Trying to Quantify Productive Outs

One of the things that I've been working on lately is a way of quantifying the so called "little things" that play such a pivotal role in who wins and who loses baseball games. I've floated the term "Quality At-Bat" for a long time. What I actually sat down and decided to work on, though, is what I call the Quality Plate Appearance.

I'll be the first to admit it's not a perfect stat. It is, like every other stat that exists, an imperfect system designed by an imperfect creature. It is very much a work in progress and just the tip of the iceberg of what I hope will be an attempt to quantify what I feel are the four areas of baseball which lack significant statistical quantification.

To test the statistic, I ran the numbers on all of the Marlins' hitters. Some notes on the process here:

1- Stats are updated through today (4/26/09) to reflect all plate appearances
2- At Bats by pitchers were not tallied up
3- I've yet to take a "team average" QPA number, because I haven't done a team analysis yet
4- I split up PH stats for our four main bench guys (Gload, Carroll, Amezaga, Helms). However, I didn't think of this until late in the analysis and I did the starters first, so it's not available for the others yet. It's also the only split I have so far. I'll expand on this - promise.

Without further adieu, the stat itself:

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What is a Quality Plate Appearance?
A Quality Plate Appearance is achieved through one of the following:

1. A plate appearance that results in a hit, walk, or hit-by-pitch
2. A plate appearance where the batter sees six or more pitches
3. A plate appearance where a batter either drives in a run or moves a runner into scoring position

NOTE: A PLAYER CANNOT RECEIVE A QPA FOR A PLAY WHICH RESULTS IN MORE THAN ONE OUT. THE ONLY EXCEPTION TO THIS IS STRIKE 'EM OUT/THROW 'EM OUT, BECAUSE HE DIDN'T HIT INTO A DP

The results, through today's game, are under here. Acronyms:
PA- Plate Appearances
QPA- Quality Plate Appearances
QPA%- Quality Plate Appearance Percentage (QPA/PA * 100)