Detroit Tigers: Austin Jackson Will Never Be That Good Again

With each passing month of Detroit Tigers center fielder Austin Jackson's career, it becomes ever more apparent that the way he tore the cover off the ball in the first month of his career was not representative of the kind of player he actually is. In fact, he has not come close to the heights he reached in the March/April days of the 2010 season.

Over the first 23 games of his career, Jackson probably did not know what the big deal about being in the Major League was all about; professional baseball, even at the highest level, was incredibly easy.

During that time span, Jackson hit .364/.422/.495 with a .410 wOBA, which is the hitting line for an All-Star and a borderline MVP candidate. Jackson's elite production was aided by an absolutely unsustainable .530 batting average on balls in play and a 37.5 line drive percentage.

For the season, Jackson hit .755/.748/1.000 with a .757 wOBA on line drives, further providing proof that line drives are the hits that help a batter the most, and he hit an inordinate amount of line drives in March and April of 2010. Since April 2010, ended, however, Jackson has yet to have a month where his line drive percentage was higher than 28.0 percent so he has not been able to benefit from as many line drives.

Jackson's opening month of his career was so extremely not indicative of his actual talent that his next-best month, which took place in July, represents a 13.7 percent drop in his batting average (.314), a 15.2 percent decrease in on-base percentage (.358), a 6.9 percent drop in slugging percentage (.461), a 12.4 percent decrease in wOBA (.359), an 18.5 percent decrease in batting average on balls in play (.432), and a 31.5 percent decrease in line drive percentage (25.7 percent).

His other months are an even more precipitous drop-off in his hitting ability as he spent just as much time being a below-average hitter as an above-average one. Last season, the average wOBA for a player was .320; for three months, he was an above-average player, and for three months, he was below-average.

Luckily for Jackson, his above-average months outshone his below-average ones so he still finished the season with a .333 wOBA.

Jackson's struggles as a hitter continued over the first month of this baseball season as he hit only .181/.252/.257 with a .232 wOBA. During those 27 contests, Jackson also posted the lowest batting average on balls in play of his career (.265) so it is no wonder it was another mediocre hitting month for Jackson.

With the way in which Jackson's career path is trending, his biggest struggle will not be trying to duplicate the first 23 games of his career. Instead, the biggest battle he will face is not being a below-average hitter more often than he is an above-average one.

New York Yankee First Baseman Mark Teixeira Will Not Have To Play Catch-Up This Season

For the first time in his three seasons with the New York Yankees, first baseman Mark Teixeira will not have to spend every month of the baseball season after April playing catch-up so he can match his career numbers. Instead, all he has to do for the rest of this regular season is to match the production he had over his great first month of the season.

Over the first month of the season, including a lone game in March, Teixeira posted a batting line of .256/.392/.549 with a .410 wOBA. His .256 batting average and his .273 batting average on balls in play are not as good as his career marks of a .285 batting average and .302 batting average on balls in play, but Teixeira is not letting that keep him from having his best ever opening full month of the season; in 2004 over the course of eight games of a truncated April, Teixeira hit .276/.432/.552 with a .422 wOBA, but there is no certainty that he would have done that for the whole month.

The reason why Teixeira's start to the season has been so excellent has everything to do with his on-base and slugging percentages, percentages that are more indicative of a baseball player's true hitting level than batting average anyway. Riding the strength of a 15.7 walk percentage along with being hit by pitches on three separate occasions, Teixeira has managed to get on base at an MVP-level clip.

In fact, should Teixeira manage to maintain that on-base percentage for the rest of the season, it would give him his third-highest on-base percentage for a season since his career began in 2003.

Teixeira's March and April were also witness to a power explosion, the likes of which he has never experienced over a full March and April. His .293 isolated power is so impressive that should he manage to sustain it, it will be the highest such mark of his career. To sustain his stratospheric isolated power, however, he will need to also keep up a very impressive 20.0 home run to fly ball percentage. Since he has already had a higher home run to fly ball percentage in two previous seasons, 2004 (22.4 HR/FB%) and 2005 (21.2 HR/FB%), it is not outside the realm of possibility that he can do so again.

The 2011 March and April Teixeira put up is a far cry from what he did in his other two seasons as a New York Yankee. In 2009, he started off the season hitting .200/.367/.371 with a .330 wOBA. To get to his season totals, Teixeira had to improve his batting average by 46.0 percent (.292), his on-base percentage by 4.4 percent (.383), his slugging percentage by 52.3 percent (.565), and his wOBA by 21.8 percent (.402).

