Baseball's Three True Outcomes and "Three True Outcome Percentage"

In baseball circles, the "three true outcomes" are a home run, walk and a strikeout. That definition is obviously angled to batters, and follows the logic that the three events are not impacted by fielders and are more "true" than other events on the field.

Recently I wondered-what if a batter had a sabermetric-style statistic centered around the three true outcomes? Maybe a percentage of total plate appearances that ended in those three things?

So with that I bring to you the formula for "Three True Outcome Percentage":

Strikeouts+Walks+Home Runs/Plate Appearances= Three True Outcome Percentage

Let's take the formula for a spin, with a current player who is the virtual definition of a three true outcome hitter,  Adam Dunn of the Chicago White Sox.

Let's start with Dunn's career, through Sunday's action.

2,239 strikeouts+1,259 walks+443 home runs/7884 plate appearances=.499

So Dunn's career Three True Outcome Percentage is essentially 50 percent.

Let's narrow down to his 2012 campaign:

222 strikeouts+105 walks+41 home runs/649 plate appearances= .567, or 56.7 percent.

Now I'd like to look at another, more famous hitter in Barry Bonds, who "evolved" during his career.

1990 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Bonds' first MVP season.

83 strikeouts+93 walks+33 home runs/621 plate appearances=33.6 percent

Now here's 2001 with the San Francisco Giants, when Bonds broke the single-season home run record.

93 strikeouts+177 walks+73 home runs/664 plate appearances= 51.6 percent.

Bonds' emergence as a more prolific power hitter, for whatever reasons, led to pitchers being more careful with him. Couple that with his own increased selectivity, as the all-around skills he had as a younger player deteriorated with age, and you have more walks and four straight years (2001-2004) where his OPS was over 1.200.

Bonds's career Three True Outcome Percentage, for those interested, comes together as follows.

1,539 strikeouts+2558 walks+762 home runs/12,606 plate appearances= 38.5 percent

Note: Bonds obviously holds the career record for home runs, and his all-time best walk total is bolstered by 688 intentional walks.

I haven't done enough research at this point to know if Three True Outcome Percentage helps differentiate good hitters from bad or has any substantial predictive value on a wide scale. But hitters that have a high percentage of those three events will be more immune to being impacted by good or bad fortune, which would in turn make their performance easier to predict. Dunn is a shining example, as he hit exactly 40 home runs in four straight seasons (2005-2008) and then 38 in both 2009 and 2010. His RBI totals also followed suit, with between 100 and 106 RBI in five of those six seasons.