37
9	2001	Jason Kendall	PIT	27.02
10	1955	Nellie Fox	CHA	26.70
11	1986	Don Baylor	BOS	26.44
12	2003	Jason Kendall	PIT	26.32
13	2000	Fernando Vina	SLN	26.06
14	1999	Chuck Knoblauch	NYA	25.91
15	2003	Craig Biggio	HOU	25.74
16	2001	David Eckstein	ANA	25.42
17	1957	Nellie Fox	CHA	25.31
18	1975	Felix Millan	NYN	25.19
19	1967	Cesar Tovar	MIN	25.10
20	1969	Ron Hunt	SFN	24.83
21	1968	Cesar Tovar	MIN	24.69
22	2005	Brady Clark	MIL	24.66
23	1996	Eric Young	COL	24.64
24	1998	Chuck Knoblauch	NYA	24.56
25	2001	Craig Biggio	HOU	24.35
26	1997	Jason Kendall	PIT	23.91
27	2004	Jason Kendall	PIT	23.72
28	1998	Jason Kendall	PIT	23.62
29	1972	Ron Hunt	MON	23.58
30	2001	Fernando Vina	SLN	23.19
31	2004	Juan Pierre	FLO	23.03
32	1980	Ozzie Smith	SDN	22.82
33	1976	Don Baylor	OAK	22.42
34	2005	David Eckstein	SLN	22.40
35	1957	Minnie Minoso	CHA	22.19
36	1991	Brett Butler	LAN	21.87
37	1961	Nellie Fox	CHA	21.83
38	1970	Ed Brinkman	WS2	21.70
39	2006	Juan Pierre	CHN	21.33
40	1973	Ron Hunt	MON	21.14
41	2002	Melvin Mora	BAL	20.89
42	1980	Alfredo Griffin	TOR	20.88
43	1993	Mike Bordick	OAK	20.72
44	2005	Juan Pierre	FLO	20.62
45	1995	Craig Biggio	HOU	20.41
46	1990	Brett Butler	SFN	20.40
47	1959	Richie Ashburn	PHI	20.08
48	1993	Chuck Knoblauch	MIN	19.99
49	1993	Brett Butler	LAN	19.92
50	1984	Brett Butler	CLE	19.82

The 25 Least Gritty Seasons

Rank	Year	Player	Team	GRIT
13234	1957	Ted Williams	BOS	-27.05
13235	2000	Sammy Sosa	CHN	-27.06
13236	1999	Mark McGwire	SLN	-27.91
13237	2006	Albert Pujols	SLN	-27.91
13238	1989	Kevin Mitchell	SFN	-31.49
13239	1998	Mark McGwire	SLN	-32.32
13240	1970	Willie McCovey	SFN	-34.09
13241	2001	Barry Bonds	SFN	-35.16
13242	2007	Ryan Howard	PHI	-35.45
13243	1969	Willie McCovey	SFN	-38.71
13244	2006	Ryan Howard	PHI	-38.90
13245	1993	Barry Bonds	SFN	-39.72
13246	2003	Barry Bonds	SFN	-42.09
13247	2001	Sammy Sosa	CHN	-42.66
13248	2002	Barry Bonds	SFN	-50.98
13249	2004	Barry Bonds	SFN	-90.01

The 50 All-Time Grittiest Careers

Rank		Full Name	Yrs	Career	YrAvg
1	*	Craig Biggio	19	250.22	13.17
2		Ron Hunt	11	236.96	21.54
3	*	Jason Kendall	11	214.62	19.51
4		Nellie Fox	10	188.42	18.84
5		Brett Butler	15	187.26	12.48
6		Chuck Knoblauch	11	170.67	15.52
7	*	Omar Vizquel	17	165.22	9.72
8		Luis Aparicio	18	162.49	9.03
9		Bert Campaneris	15	154.16	10.28
10		Don Baylor	17	152.16	8.95
11	*	David Eckstein	7	146.58	20.94
12		Pete Rose	23	143.91	6.26
13		Maury Wills	13	142.30	10.95
14		Ozzie Smith	18	140.77	7.82
15		Rickey Henderson	23	137.94	6.00
16		Cesar Tovar	10	137.83	13.78
17	*	Juan Pierre	7	137.68	19.67
18		Jim Gilliam	12	133.14	11.10
19		Willie Randolph	17	132.54	7.80
20		Fernando Vina	6	128.96	21.49
21		Eric Young	12	122.63	10.22
22		Minnie Minoso	8	121.52	15.19
23		Larry Bowa	15	117.77	7.85
24		Don Kessinger	13	116.39	8.95
25		Felix Millan	10	110.48	11.05
26		Brady Anderson	13	110.18	8.48
27		Harold Reynolds	8	109.98	13.75
28		Steve Sax	11	107.60	9.78
29		Alfredo Griffin	13	101.71	7.82
30		Tony Taylor	14	99.17	7.08
31		Mark Belanger	13	98.35	7.57
32		Toby Harrah	16	97.81	6.11
33		Curt Flood	12	97.10	8.09
34		Chet Lemon	15	95.85	6.39
35		Brian Downing	17	95.55	5.62
36		Richie Ashburn	8	94.72	11.84
37		Joe Morgan	19	94.43	4.97
38	*	Derek Jeter	12	92.21	7.68
39		Don Blasingame	9	92.03	10.23
40		Tony Fernandez	15	90.68	6.05
41		Eddie Yost	6	86.40	14.40
42		Dave Cash	9	85.14	9.46
43		Rick Burleson	9	85.06	9.45
44	*	Luis Castillo	9	84.64	9.40
45		Horace Clarke	8	81.98	10.25
46		Scott Fletcher	11	81.84	7.44
47		Bobby Grich	14	81.73	5.84
48		Tony Phillips	14	80.82	5.77
49		Johnny Temple	8	80.13	10.02
50		Tim Foli	13	79.72	6.13

The 15 All-Time Least Gritty Careers

Rank	*	Full Name	Yrs	Career	YrAvg
2371		Ernie Banks	15	-144.73	-9.65
2372		Fred McGriff	17	-145.58	-8.56
2373	*	Vladimir Guerrero	11	-148.26	-13.48
2374		Dick Allen	12	-148.29	-12.36
2375	*	Mike Piazza	14	-149.04	-10.65
2376	*	Jim Thome	13	-149.27	-11.48
2377	*	Manny Ramirez	14	-160.81	-11.49
2378	*	Ken Griffey	16	-169.47	-10.59
2379		Eddie Murray	20	-173.48	-8.67
2380		Willie McCovey	19	-184.52	-9.71
2381		Willie Stargell	16	-188.60	-11.79
2382		Willie Mays	17	-189.01	-11.12
2383	*	Sammy Sosa	16	-190.85	-11.93
2384		Hank Aaron	22	-301.91	-13.72
2385	*	Barry Bonds	21	-497.01	-23.67

So, that’s it. You’re shocked, right?

Craig Biggio and David Eckstein are real damned gritty. Jason Kendall is so gritty that he just might stab a couple dozen Californians. And none of them match the original gritster: Ron “Pig Pen” Hunt.

On the other end of the spectrum, Barry Bonds is so extremely non-gritty that his numbers are a borderline statistical anomaly (insert your favorite joke here). Ryan Howard’s poised to become the new anti-grit. When Manny’s being Manny, he’s not gritty. When Rickey did what Rickey needed to do for the sake of Rickey, he was pretty gritty.

And there are a few thousand players somewhere in the middle who I completely neglected.

Armed with this knowledge, go forth and spread GRIT to all men. Or something.