Last season, Teixeira dug himself an even deeper hole, starting off with a March and April batting just .136/.300/.259 with a .270 wOBA. With such a slow start to the season, Teixeira was required to improved his batting average by 88.2 percent (.256), his on-base percentage by 21.7 percent (.365), his slugging percentage by 85.7 percent (.481), and his wOBA by 35.9 percent (.367). The opening month hole was so deep that even with his stellar hitting the rest of the season, 2010 was his worst hitting season since his rookie year.

As one can see, it has been when Teixeira has put balls in play that he has struggled the most for the Yankees in March and April. Fortunately for him and his team, that has not been a concern this season since he is hitting with such a tremendous amount of power, he will not have to scramble to try to turn an awful start into a productive season.

With the sort of confidence that such a hot start brings with it, we might all be witnessing one of the best seasons Teixeira has had as a professional baseball player.

The Idol and the Idolater

Troy Tulowitzki has never made a secret about his extreme admiration for Derek Jeter. He plays shortstop like Jeter, wears the number 2 jersey in honor of Jeter, and his teammates teased him about his man-crush on Jeter to the point where Tulowitzki bought them all Jeter's Driven cologne as a joke. There is probably nothing about Jeter that Tulowitzki would not want to emulate so it stands to reason that he would also want to match Jeter's production on the field.

Through 530 career games, there is one hitting category in which Tulowitzki has already passed Derek Jeter, but in others he is still chasing his idol. It should come as no surprise that Tulowitzki has a higher slugging percentage than Jeter did in his first 530 career games (.484 to .456). There are a lot of things Jeter does well as a hitter, but hitting for power is not one of them. On the other hand, Tulowitzki has true power hitting capabilities.

When it comes to on-base percentage, Jeter has been statistically significantly better, posting an on-base percentage of .383. to Tulowitzki's .362. Since their walk percentages (percentage of plate appearances that end in a walk) are so similar (Tulowitzki .097;Jeter .091), the main difference between their on-base percentages comes on balls they put into play.

There, Jeter has a sizable advantage with a .364 BABIP to Tulowitzki's .322 BABIP. Jeter's advantage in batting average on balls in play is a direct result of the kind of hitter he is. Groundballs are more likely than fly balls to turn into hits so Jeter benefits from being an extreme groundball hitter while Tulowitzki is more likely to hit a fly ball.

Jeter also has a large advantage in wOBA (.390 to .372).

Once home splits are taken into consideration, Tulowitzki closes the gap, but that has more to do with his extremely hitter friendly home ballpark, Coors Field, than anything else. There, Tulowitzki has hit .309/.382/.523 with a wOBA of .393; Jeter hit .310/.381/.449 with a wOBA of .385. In their respective home ballparks, Tulowitzki's power advantage becomes even more evident.

However, on the road, Jeter re-establishes himself as a better hitter through their first 530 games for the same reasons as in the overall comparison. Jeter has a higher batting average (.318 to 274), on-base percentage (.384 to .346), batting average on balls in play (.373 to .309), and wOBA (.395 to .353). Jeter also has a slightly better slugging percentage (.463 to .449), but that is because of his higher batting average; Tulowitzki's isolated power is still greater (.175 to .145).

As it stands now, Tulowitzki is not as good a hitter as Jeter was to start his career, mainly because of the inability for him to hit as well on the road. Jeter had no such problem and to equal his idol, Tulowitzki will need to come up with a solution for his road hitting woes.

Even though he might be slightly behind Jeter in the hitting department, Troy Tulowitzki can always be proud himself for being a much better fielder. Tulowitzki is a pretty good and above-average defensive shortstop according to ultimate zone rating (UZR) while Jeter is one of the worst defensive shortshops in the majors.

Examiner

If you have been wondering why I have not been updating my blog as often in the past couple of weeks, it is because I have been writing about the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots on Examiner.com.

If you enjoy the articles I write on my blog, then you will love the ones I write on that site. Please visit the links and check out the articles. Thanks.

http://www.examiner.com/x-61649-Boston-Red-Sox-Hater-Examiner

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Give Francoeur What He Wants

If Jeff Francoeur truly desires a trade, then the New York Mets should oblige him and quickly because Francoeur and his agent are obviously suffering from troubling delusions. Francoeur has never deserved to play every day in his career, and the New York Mets would be foolish to allow him to bully them into committing the folly of caving into his demands.

