Saturday, May 12, 2012

A little fun with numbers

Baseball is a game of numbers and statistics. And with the season still being on a bit of the short sample size variety, some strange things happen. Here is a short list of some oddities this season has so far shown us:

  • Josh Hamilton has hit 17 homers. The Padres have hit 12 as a team. The Cubs have only hit 18 combined and the Twins have hit 19 as a team.
  • The Padres have as many triples as homers. Each at 12.
  • The Orioles have only nine stolen bases all season and have been thrown out nine times in other attempts. They are the only team not above a .500 percent success rate.
  • Derek Jeter has played 32 games and has 51 hits. Clint Barmes, Sean Rodriguez and Brendan Ryan have played a combined 90 games and have a combined 50 hits.
  • Carlos Beltran has hit as many homers as Matt Kemp and has driven in more runs.
  • Not only has Clint Barmes only had 15 hits and is batting only .158, he also has the lowest walk rate among qualified batters at 1.0 percent. He has walked once all season and has more homers than walks with two. His on-base percentage is .192.
  • Adam Dunn's current OPS+ is 106 points higher than last season.
  • The Oakland Athletics are batting .216 collectively.
  • The Pittsburgh Pirates have a team on-base percentage of only .279. They are scoring less than three runs a game this season.
  • Albert Pujols' OPS after 32 games is lower than Adam Dunn's was last year after 32 games. .521 to .583.
  • Mark Reynolds of the Orioles has 36 strikeouts this season and 35 combined hits and walks. If he stays on this pace for all three, it will be his third straight season with more strikeouts than combined hits and walks.
  • Orlando Hudson has already hit five triples but has no doubles. Last year, he hit three triples all season.
  • Seventeen of Joey Votto's 31 hits have been for extra bases.
  • Freddie Freeman leads the majors with a 37.8 line drive percentage but is only batting .283.
  • Kurt Suzuki is third in baseball with a 52.9 percent fly ball rate. None of them have gone over the fence.
  • Almost 45 percent of Josh Hamilton's fly balls have gone over the fence.
  • Gaby Sanchez only has a line drive percentage of 7.6 percent, easily the lowest in the majors.
  • Emilio Bonifacio leads the league with seven bunt base hits. He also has seven infield hits.
  • Derek Jeter has only hit 17 fly balls all season. Five of them have been homers.
  • Carlos Ruiz, who is having a fantastic season for the Phillies, has made contact with 99.1 percent of all pitches he has swung at in the strike zone.
  • Jed Lowrie has only swung at 13.8 percent of pitches out of the strike zone. Now that is patience.
  • Danny Valencia swung at 40.1 percent of pitches out of the strike zone but only 50.5 percent of pitches in the strike zone. He was sent to the minors this week.
  • The three lowest percentages of swings in the strike zone are all Twins: Valencia, Carroll and Mauer.
  • 30 of Emilio Bonifacio's 31 hits have been singles. He has an ISO of .008 and a slugging percentage of .254.
  • But Bonifacio doesn't have the league's lowest slugging percentage. That belongs to Marlon Byrd at .206. Theo really stuck it to his old team.
  • And last but not least, the player with the lowest fWAR is Brennan Boesch at -1.1. Albert Pujols and Chone Figgins are tied for second worse at -0.9.


1 comment:

Bill Miller said...

This is a cool post. I'm glad you pointed out what a great start Beltran is off to. He is so overlooked. And the Orioles poor performance as far as stolen base attempts is concerned show how overrated that aspect of the game is.
Nice work, Bill