Friday, March 18
Tuesday, September 11
Most surprising AL hitters
So with the season winding down, and with most fantasy leagues into the playoffs, I figured I'd take a look and pick out some of the most surprising hitters in the American League. Because I'm lazy, I'll let others do most of the work for me on this. I could go the WARP or VORP route to try to determine value, but this blog has a bit of a fantasy bent, so I figured I'd look at fantasy stats. So I went to Yahoo (correction, Yahoo!) and sorted by their seasonal ranking for AL hitters. I'll admit, I don't know how this is computed, but the results look pretty good. Powered by the song in the iPod nano commercial (1, 2, 3, 4 by Feist) here then, in order of rank, are the surprising additions to the top hitters in the American League.
- Magglio Ordonez, second highest rated hitter in the AL. While Maggs is no slouch with the bat, no one expected him to be this good this season. I think most people figured his better days were behind him, but he's hitting an obscene .359 with 128 driven in already.
- Curtis Granderson, 6th highest rated AL hitter. Grandy has exploded through the ceiling of what I thought he was capable of. Before the season I though his line would be about:
.283 average, 91 runs, 24 HR, 76 RBI, with a decent chance to get 20 steals.
he's already got:
.305 average, 112 runs, 21 HR, 71 RBI, and 20 steals.
Oh and he also has that whole 20-20-20-20 thing.
- Carlos Pena, 11th rated AL hitter. Holy crap! This guy has always had worlds of potential (said to be a future star on Baseball Prospectus '02 and '03), but it looked like he was never going to realize it. He hit 27 HR in 2004 with the Tigers, but was rapidly slipping to journeyman status (see also: Phelps, Josh). With 38 HR already, it looks like he's reached that star status after all.
Others worth mentioning:
Nick Markakis (#13) - Good combination of power and speed, turned out to be a better player than many expected.
BJ Upton (#14) - Much like Markakis, a great power speed combo, Upton is finally showing his immense talent on the field.
Adrian Beltre (#24) - He'll always have the air of an underachiever after that monstrous 2004 season, he's having a very solid season.
Jose Guillen (#27) - A lot of people thought my former binky was washed up after a couple injury plagued, unproductive seasons, but Jose has really rebounded.
- Magglio Ordonez, second highest rated hitter in the AL. While Maggs is no slouch with the bat, no one expected him to be this good this season. I think most people figured his better days were behind him, but he's hitting an obscene .359 with 128 driven in already.
- Curtis Granderson, 6th highest rated AL hitter. Grandy has exploded through the ceiling of what I thought he was capable of. Before the season I though his line would be about:
.283 average, 91 runs, 24 HR, 76 RBI, with a decent chance to get 20 steals.
he's already got:
.305 average, 112 runs, 21 HR, 71 RBI, and 20 steals.
Oh and he also has that whole 20-20-20-20 thing.
- Carlos Pena, 11th rated AL hitter. Holy crap! This guy has always had worlds of potential (said to be a future star on Baseball Prospectus '02 and '03), but it looked like he was never going to realize it. He hit 27 HR in 2004 with the Tigers, but was rapidly slipping to journeyman status (see also: Phelps, Josh). With 38 HR already, it looks like he's reached that star status after all.
Others worth mentioning:
Nick Markakis (#13) - Good combination of power and speed, turned out to be a better player than many expected.
BJ Upton (#14) - Much like Markakis, a great power speed combo, Upton is finally showing his immense talent on the field.
Adrian Beltre (#24) - He'll always have the air of an underachiever after that monstrous 2004 season, he's having a very solid season.
Jose Guillen (#27) - A lot of people thought my former binky was washed up after a couple injury plagued, unproductive seasons, but Jose has really rebounded.
Tuesday, August 28
Hit Your Age!
So I was thinking yesterday, you know how when a player is hitting very poorly, they say he's "not hitting his weight." That is, his batting average is lower than his weight. Well I was wondering, what's the opposite of that. Obviously, having a batting average higher than your weight isn't really that great an accomplishment (unless you're Cecil Fielder or Matt Stairs). So then I thought, what about hitting your age? As in, your yearly homer run total is higher than your age.
Of course, this implies you're a power hitter to some extent, you won't find any Jason Tyner types on this list. However, it seems to me that a list of the Age All Stars would represent some of the best players in the league. So, without further ado, here's last year's Age All Stars:
Grady Sizemore, age 24, 28 HR in 2006. What can you say? Grady is a stud and figures to be in the discussion for best AL centerfielder for at least the next 10 years.