Going back four years, I have written ten posts detailing the struggles Francoeur has experienced on the major league level. Since the time when I gave up beating the dead horse that is the fact Francoeur barely deserves to still be on any major league roster, nothing has changed. By every possible hitting statistic, Francoeur is a below average hitter when allowed to play every day.

In his 3,328 plate appearances, Francoeur has only hit .267/.309/.426. The league average during that time has been .267/.338/.427. While Francoeur is right on average in terms of batting average and slugging percentage, he fails to measure up when it comes to on-base percentage, which is the most important of those three hitting statistics.

Moreover, Francoeur's career wOBA of .314 is lower than the league average wOBA, which is around .335. A team simply is not going to be able to maximize their potential with Francoeur playing right field every day, no matter the above average defense he plays. If every player on a roster hit like Franceour, any team he played for would have a .454 winning percentage.

If Francoeur truly wanted to stick around in the majors, there is only one way in which he can do that; he will need to accept a role as a platoon partner. For his career, Francoeur has only done one thing right and that is to hit left handed pitching well. Under those conditions, Francoeur has hit .300/.343/.484 with a .347 wOBA, reasonably above average. Any other utilization of Francoeur is an unforgivable error since there is so much empirical evidence of the kind of hitter he is.

Against right handers, Francoeur has only hit .255/.295/.403 and a .302 wOBA, which is what players who no longer are in the majors hit. To play Francoeur against a right handed pitcher is akin to just picking a person at random from the stands at Citi Field and having him or her hit; the results will probably be the same.

The sooner Francoeur realizes his only value as a player, the sooner he will see himself actually help a team win instead of costing the team more runs than he provides due to the fact he is more likely to face a right handed pitcher than a southpaw. If Francoeur refuses to accept his role, then he is much too selfish to continue to take up a spot on the Mets' roster.

MLB Trade Round-Up Addition

In an oversight that I hope to correct now, I neglected to mention another major league player for whom a team traded for and from whom the team will receive less production than might be hoped for from the franchise's front office. When the New York Yankees acquired Kerry Wood from the Cleveland Indians, they did so to replace Chan Ho Park in the bullpen and shore up their relief pitching. Instead, the Yankees simply traded one mediocre relief pitcher for another.

One could even make the case that the Yankees actually received an inferior pitcher at the trade deadline. Before the trade was finalized, Chan Ho Park had pitched twenty-seven games for the Yankees and Kerry Wood twenty-three for the Indians. In those games, Park posted a 2.42 strikeout-to-walk ratio (K/BB), superior to Wood's own 1.64 K/BB ratio. Woods has really struggled with walking players in 2010, walking 4.95 hitters per nine innings. For a relief pitcher, such a walk rate is much too high.

The two pitchers were fairly similar in terms of wOBA so there is no real advantage there; Park allowed hitters a .361 wOBA and hitters who faced Wood have a .355 wOBA. Those statistics indicate facing either pitcher made players into above average hitters since an average wOBA is around .335.

Where there was another advantage for Park was in terms of fielding-independent ERA (FIP) and expected fielding-independent ERA (xFIP). Fielding-independent ERA helps you understand how good a pitcher pitched regardless of the defense behind him and expected fielding-independent ERA does the same while normalizing a pitcher's home run rates so pitchers who have been unlucky in the number of home runs given up are not penalized unduly. Expected fielding-independent ERA is one of the best pitching metrics to use to determine a pitcher's future ERA.

Once again demonstrating how closely matched the pitchers' seasons have been, Park's FIP was 5.14 with the Yankees while Wood's was 5.20 with the Indians. However, Park's xFIP of 4.34 was much lower than Wood's xFIP of 5.03. Therefore, we could expect that Park will end the season with better overall numbers than Wood.

The reason why there is more of a difference between Park's xFIP and his FIP is that he had been very unlucky with giving up home runs. There was no reason to believe his home run per fly ball ratio will stay at 15.2%, which is much higher than league average. When Park's home run to fly ball ratio does come down, he will become almost a full run better on the mound.

On the other hand, Wood's home run per fly ball ratio of 11.5% is much closer to league average so the rate at which he has given up home runs is much less likely to change. The same goes for the number of runs he gives up.

