Baseball Stats Say: Let Barry Bonds Hit *By BRUCE WEBER* Published: June 19, 2004 erry Reiter, who grew up and played high school baseball in Yankee territory, near Morristown, N.J., is a Boston Red Sox fan, for some reason. (O.K., he went to Harvard eventually, but still.) In any case, he's worried about his club, and he has something to contribute to the cause. In fact, it is rather urgent because this weekend the Red Sox are in San Francisco, home of the Giants and more to the point, of the Giants' left fielder, Barry Bonds. Mr. Reiter's message to the Red Sox, to their manager, Terry Francona, and to the pitching staff, runs counter to the prevailing wisdom in baseball these days. But it's simple: do not walk Bonds. For the sports indifferent, some background: Bonds is on a pace to become baseball's all-time home run leader, possibly as early as next season, and at age 39, he is probably the most dangerous hitter in the game, leading both leagues this year with an average, before last night's game, of .377. Since 2001, when Bonds shattered the record for home runs in a single season with 73, opposing pitchers have often opted to walk him, intentionally or semi-intentionally, even in unthreatening circumstances, rather than try to get him out and risk worse damage. This year, barring injury, Bonds seems likely to become the first major leaguer to walk 200 times in a season. In other words, opponents prefer giving the other Giants' hitters the advantage of a man on base to facing the ferocious Bonds on an even playing field. Mr. Reiter would like the world in general - and the Red Sox in particular - to know that this strategy is not only lily-livered but also self-defeating. An assistant professor of statistics at Duke University, Mr. Reiter, 34, has done what statistics professors and baseball fans everywhere do: he has run the numbers. The results, he said, make it clear that the Giants are likelier to score when Bonds is walked than when he is pitched to, and that overall they score more runs. "What I did was go back to the last three seasons and look at every one of Bonds's plate appearances and examine what happened in the inning after the first pitch to him," Mr. Reiter said in a telephone interview. "In innings where he was walked and innings where he was pitched to, how many runs did the Giants score after the first pitch to Bonds?" To account for different game situations, Mr. Reiter divided his study according to the number of outs and whether the bases were empty when Bonds came to bat or there was a runner on first base (these are the situations when giving away a walk is generally considered ill advised). For example, over the last three years Bonds came to the plate 377 times with nobody on and nobody out. He walked 79 times; the Giants scored in 37 of those innings, 47 percent of the time, and overall scored 0.9 runs per inning. But when Bonds was not walked with no one out and no one on, the Giants scored in 107 of 298 innings, 36 percent of the time, and an average of 0.6 runs per inning. "According to the data," Mr. Reiter said, "the only situation where the numbers favor walking him are none on and one out." With none on and two out, he said, the risk of pitching to him and walking him is about the same. "You could flip a coin," he said. The issue of using statistics to build and operate a baseball team is a hot one these days, in the wake of Michael Lewis's best-selling book, "Moneyball," which focused on the Oakland Athletics' general manager, Billy Beane, and his use of numbers to select players and determine strategy. The Red Sox are another team that follows this line of thinking - the legendary interpreter of baseball minutiae, Bill James, is in their employ - but not everyone buys into it. For one thing, the argument goes, statistics and their interpretations conflict. Statistics indicate, for example, that on average a major league baseball team scores 0.5 runs per inning; when a team gets the first batter of an inning on first base, that number goes up to 0.9 runs per inning. So when Bonds is walked to lead off an inning, the Giants' offense is only average. When he is pitched to, it scores at a better than average rate. "That's true," Mr. Reiter said, "but when you pitch to Bonds, the Giants still score only 0.6 runs, which, compared to the alternative strategy, is a better result." Still, the argument goes, it might be generally true that it is better to pitch to Bonds than to walk him, but what if you get more specific? In day games this season, Bonds is hitting .528, more than .200 points higher than he is hitting at night. In his home ballpark he's hitting .462, away from home only .308. Against right-handed pitching, the left-handed Bonds is hitting .414, .100 points higher than against southpaws. Are these conditions not so pertinent as the number of outs and base runners? For another thing, making on-field decisions on the basis of statistics is trying to predict the future on the basis of the past, and the numbers do not tell you whether the pitcher is having trouble hitting the corners that day or whether the hitter has a stomach virus, a sick child at home or a suddenly exploitable hole in his swing. "I'm definitely willing to be flexible," Mr. Reiter said, noting that what you might do with Bonds could depend on serendipitous factors, who the pitcher is, for example, and when in the game Bonds is batting. A starting pitcher, say, Pedro Martínez of the Red Sox, tends to be less effective late in the game than he is early. "Pedro in the third is different from Pedro in the eighth," he said. So with the score tied in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game of the World Series, he'd pitch to Bonds? "If my objective is to win the game, and I'm willing to handle the outcry if I lost, then the numbers say pitch to him," Mr. Reiter said. "Of course, there are always other considerations that plague the Red Sox." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company