In part 1, I looked at whether significant experience as an all-star or in HRD contributed to second half drops in performance. Although it does, it's more likely that the inexperienced players are regressing to the mean after flukey first halves.
Here I want to look at whether the number of swings taken affects the second half drop off, to the extent there is one. The swing counts are approximate, based on 10 outs per round and some info I found about "swing offs" and abbreviations (like when Josh Hamilton in 2008 quit swinging in the second round after 4 outs, because he had already advanced to the finals).
Of the 79 participants in the set, 39 took fewer than 20 swings. These are pretty much the folks who bow out after the first round. So that's one "tier". There are no obvious breaks in the number of swings among the remaining 40 players, so I set the second tier at 21-41 swings, and the third tier at more than 41. That also happens to give me 20 players in each of the final two tiers.
First tier (0-20 swings):
This group had a higher K% in the second half by 1.5%, lost 44 points of OPS, lost 34 points of ISO and had a reduced HR/Contact% by 1.1%. BABIPs rose by only 6 points.
Second tier (21-41 swings):
This group had a higher K% in the second half by 0.6%, lost 21 points of OPS, lost 16 points of ISO and had a reduced HR/Contact% by 1.0%. BABIPs rose by only 4 points.
Third tier (42+ swings):
This group had a higher K% in the second half by 0.9%, lost 25 points of OPS, lost 12 points of ISO and had a reduced HR/Contact% by 0.2%. BABIPs fell by 4 points.
Conclusions:
Well I know what it doesn't mean. The HRD does not wear out players. The guys who took the most swings have negligible reductions in their stats that are consistent with what we found "experienced" players experienced in the second half. And in many cases, the guys with more swings have less of a drop in the second half; and as explained below, some of them get significantly better.
Moreover, the middle group feels the impact in the second half less than those who take fewer swings in Tier 1. Swinging more in the HRD is not adversely affecting second half performance.
What's most interesting is that the Tier 1 players have stat reductions in the second half that look almost identical to the stat reductions for the significantly inexperienced all-stars discussed in my first post! Yet of the 39 players in Tier 1, only 21 fall into the inexperienced category. It's almost an even split in Tier 1 among experienced and inexperienced players. (For comparison, 60% of the players in Tier 2 are experienced by my filter, and 50% in Tier 3). Moreover, the second half differentials for the experienced group in Tier 1 and the inexperienced group in Tier 1 are pretty much the same: OPS, ISO and BABIP changes are within 1 or two points for both.
Does it get into the Tier 1 group's head that they didn't do so hot in the HRD? If that's the explanation, you would think the experienced Tier 1 players would shake it off better; but that's not what the numbers say.
Or is it physical/mechanical: that is, taking fewer hacks trying to hit homers is more likely to mess up your swing than taking more. Maybe taking more swings makes it more likely that your altered mechanics at the beginning of the HRD resolve to your natural rhythm by the time you've taken at least 20 hacks. And maybe only taking 15 home run swings is just enough to throw you off, but not enough to get you back in rhythm.
The impact is still pretty small, but it seems likely that those who don't make the semis will be more affected than those who do.
Despite all that Tier 1 talk, the worst subset to be in is the inexperienced player taking more than 41 swings (Tier 3). Those players had their K% jump 2.9% in the second half, lost 32 points of OPS, 37 points of ISO and 1.4% shaved off their HR/Contact%, and those numbers are with a boost in BABIP of 18 points!
By contrast, the experienced players in Tier 3 are the most stable. They shave off 2% points from their K%, increase OPS by 177, increase ISO by 104 and increase HR/Contact% by 4.3%! Some of that is because of a BABIP boost of 14 points (and a small sample size...there are only 10 of them).
If you play fantasy baseball, odds are that you won't dump any experienced player just because of HRD. But if you have an inexperienced player who had a hot first half, made the All-Star team and is participating in HRD, you might be a little worried. Based on these numbers, ideally those guys (Hart, Swisher and Young) make it past the first round and lose in the semis. The worst thing that can happen is for those guys to make the finals and take a bunch of swings (think Bobby Abreu and Garret Anderson).
For the experienced players, the further they go in the HRD, the better off you'll be. :)