With Kerry Wood, the Yankees have not made their bullpen any better since he, like Park before him, cannot be trusted to pitch high leverage innings. The Yankees would best be served using Wood in games whether they either have a sizable lead or a sizable deficit. Otherwise, his propensity to transform every hitter into an above average one would only lead to the Yankees losing games.

Discovering The True B.J. Upton

Tampa Bay Ray center fielder B.J. Upton is the poster child for the notion that after a number of years in an athlete's career, there comes a time when the player's past performances have to outweigh a player's potential when determining just how good the player is. While everyone seems to be contractually obligated to mention all the tools Upton possesses, after 612 games and 2,570 plate appearances, we should be able to get some idea of the production Upton can be expected to provide over the course of his career.

In order to understand which of the seasons Upton had that can best be reconciled with his other ones, I separated each of his individual seasons and then compared them to the rest of the seasons to determine how similar the two data sets were to each other. For example, for Upton's 2004 season, I compared his 2004 numbers to the totals of his 2006-2010 seasons.

There have been two seasons in Upton's career which in no way reflect what kind of hitter he is. The first season is 2006 where in fifty games, Upton hit a measly .246/.301/.291 with a .209 GPA and .279 wOBA, far below what Upton has hit in his other 562 games where his batting line is .263/.351/.420 with a .263 GPA and .354 wOBA.

No matter how poor of a player I might think Upton is, he is definitely not as bad as he was in that fifty-game stretch.

Then again, Upton is nowhere near as great as he was in 2007. Most people point to this career year of Upton as evidence of the player he could or should be, forgetting that even an average player can have one really phenomenal season. The truly elite players are able to string together a number of great seasons.

Upton has failed to do so in a big way. During his career year, Upton hit .300/.386/.508 with a .301 GPA and a .396 wOBA, statistically significantly more impressive than .252/.336/.383 with a .247 GPA and .336 wOBA he hit in all other games.

Upton's 2007 season was an extremely lucky for him, which explains why he has not been able to duplicate it. First of all, he had an extremely high batting average on balls in play compared to his career. That season, it was .393, much higher than his career mark of .335, which is only that high because it includes his 2007 season.

Also, Upton was lucky when it came to his home run to fly ball ratio. Once again, his 2007 mark of 19.8% of his fly balls leaving the park is almost twice as much as his career home run to fly ball ratio of 10.1%. That explains why his slugging percentage was so out of line with his slugging percentage in other years.

To a lesser extent, 2008 also represented a season where he outperformed his true self, at least in one category; every other category was in line with his combined other seasons. His on-base percentage of .383 during the 2008 season is significantly better than his .335 on-base percentage in his other seasons combined. Upton is simply not a player who will consistently have an on-base percentage that high.

He was helped in large part that year by drawing an inordinate number of walks. His walk percentage (walks per plate appearance) that year was 15.2%; in all his other games, it is only 10.0%. Once again, we see Upton fails to match himself and exhibit some consistency when he reaches great heights.

Taking all his seasons and comparisons into consideration, it is safe to assume Upton is a player whose on-base percentage will be within a few ticks of .335, his slugging percentage will be within a few ticks of .405 and his wOBA should hover around .340, combining to make Upton a perfectly average hitter.

Despite what Upton has the potential to do on the baseball field, his production should have the final say and his production says he will never be a star in the majors. He is the average player he has been for his career.

MLB Trade Round-Up

Each season, dozens of trades are made within Major League Baseball, but most of the trades will have very little positive impact on the teams. Here, today, I want to give a rundown of a few teams that think they have obtained better players than they have.

Washington Nationals: Wilson Ramos

I have to admit I almost believed the hype about Wilson Ramos. There was so much talk and so much agreement about the fact that he was going to be a great major league catcher some day and might even take Joe Mauer's place behind the mound if Mauer had to undergo a position change. It was one of the few times I trusted the majority opinion implicitly without doing some research of my own. Never again.

Wilson Ramos is not a can't-miss prospect; he is actually a can't-succeed prospect. Usually, with predictions, I am afraid that I will be proven wrong. With Ramos, I have no such fears.

My prediction of an extremely disappointing career for Ramos is based on his minor league numbers where he has only hit .283/.330/.426 with a gross product average of .255. For those not familiar with gross product average, it is a more accurate variation of OPS and should be read as a batting average. A gross product average of .255 is beyond terrible for the majors. For the minors, it is the number of a player who has no chance of producing on the major league level because of the statistical regression involved in making the leap from an inferior level to a superior one.

