The Sexiest of All Topics: Plate Appearances

In 2022 the average number of plate appearances among big leaguers was 121. A plate appearance marks any time a player walks up and digs into the batter box. Each spit, every toe twist, and all of the glove-tightening times in the box accumulate together into plate appearances. Let’s start with the easy one. Who had the most? Marcus Semien. He had 724. In fact, he had exactly 724 last season as well. That’s roughly 4.5 plate appearances per game.

That’s absurd.

He played in 161 games in 2022 and he wasn’t even the player who played in the most games this year. That would be 162 games and, actually, two players did it; Dansby Swanson and Matt Olson. Teammates! The Ironman Cal Ripken, Jr. averaged 4.3 plate appearances (12,883) per game (3,001) for his career. What Semien, Swanson, and Olson did this year is special. It should be an award in itself. If it is already and I don’t know it, don’t blast me. But I’m pretty sure people would just say, “Oh, an award just for showing up?” and I would argue that showing up is rare these days.

Here’s a histogram of 2022’s every plate appearance:

Distribution (Histogram) of 2022 Plate Appearances

The median number of plate appearances among all ball players in 2022 was 220. On the tail ends are the fellas I mentioned above and the real Moonlight Graham types, those who appeared in one game and did not record a plate appearance. The lucky two players of 2022 to earn Moonlight status were Cory Spangenberg and Scott Kingery. Spangenberg spent his year in AAA but was called up for the St. Louis trip to Canada. He relieved Brendan Donovan at third, who relieved Albert Pujols at first, and did not get to dig into the box. In much the same way, Kingery came into the game as a defensive substitute for starting second baseman Bryson Stott, who moved to shortstop to give starter Didi Gregorius some time off his feet. Didi would end up getting the rest of the season off his feet the day after his one-for-four day on August third as he was released by the club on the fourth.

In the middle of the above histogram were your, well, average players and the average number of plate appearances in 2022 was 264 rounding up. No player accumulated exactly the average number of plate appearances, but there were three players who were exactly in the middle (median) with 220 plate appearances:

Exactly Median Plate Appearance Accumulators 2022
Name Team G PA HR R RBI SB AVG WAR
Ezequiel Duran TEX 58 220 5 25 25 4 0.236 0.1
Jonathan Villar – – – 59 220 3 25 18 7 0.208 -1.3
Robinson Chirinos BAL 67 220 4 10 22 1 0.179 -1.6

Hopefully, you didn’t have a tremendous amount of shares on any of these players and if you did, you didn’t hang on. Plate appearances are valuable and if you drafted players who accumulated a lot of them you in turn accumulated value:

Scatter Plot: PAs vs. 2022 YTD Dollar Value

One of the biggest outliers on the year was Aaron Judge with all that value, all those plate appearances, and each one of those dingers. But, he was actually projected by Steamer pre-season for 665 plate appearances. He accumulated 696, but who would ever project that? Who else exceeded their plate appearance expectations? Here are the top 10:

Top Plate Appearance Projection Exceeders
Name Steamer Preseason PA Projection Actual 2022 PA Diff Dollars
Brandon Drury 38 568 530 $17.09
Brendan Donovan 20 468 448 $2.51
Luis Rengifo 103 511 408 $1.79
Geraldo Perdomo 123 500 377 -$6.86
William Contreras 30 376 346 $11.90
MJ Melendez 199 534 335 $8.77
Willi Castro 66 392 326 -$2.44
Gilberto Celestino 26 347 321 -$9.85
Nick Gordon 123 443 320 $2.05
Thairo Estrada 227 541 314 $12.07

Plate Appearances aren’t everything, but they help a lot. For example, Celestino filled in for injured Twins a lot in 2022 as a 23-year-old. In last season’s Top 39 Prospects for the Minnesota Twins written by Eric Longenhagen, Celestino ranked 10th in the organization. Earning 122 games in 2022 after 23 in 2021 means something. What exactly? I don’t know since he returned such negative value, but I’m sure it means something.

Looking at the flip side of this analysis, who didn’t meet expectations, isn’t as informative because it so often is a result of injury, but here it is anyway:

Top Plate Appearance Projection Underperformers
Name Steamer Preseason PA Projection Actual 2022 PA Diff Dollars
Miguel Sanó 619 71 -548 -$22.70
Kris Bryant 669 181 -488 -$8.73
Adalberto Mondesi 536 54 -482 -$18.98
Willie Calhoun 494 62 -432 -$18.22
David Fletcher 655 228 -427 -$13.83
Bobby Bradley 439 17 -422 -$21.91
Ozzie Albies 673 269 -404 -$5.94
Anthony Rendon 590 193 -397 -$13.98
Lorenzo Cain 546 156 -390 -$16.25
Mitch Haniger 629 247 -382 -$5.80

Now, a deep dive is fun, it’s interesting, it’s hip, it’s “with it”. But what we’re really after is trying to figure out who to put our money on for next year. Who is likely to repeat? Ask any projection system maintainer and they’ll tell you it’s impossible. I won’t be trying to project next season’s plate appearances. But, what I will do is look at the players who have accumulated a lot year after year. Here are the players who have accumulated the most plate appearances in the past four years:

Top 10 Most Plate Appearances in the Past Four Years
Name 19PA 20PA 21PA PA 4 Year Total
Marcus Semien 747 236 724 724 2431
Freddie Freeman 692 262 695 708 2357
Jose Abreu 693 262 659 679 2293
Whit Merrifield 735 265 720 550 2270
Pete Alonso 693 239 637 685 2254
Paul Goldschmidt 682 231 679 651 2243
Rafael Devers 702 248 664 614 2228
Manny Machado 661 254 640 644 2199
Cesar Hernandez 667 261 637 617 2182
Trea Turner 569 259 646 708 2182

These are all players who we should be able to count on at this point. It’s likely each one of them has played through injury to accumulate such a high PA count, but it means that they have consistently shown up the past four seasons. There were also plenty of players who didn’t appear as often, but still accumulated value. By performing a cluster analysis on plate appearances and end of season value, we end up with essentially the same scatter plot from above, but broken down into distinct groups:

Clusters of Player Plate Appearances and Value

The upper portion of the green and blue clusters are interesting because they either were valuable and injured, or they were valuable and didn’t get the opportunity they deserved. Most interesting from this perspective are the upper portions of the green and blue clusters as they returned positive value while collecting closer to average times at the plate. Here’s all the players in cluster three (blue) who earned positive value and how many days they spent on the IL in 2022:

Cluster Three Players With IL Days
Name PA Dollars IL Days
Jake McCarthy 354 $8.51
Danny Jansen 248 $5.71 69
Eric Haase 351 $5.64
Christian Bethancourt 베탄코트 333 $4.42
Jose Trevino 353 $4.40
Albert Pujols 351 $4.14
Eloy Jiménez 327 $3.31 73
Oneil Cruz 361 $2.15
Nick Fortes 240 $1.76
Jazz Chisholm Jr. 241 $1.52 99
Tim Anderson 351 $1.00 81
Austin Slater 325 $0.90 27
Jorge Alfaro 274 $0.22 11
*IL Days calculated using Roster Resource Injury Report Excel Workbook Download

Those not highlighted in red could have the potential for more opportunities in 2023. Those not highlighted are very likely to collect more plate appearances in 2023 as longs as they can return to health. Here’s the same table showing those in cluster four (green):

Cluster Four Players With IL Days
Name PA Dollars ILDays
Mike Trout 499 $22.47 35
Michael Harris II 441 $19.47
Starling Marte 505 $17.69 29
Salvador Perez 473 $14.26 47
Willson Contreras 487 $13.87 24
Travis d’Arnaud 426 $13.67
Bryce Harper 426 $13.00 61
William Contreras 376 $11.90
Adley Rutschman 470 $10.90
Josh Rojas 510 $10.80 32
Joc Pederson 433 $10.57 8
Cal Raleigh 415 $10.07
Nico Hoerner 517 $9.90 13
Luis Robert 401 $8.13 33
Kolten Wong 497 $7.40 20
Christian Vazquez 426 $7.28
Giancarlo Stanton 452 $6.97 42
Byron Buxton 382 $6.96 44
Andrew Benintendi 521 $6.59 33
Jonah Heim 450 $6.47
Trevor Story 396 $6.36 62
Josh Naylor 498 $5.84 18
Tyler O’Neill 383 $5.82 63
Jon Berti 404 $5.67 48
Gary Sanchez 471 $4.81
Seiya Suzuki 446 $4.63 38
Harold Ramirez 435 $4.06
Gavin Lux 471 $4.01
Christopher Morel 425 $3.56
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. 493 $3.32 28
Marcell Ozuna 507 $2.99
Keibert Ruiz 433 $2.61 27
Brendan Donovan 468 $2.51
Brandon Marsh 461 $2.48 10
Raimel Tapia 433 $2.12
Austin Nola 397 $2.05
Nick Gordon 443 $2.05
Jose Miranda 483 $1.93
Luis Rengifo 511 $1.79
Daniel Vogelbach 461 $1.54 10
Jean Segura 387 $1.38 64
Jorge Polanco 445 $1.17 51
Bryson Stott 466 $1.08
Tyrone Taylor 405 $1.00 20
Santiago Espinal 491 $1.00 14
Elias Diaz 381 $1.00
Oscar Gonzalez 382 $0.86 33
Nelson Cruz 507 $0.82
Martin Maldonado 379 $0.52
Ramón Urías 445 $0.18 42
Chas McCormick 407 $0.08
*IL Days calculated using Roster Resource Injury Report Excel Workbook Download

You can see that this list is heavy on catchers because they ultimately end up with fewer plate appearances than say an outfielder, but with higher value given their positional scarcity. Take it for what it’s worth. But, there are a number of interesting players who received middle of the pack opportunities and still finished with value.

At this point I think I have worn out my welcome and if you see another table you may click somewhere else. However, a plate appearance deep dive takes time and can be boring. But, it’s necessary to analyze as part of next season’s draft preparation. Just remember that plate appearances earn value. As the late, great Stephen Hawking once said, “Half the battle is just showing up.” In fantasy baseball, it’s probably more like 88%.





1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Another Old Guymember
1 year ago

I appreciated and enjoyed this article. You haven’t worn out this reader’s welcome, Lucas. Full time at bats by players that are not in a platoon and injury prone are incredibly valuable, particularly in weekly leagues with shallow benches. You have attempted to quantify this, which I find so valuable. In my humble opinion, I tend to rely on depth charts with the staff inputs from fangraphs as being more valid than those projected by steamer, although I have never done anything to support my possibly invalid instincts.