Joe Crede, age 28, 30 HR. He finally put it all together in '06 after having been in the majors for several years. His chronic back problems didn't really bother him in '06, unfortunately, this may have been a career year.
Torii Hunter, age 31, 31 HR. He'll likely get paid pretty hansomely for it after the '07 season.
Vernon Wells, age 28, 32 HR. And for this he got a 126 mill. contract.
Vlad Guerrero, age 31, 33 HR. One would think that Vladdy has been an Age All Star pretty much since he broke into the league.
Mark Texeira, age 26, 33 HR. Tex had an even better year in 2005 as a 25 year old socking 43 HR.
Justin Morneau, age 25, 34 HR. This plus 130 RBI wins you the MVP.
Richie Sexson, age 32, 34 HR. No offense to Richie, who had a decent year in 2006, but he drags this list down.
Alex Rodriguez, age 31, 35 HR. Still an age All Star in a down year for him.
Paul Konerko, age 31, 35 HR. Well worth his new contract.
Manny Ramirez, age 34, 35 HR. Barely makes the list, due to a nagging knee injury that limited him in September.
Nick Swisher, age 26, 35 HR. A big jump up in power for Swish, who seems to have come into his own in 2006.
Jason Giambi, age 36, 37 HR. The Giambino isn't young, but he can still hit it out of the ballpark.
Troy Glaus, age 30, 38 HR. A bit of an under the radar member of the Age All Stars.
Frank Thomas, age38, 39 HR. The first time the Big Hurt has been a Age All Star in quite some time.
Travis Hafner, age 29, 42 HR. Pronk had a monster year, but is older than you might think.
Jim Thome, age 36, 42 HR. Thome just keeps on putting up seasons like this.
Jermaine Dye, age 33, 44 HR. Perhaps the most surprising member of the 2006 Age All Stars. Dye actually just missed out in 2005 (31 HR at age 32).
David Ortiz, age 31, 54 HR. Unsurprisingly, Big Papi tops our list.
There you have it, 19 guys managed to "Hit their age" in 2006. Preparing this raised a few interesting questions. Perhaps I'll dig into this more from a historical perspective. A step I could take later on down the road would be to compile a list of the number of seasons a player has been an Age All Star. Another further step I might take is to calculate the number of HR in excess of one's age a player hits. This would give you a cummulative total for their career, in seasons where they hit their age. This might be a decent way to measure peak value, or at least peak power. If I did come up with a list of career HRs in excess of age, I bet ARod would come out the leader (or maybe Griffey or that Ruth guy).
Of course, this implies you're a power hitter to some extent, you won't find any Jason Tyner types on this list. However, it seems to me that a list of the Age All Stars would represent some of the best players in the league. So, without further ado, here's last year's Age All Stars:
Grady Sizemore, age 24, 28 HR in 2006. What can you say? Grady is a stud and figures to be in the discussion for best AL centerfielder for at least the next 10 years.
Joe Crede, age 28, 30 HR. He finally put it all together in '06 after having been in the majors for several years. His chronic back problems didn't really bother him in '06, unfortunately, this may have been a career year.
Torii Hunter, age 31, 31 HR. He'll likely get paid pretty hansomely for it after the '07 season.
Vernon Wells, age 28, 32 HR. And for this he got a 126 mill. contract.
Vlad Guerrero, age 31, 33 HR. One would think that Vladdy has been an Age All Star pretty much since he broke into the league.
Mark Texeira, age 26, 33 HR. Tex had an even better year in 2005 as a 25 year old socking 43 HR.
Justin Morneau, age 25, 34 HR. This plus 130 RBI wins you the MVP.
Richie Sexson, age 32, 34 HR. No offense to Richie, who had a decent year in 2006, but he drags this list down.
Alex Rodriguez, age 31, 35 HR. Still an age All Star in a down year for him.
Paul Konerko, age 31, 35 HR. Well worth his new contract.
Manny Ramirez, age 34, 35 HR. Barely makes the list, due to a nagging knee injury that limited him in September.
Nick Swisher, age 26, 35 HR. A big jump up in power for Swish, who seems to have come into his own in 2006.
Jason Giambi, age 36, 37 HR. The Giambino isn't young, but he can still hit it out of the ballpark.