Although I have not found a large collection of minor league box scores that I can use to compare to a player's major league statistics, I feel very confident in predicting that only a tiny percentage of players ever significantly outperform their minor league numbers while the other 99% do not. Therefore, with great certainty and with a sample size of 1,519 minor league plate apperances, it is painfully obvious Ramos is the well below average hitter he has shown himself to be.

The Washington Nationals should not expect him to be their catcher of the future unless they enjoy costing themselves runs at the plate.

San Diego Padres: Miguel Tejada

Trading for Miguel Tejada in 2006 would have made sense. Trading for him in 2010 is inexplicable and simply should not have been done.

Tejada is thirty-six years old now and in the midst of the worst season of his career since he became a full-time player. He is only hitting .267/.308/.358 with a wOBA of .294. For a reference point on wOBA, which should be read like on-base percentage, the average for it is around .340, well above Tejada's mark. Nothing about any of Tejada's hitting statistics indicate a rebound is in the future, either, so he will just be carrying his below average bat to the Padres.

Hopefully, the Padres are not expecting Tejada to do anything to help them get to the playoffs. It is more likely he will do more to keep them out of the playoffs.

New York Yankees: Lance Berkman and Austin Kearns

Lance Berkman is not a terrible player, but the Yankees need to be especially careful in the way they choose to deploy him. I first wrote about the deficiency of Lance Berkman the hitter a few years ago when I listed him among the switch hitters who are significantly worse in one side of the batter's box than the other. Since then, nothing has changed.

Berkman is still a player who is average when facing left handed pitchers (.343 wOBA) and an elite hitter when facing right handed pitching (.377 wOBA). He has seen a decline in his overall production over the past three seasons, but he should still be able to hit well enough against righties to give the Yankees value.

Under no circumstances should he be allowed to hit against left handed pitching. It will only end badly and will cost the Yankees runs. League average is nothing to encourage in your team's lineup.

Trading for Austin Kearns was a little bit of a head scratcher. True, he is a little bit better batter against left handed pitching (.353 wOBA) versus right handed pitching (.340 wOBA), but he has really not hit well against left handers since 2007. His last three wOBAs when facing a portsider have been .240 wOBA in 2008, .287 wOBA in 2009, and a .315 wOBA in 2010, albeit in not the optimal sample size, but still troubling.

Then again, Kearns has not been too much of a productive hitter overall these past few seasons so his struggles against left handed pitching is most likely just a microcosm of his decline even though he has had a bit of a resurgence this season.

Overall, it is hard to envision Kearns helping the Yankees for the rest of the season.

St. Louis Cardinals: Jake Westbrook

Far be it from me to question the ability of the best pitching coach in the majors, Dave Duncan, to turn around Jake Westbrook and make him into a better pitcher, but Duncan certainly has his work cut out for him.

Right now, Westbrook is mired in the worst season of his career. He does not strike out enough batters (5.15 K/9 IP), he walks too many hitters (3.10 BB/9 IP), and he has given up too many home runs (1.06 HR/9 IP) to be effective with any team. As expected with those poor statistics, his expected fielding-independent ERA of 4.41 is the highest it has ever been.

Even a change to the National League where Westbrook will no longer have to face a designated hitter will not make that much of a difference.

Instead of solidifying the Cardinals' rotation for a postseason push, Westbrook will only be the fourth best pitcher on the staff behind Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, and Jaime Garcia.

A Not So Bold Prediction

If I may, I want to give a word of advice to everyone who is currently waiting with bated breath as Alex Rodriguez chases his 600th home run, which will make him only the seventh player in major league history to accomplish that feat. Save the battery for your digital cameras, rest your legs by sitting down when Rodriguez comes to bat, and do not waste your DVR space by recording the Yankees' games. Based on Rodriguez's home run production this season, he will play in at least three more games before hitting his milestone home run.

Rodriguez has amassed 395 plate appearances and hit sixteen home runs this season while playing in ninety games. This output puts his home run rate at one home run per 24.7 plate appearances and in ninety games, Rodriguez has found himself in the batter's box 4.4 times per game.

Since Rodriguez's 599th home run, he has had ten plate appearances and unsurprisingly considering his season's home run history, he has not hit another one. Due to the fact he needs around fifteen more plate appearances to be due to hit a round-tripper and that he will need around three and one half games to reach that mark, Rodriguez's 600th home run should not occur before Wednesday against the Cleveland Indians.

