Baseball Breakdown of Double Play Grounders and Would-be Sac Flies Per Out

Because I wanted to revisit Statis-Pro baseball and distribute outs and errors with a 20-sided die rather than their playing cards, I broke down the 185,000 plus times a batter stepped up to the plate last year and provided the numbers under the "All PA" column below.

The error number is not a true percentage, because in fact multiple outs can be recorded on a given playmaking fielding averages appear even higher than they are per play, but let's skip that for now.

	All PA	Opportunity		In play out	per 20-sided die	1B or 2B
TPA	185498		185498	86309	20	50050
1b	26880		26880			26880
2B	8400		8400			8400
3B	810		810
HR	6120		6120
GB 1 out	40298		31818	31817	7.4
GDP	3810	0.31	12290	12290	2.8
Infield error	2070		2070	2070	0.5
SF	1170	0.09	13000	13000	3.0	13000
Fly Ball out	37462		25632	26382	6.1
OF or C error	750		750	750	0.2
SO	38228		38228
BB	15840		15840
HBP	1770		1770			1770
SH	930	choice	930
IBB	960	choice	960

The most important thing I needed to break out was the chance of a double play grounder and of a sacrifice fly in order to give the proper chances of each on my 20-sided die - each representing a 5% chance of something happening through a subsequent role of the die if the first one came up "20" could give a 0.25% chance on two rolls.

At first tally, there were on 3,810 double-play grounders. However, there is only a man on first and less than two outs 31% of the time so we can reverse engineer to estimate there were 12,290 balls hit like a double-play grounder - but 69% of the time they just turned into groundouts because there was no force for a double play.

There were only 1,170 sacrifice flies, but there is a man on third with less than two outs only 9 percent of the time, so likewise we can reverse engineer that an estimated 13,000 balls were hit deep enough to be sacrifice flies but 91% of the time no one was on 3rd base to run home and give credit. Most do not realize that a batter does not get a sacrifice fly credit if a runner goes from 2nd to 3rd base on his fly ball.

Once you take away all the hits, strikeouts, walks and decisions to either bunt or intentionally walk a batter, we are left with 86,309 times that a batter hit a ball that resulted in an out or someone reaching on an error. When you break that down to a 20-sided die, we find 3 of the sides should equal a double play grounder and another 3 equal a sac fly. You also have 7 other clean groundouts, 6 other clean foul balls, and then some fractions that we break down into a second roll of the die if a 20 comes up the first time.

Die	Out on card (DP if force, if not runners hold and out at 1st)
1	DP
2	DP unless batter OBR A
3	DP unless batter OBR A-B
4	DP unless batter OBR A-C
5	DP unless batter OBR A-D
6	Ground Out Runner A Advance
7	Ground Out Runner A-B Advance
8	Ground Out Runner A-C Advance
9	Ground Out Runner A-D Advance
10	Ground Out Runner Advance
11	Fly Out
12	Fly Out
13	Fly Out
14	Fly Out, runner OBR A on 2nd or 3rd Advance
15	Fly Out, runner OBR A-B on 2nd or 3rd Advance
16	Fly Out, runner OBR A-C on 2nd or 3rd Advance
17	Fly Out, runner OBR A-D on 2nd or 3rd Advance
18	Fly Out, runner on 2nd or 3rd Advance
19-20	Roll Again Below - possible defensive play
	2nd roll below
2 dice new roll	Based on two 6-sided dice out hit to: 2 or 3 = 1b, 4 = P, 5 = cf, 6 = 3b, 7 or 12 = SS, 8 = 2b, 9 = pulled to outfielder, 10 = C, 11 = opposite field outfielder.
1	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 1 -10
2	E1-10 1-base error, OTHERWISE OBRA or B lead runner beats attempted throw, all safe - otherwise lead runner out
3	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 2-10
4	E2-10 1-base error, OTHERWISE OBRA lead runner beats attempted throw - otherwise lead runner out
5	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 3-10
6	E3-10 1-base error, OTHERWISE Fielder throws out lead and DP if force, or OF diving catch - otherwise batter out all others advance
7	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 4-10
8	E4-10 1-base error, OTHERWISE Fielder throws out lead and DP if force, or OF diving catch - otherwise batter out all others advance
9	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 5-10
10	E5-10 1-base error, OTHERWISE CD2-4 throws out lead and DP if force, or OF diving catch - otherwise batter out all others advance
11	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 6-10
12	E6-10 1-base error, OTHERWISE CD2-4 throws out lead and DP if force, or OF diving catch - otherwise batter out all others advance
13	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 7-10
14	E7-10 1-base error, OTHERWISE CD3-4 throws out lead and DP if force, or OF diving catch - otherwise batter out all others advance
15	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 8-10
16	E8-10 1-base error, OTHERWISE CD3-4 throws out lead and DP if force, or OF diving catch - otherwise batter out all others advance
17	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 9-10 - OPTIONAL NEXT PLAY IS Z PLAY
18	E9-10 1-base error, OTHERWISE CD4 throws out lead and DP if force, or OF diving catch - otherwise batter out all others advance - OPTIONAL NEXT PLAY IS Z PLAY
19	out runners advance, BUT 2-base error if E reading 10 - OPTIONAL NEXT PLAY IS Z PLAY
20	E10 1-base error, OTHERWISE CD4 throws out lead and DP if force, or OF diving catch - otherwise batter out all others advance - OPTIONAL NEXT PLAY IS Z PLAY
	On references to OBR runners, if lead runner is too fast to get defense throws out batter.