Troy Glaus, age 30, 38 HR. A bit of an under the radar member of the Age All Stars.
Frank Thomas, age38, 39 HR. The first time the Big Hurt has been a Age All Star in quite some time.
Travis Hafner, age 29, 42 HR. Pronk had a monster year, but is older than you might think.
Jim Thome, age 36, 42 HR. Thome just keeps on putting up seasons like this.
Jermaine Dye, age 33, 44 HR. Perhaps the most surprising member of the 2006 Age All Stars. Dye actually just missed out in 2005 (31 HR at age 32).
David Ortiz, age 31, 54 HR. Unsurprisingly, Big Papi tops our list.
There you have it, 19 guys managed to "Hit their age" in 2006. Preparing this raised a few interesting questions. Perhaps I'll dig into this more from a historical perspective. A step I could take later on down the road would be to compile a list of the number of seasons a player has been an Age All Star. Another further step I might take is to calculate the number of HR in excess of one's age a player hits. This would give you a cummulative total for their career, in seasons where they hit their age. This might be a decent way to measure peak value, or at least peak power. If I did come up with a list of career HRs in excess of age, I bet ARod would come out the leader (or maybe Griffey or that Ruth guy).
Sunday, August 26
On the Juice?: Adrian Beltre
In the hopes of maybe becoming Mr. No One in Particular over at USS Mariner.com, the next subject of our OTJ series will be one Mr. Adrian Beltre.
In the interests of full disclosure, Adrian has been my third baseman the last 2 seasons in my AL keeper league. In that time I've had a love-hate relationship with him. When I drafted him, I already had Hank Blalock at third, and Beltre was the best available talent on the board. Throughout the season I was continually tempted to drop him, before realizing that Hank was even worse, and trading him (Hank). I reluctantly ended up holding onto Beltre all season, and he rewarded me by probably being the MVP of the fantasy finals, hitting 6 HR, to go along with 16 RBI and 18 runs scored during the final two weeks of the season. Since then, I've pretty much loved him, although I did make a serious push to replace him with Alex Gordon this year at draft time.
As pretty much anyone who follows baseball knows, Adrian Beltre put up one of the greatest contract drives in history. In 2004 as a 25 year old third baseman of the LA Dodgers, Beltre hit .334 with 48 HR and 121 RBI. Besides that season, his career high in average, in any season, including subsequent ones, is .290. His career high is HR is 25. His career high in RBI is 89. So he exceeded his career highs by .044 in average, 23 (!) in HR, and 32 in RBI.
Going back in time, Adrian Beltre was born April 7th, 1979. He's younger than most people think, due in part to the fact he was signed illegally as a 15 year old. He progressed through the minors pretty quickly, appearing in the majors at the age of 19. His minor league high in HR was 26 in 123 games at Vero Beach (A+) as a 17 year old.
Discounting his rookie season as a 19 year old, Beltre has been pretty much the same player his entire career in the majors, besides his obscene 2004 season. Here are his HR totals for every season from 1999, his first full time season, to 2007: 15, 20, 13, 21, 23, 48, 19, 25, 20 (so far). Now here are his batting averages for each of those seasons: .275, .290, .265, .257, .240, .334, .255, .268, .283 (so far). So he's about a .270, 20 HR hitter. That's a decent player, especially when you play gold glove caliber defense, which he does.
What to make of 2004? As anyone who has followed Beltre knows, he's an extremely streaky hitter. Hell, just look what he did the last 2 weeks of 2006 (6 HR, 16 RBI). Maybe he just got on a roll all season. However all that being said, 2004 is a huge outlier in an otherwise remarkably consistent career. His career high in HR in non-2004 seasons was 25. He hit nearly twice that many in 2004. As a result he got a 5 year, 64 million dollar deal. The evidence is pretty damning. One thing to look at is his batting average on balls in play. This can help us see how fluky a season Beltre had. His BABIP in 2004 was .335, which is pretty high. That helps explain the .334 average. But what about all the power?
A good way to measure power, of course, is slugging percentage. It's a better way to figure out how much of an outlier 2004 really was. Maybe Beltre just was lucky in that a lot of warning track shots ended up over the fence in 2004. Well, here again the evidence is damning. His slugging percentage in 2004 was an obscene .629. His career high besides that season is .493 (this season). Anyway you slice it, he either had one of the flukiest seasons in history, or he was juicing.