Although Rodriguez does hit home runs closely together some times, he has been just as likely this season to go a good amount of games between blasts. This time he will more than likely have to play through at least three complete games before joining the exclusive 600 home run list.

In Defense of Jorge Posada

A.J. Burnett may not have explicitly stated he would feel more comfortable pitching to Jose Molina over Jorge Posada in the playoffs, but due to his abysmal performance against the Boston Red Sox on August 22nd, where over five innings he gave up nine earned runs and three home runs while pitching to Posada, the prevalent thinking is that Burnett is a significantly better pitcher when Molina is his battery mate. In fact, the popular opinion is so widely accepted that even New York Yankees manager, Joe Girardi, has fallen prey to it. Therefore, Girardi is removing Posada, the 7th most valuable hitter on the Yankees roster according to win probability added, in favor of Molina, who actually does more damage to the Yankees than he does to the opposing team when he bats, under the hope Burnett will perform better on the mound.

At first blush, Burnett's splits with Posada and Molina seem to support Girardi's thinking. Burnett has pitched fifteen starts with Posada behind the plate and eleven when Molina was making the pitching calls. With neither catcher did Burnett pitch deep into games, averaging just a little over six innings no matter which one of the two was receiving. However, there the similarities end. When Posada was his catcher, Burnett had a fielding-independent ERA of 4.84, but his fielding-independent ERA with Molina was over a run less at 3.68. This difference indicates that for every nine innings Burnett pitched, he gave up 1.16 fewer runs with Molina than Posada.

Furthermore, Burnett was a much better strikeout pitcher with Molina, striking out 10.10 batters per nine innings compared to striking out only 7.26 batters per nine innings. By striking out more batters, Burnett pitched to less contact, which helps explain why his gross product average (GPA) against [(OBP*1.8 + SLG/4); read like a batting average] is so much lower with Molina (.225 GPA to .263 GPA).

By now, you the reader probably agree with Girardi in thinking the Yankees have a better chance of winning if Burnett is allowed to pitch to Molina. I caution you against reaching that conclusion. We have already seen what the statistics say at first blush and now we must delve a little deeper.

The disparity between Burnett pitching to Molina and Burnett pitching to Posada is easily explained away by the quality of opponents faced. Burnett's pitching numbers with Posada suffer from the fact that Posada caught all four of Burnett's starts against the Boston Red Sox, the second most prolific offense in the regular season. In his four starts against the Red Sox, Burnett had an abominable fielding-independent ERA of 7.95, allowed the Red Sox hitters to have a .336 GPA against him, gave up 2.65 home runs per nine innings, and had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 1.00. These four starts completely skew the true picture of what kind of pitcher Burnett is with Posada.

Once those starts are taken out of the equation, the truth is revealed, which is that Burnett is almost the same pitcher with Posada and Molina. His fielding-independent ERA drops to 4.02 in games caught by Posada, which is only .34 runs above his fielding-independent ERA with Molina. The only significant advantage that remains is Burnett's strikeouts per nine innings pitched; even without the Boston Red Sox games, Burnett still struck out only 7.31 batters per nine innings pitched. However, since the now removed Red Sox games accounted for 16 of the 46 walks he gave up with Posada catching him, the strikeout-to-walk ratios are not that dissimilar (2.10 K/BB with Posada to 2.66 K/BB with Molina).

Burnett is not a good enough pitcher with Molina to warrant Girardi's refusal to allow Posada to catch him. No matter who catches him, Burnett is still the same pitcher. What really matters in how he performs is which team he is facing. If the Yankees really want to ensure their postseason success, it might be best to simply disallow A.J. Burnett from pitching to the Red Sox should the occasion arise. As if Yankee fans didn't have enough reasons to root against the Boston Red Sox already, they have one more; the Red Sox are Burnett's kryptonite.

Still Some Value In Lidge

Philadelphia Phillies relief pitcher Brad Lidge has been a disappointment to the sport of baseball over the last several months on a couple of levels. The first level is a fairly obvious one; during the 2009 regular season, Lidge failed to garner a save in eleven of his forty-two save opportunities. For a supposedly elite closer, that is simply inexcusable. Closers are supposed to be the relief pitcher a team can put the most trust in; they give the team confidence that they can get three outs before sacrificing the lead. Lidge betrayed that trust and has left the Philadelphia Phillies in the precarious position of not having a reliable closer entering the postseason.

The second level of disappointment Lidge has been responsible for is the way he Jedi-mind tricked the Philadelphia Phillies into giving him a three-year, $37.5 million contract extension in the middle of the 2008 season. I say that Lidge tricked the Phillies into doing so because I do not want to believe the Phillies would give such a large amount of money for a player who is not only not even elite at his position, but whose career is the epitome of inconsistency. Instead, I choose to believe that the Philadelphia Phillies realize that closer is the most fungible and unreliable position in the sport of baseball. Success in one year from a closer is no guarantee of success in the following year. Except for a couple of closers playing in the sport today, Mariano Rivera and Jonathan Papelbon, there is no one else a team should lock up for more than one to two years at a time.

Still, there is some value left to be found in Brad Lidge in the upcoming postseason, value the Phillies can squeeze out like the last little bit of toothpaste left in the tube. However, they cannot think of Lidge like the closer they are paying him to be. Instead, Lidge should be looked at like an old black and white television set that relies on antennas to acquire reception. When the antennas are in the perfect position and the weather outside is clear, the reception will come in crystal clear. Any variation on that will produce only static. For Lidge, the perfect position for his antennas is saving games where he has at least a three-run lead in the ninth inning.

Saves can be broken down into three categories; there are the three-run saves, the two-run saves, and the one-run save. During the regular season, Lidge had fourteen three-run save opportunities, thirteen two-run save opportunities, and fifteen one-run save opportunities. As the pressure mounted, there was an indirect correlation with how Lidge performed.

In three-run save opportunities, Lidge pitched the best he did all season. He had a 3.66 fielding-independent ERA, 4.00 K/BB ratio, 1.38 HR/9 IP and only allowed batters to hit .269 BA/.321 OBP/.423 SLG/.250 GPA. While those numbers do not top his best seasons, they are a sight better than what he did when the lead was not as large. During two-run save opportunities, he had a 5.42 fielding-independent ERA, 2.43 K/BB ratio, 2.31 HR/9 IP, and .256 BA/.353 OBP/.512 SLG/.287 GPA. Lidge's numbers increased and decreased in all the wrong categories. Then there are Lidge's one-run save opportunities. In those, the only thing that would have classified him as a major league pitcher is his paycheck. His fielding-independent ERA was an abominable 7.33, his K/BB ratio was only 1.08, 2.23 HR/9 IP, and every hitter who came up to plate turned into a MVP as evidenced by his allowing batters to hit .386 BA/.486 OBP/.596 SLG/.368 GPA.

As his statistics suggest, the Phillies need to put Lidge in the least pressure-packed situations if they want him to perform adequately. This does not necessarily mean hiding him in games where the Phillies are being blown out, but he does need to pitch with a sizable lead. Also, it is important to remember no matter how effective Lidge may look under the circumstances I have outlined, the Phillies should not trust him again when the game is truly on the line. There is still some value left in Lidge, but there is not that much.

Not Worth The Headache

All men are not created equal. Among us, the talented and the genius and the rich and the beautiful are allowed to take more liberties, given more freedoms, and get away with more antisocial behavior than their more average counterparts. The same rule applies to the world of professional athletes. Sports franchises are more than willing to employ and pay excellent money to criminals or disruptive influences in the locker room as long as the players are producing at a high level on the field and are helping the team to victories. However, there always comes a time with these players when their production on the field is outweighed by all the negative aspects that come with having them on the team. The latest in a long line of players whose cons eventually outweighed their pros is Milton Bradley, major league outfielder who was recently suspended for the rest of the season by the Chicago Cubs for detrimental conduct.

The Chicago Cubs can call it whatever they want, but the real reason they have suspended Milton Bradley and will seek to trade him in the off-season is simply buyer's remorse. They committed the cardinal sin of giving a player of Bradley's personality make-up a long-term contract (three years, $30 million contract) and now are seeking to correct the situation. When dealing with headaches, it is best to keep them on a series of one-year contracts for below market value compensation. By not doing so, they give the athlete reinforcement that his behavior will be accepted and that the team sees no reason for him to change, leading him to inevitably act out.

Fortunately for the Cubs, the contract was structured so that if they can trick a team into taking on Bradley and his onerous salary, they will have only been on the hook for $9 million of the $30 million; there was a signing bonus of $4 million and a 2009 salary of $5 million. Not only will they be getting rid of a player who is not worth the money, but they will be doing something almost every sports franchise wants to do in these economic climates. That is, the Cubs want to cut payroll and Milton Bradley has given them the perfect excuse to do so.