In the end, steroids can't entirely describe what happened to Adrian Beltre in 2004. He did his 44 points higher than in any other season of his career. But, however magical 2004 was for Adrian, and despite his denials, he probably had some chemical help in 2004.
Verdict: (Probably) Guilty
In the interests of full disclosure, Adrian has been my third baseman the last 2 seasons in my AL keeper league. In that time I've had a love-hate relationship with him. When I drafted him, I already had Hank Blalock at third, and Beltre was the best available talent on the board. Throughout the season I was continually tempted to drop him, before realizing that Hank was even worse, and trading him (Hank). I reluctantly ended up holding onto Beltre all season, and he rewarded me by probably being the MVP of the fantasy finals, hitting 6 HR, to go along with 16 RBI and 18 runs scored during the final two weeks of the season. Since then, I've pretty much loved him, although I did make a serious push to replace him with Alex Gordon this year at draft time.
As pretty much anyone who follows baseball knows, Adrian Beltre put up one of the greatest contract drives in history. In 2004 as a 25 year old third baseman of the LA Dodgers, Beltre hit .334 with 48 HR and 121 RBI. Besides that season, his career high in average, in any season, including subsequent ones, is .290. His career high is HR is 25. His career high in RBI is 89. So he exceeded his career highs by .044 in average, 23 (!) in HR, and 32 in RBI.
Going back in time, Adrian Beltre was born April 7th, 1979. He's younger than most people think, due in part to the fact he was signed illegally as a 15 year old. He progressed through the minors pretty quickly, appearing in the majors at the age of 19. His minor league high in HR was 26 in 123 games at Vero Beach (A+) as a 17 year old.
Discounting his rookie season as a 19 year old, Beltre has been pretty much the same player his entire career in the majors, besides his obscene 2004 season. Here are his HR totals for every season from 1999, his first full time season, to 2007: 15, 20, 13, 21, 23, 48, 19, 25, 20 (so far). Now here are his batting averages for each of those seasons: .275, .290, .265, .257, .240, .334, .255, .268, .283 (so far). So he's about a .270, 20 HR hitter. That's a decent player, especially when you play gold glove caliber defense, which he does.
What to make of 2004? As anyone who has followed Beltre knows, he's an extremely streaky hitter. Hell, just look what he did the last 2 weeks of 2006 (6 HR, 16 RBI). Maybe he just got on a roll all season. However all that being said, 2004 is a huge outlier in an otherwise remarkably consistent career. His career high in HR in non-2004 seasons was 25. He hit nearly twice that many in 2004. As a result he got a 5 year, 64 million dollar deal. The evidence is pretty damning. One thing to look at is his batting average on balls in play. This can help us see how fluky a season Beltre had. His BABIP in 2004 was .335, which is pretty high. That helps explain the .334 average. But what about all the power?
A good way to measure power, of course, is slugging percentage. It's a better way to figure out how much of an outlier 2004 really was. Maybe Beltre just was lucky in that a lot of warning track shots ended up over the fence in 2004. Well, here again the evidence is damning. His slugging percentage in 2004 was an obscene .629. His career high besides that season is .493 (this season). Anyway you slice it, he either had one of the flukiest seasons in history, or he was juicing.
In the end, steroids can't entirely describe what happened to Adrian Beltre in 2004. He did his 44 points higher than in any other season of his career. But, however magical 2004 was for Adrian, and despite his denials, he probably had some chemical help in 2004.
Verdict: (Probably) Guilty
Wednesday, August 22
Somewhere Jayson Stark springs into action...
So as you may or may not have seen, the Texas Rangers pretty much made the Baltimore Orioles their bitches today. They absolutely pummeled the quartet of Daniel Cabrera, Brian Burres, Rob Bell and Paul Shuey for a grand total of THIRTY runs.I was curious if that was a major league record. I went over to Baseball-Reference to use the play index, and it came up with no games since 1957 where a team scored more than 29 runs. What about earlier? Was Baseball Reference's Play Index cock-blocking me because it wanted me to pay for a subscription?
So I headed over to Wikipedia. It was the bottom of the ninth, but the Rangers were done (barring the rare 27 run inning). Even though the game had even finished, someone had ALREADY updated the entry to say that the Rangers set the modern day record for runs scored tonight.
Somewhere in the greater Philadelphia area the red phone is ringing in the Stark household. Tim Kurkjian is orgasmic on the other end of the line, and tomorrow's inevitable useless info column is being banged out on the computer...
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