With his latest disparaging comments about the Chicago Cubs, he forced the Cubs to re-evaluate just how valuable a player he is and he did so at the worst time. This season marks the worst Bradley has had since 2004 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Although his on-base percentage has been a very respectable .378, as a corner outfielder, his job is to provide power to the line-up and there he has failed miserably. His .397 slugging percentage ranks near the bottom of all qualified hitters, making him one of the more overpaid players in baseball for the paltry value he is providing. Even more troubling is his isolated power (slugging average minus batting average) of .140, his lowest such total since 2002. Isolated power is a reliable indicator of much of a true power hitter a player is because it only counts extra base hits; it also allows one to observe the start of a decline in a player's production. Bradley's precipitous drop in isolated power from 2008 to 2009 (.242 to .140) most likely foreshadows the fact his power is a thing of the past, making him and his albatross of a contract even more of a liability for the Cubs. They will never get their money's worth out of Bradley.

Truth be told, the Cubs should have never given Milton Bradley that much money, but they have a history of overpaying free agent players coming off of great statistics in contract years. Although he may get a lot of media attention, Bradley is nothing more than an okay player, deserving of okay player money, which is why several teams have given up on him in the past. If he were better, then he would have stayed with teams longer instead of playing for seven teams over ten seasons. The Cubs are just the seventh team to figure out the obvious; Milton Bradley's production is not worth the extra headaches of having him on the roster.

The Delicate Genius

Mike Mussina, especially during his tenure with the New York Yankees, has earned the classification of a delicate genius. The origins of the moniker no doubt arise from the fact that he is such a creature of habit and routine that any deviation from it decreases his effectiveness on the mound. One popular anecdote regarding how much Mussina hates any sort of change is how he handled the Yankees' trip to Japan to start the regular season in 2004. Instead of trying to experience a new culture, Mussina spent the duration of the trip in his hotel room. In addition, rain delays are his kryptonite because they ruin his precious schedule and throw him off his game and when Mussina's fielders commit an error behind him, he reacts as if they did it on purpose in order to aggravate him. Perhaps, though, Mussina's reputation as a delicate genius is undeserved.

A poorly kept secret in baseball is that the same pitchers who are good at preventing earned runs are equally as adept at preventing unearned runs. Following that logic, it would stand to reason that if Mussina really was affected by everything not going as he had so carefully planned it, he would be a considerably worse pitcher when his defense allowed a baserunner to reach base on an error.

Before Mussina became a Yankee, he pitched ten seasons for the Baltimore Orioles. In those ten seasons, no baserunner reached base on an error in 228 of his starts while there was an error committed while he was pitching in sixty starts. During the starts with an error, Mussina's fielding independent ERA (3.99 to 3.71), gross product average allowed (.238 GPA to .227 GPA), and home runs allowed per nine innings (1.12 to .89) increased slightly, but none of the increases were statistically significant. Actually, Mussina had a statistically significantly better walk rate when there was an error committed; in those games his walks per nine innings was 1.85 and when there was no error, Mussina's walk rate was 2.16.

As a Yankee pitcher, the story is similar to his tenure with the Orioles. There were 167 error-free starts for Mussina and forty-seven starts where there was at least one error. Again, Mussina's fielding independent ERA (3.83 to 3.62) and home runs allowed per nine innings (1.05 to 0.98) increased, but not to any level that was statistically significant. Overall, Mussina is the same pitcher whether or not there is an error committed behind him.

Whether it be Mussina's anal retentiveness or the fact he can't throw a fastball in the upper 90s, he has become one of the more popular baseball players to degrade and demean. The only problem is that his inability to cope with change does not make the fact he has been a very good pitcher for a very long time, and as a result of his success in professional baseball, he deserves a little more respect.

The Issue With Pitch Counts

As past baseball research discovered the connection between high pitch counts and increase in injuries to pitchers and loss of effectiveness, more and more attention has been paid to tracking the pitch counts of pitchers across all levels of baseball. Any baseball fan, casual or hardcore, would be hard pressed to watch a baseball game being telecast without some mention being made of how many pitches have been thrown by a particular player with one hundred pitches being the benchmark for when many people think the manager should start thinking about taking the pitcher out of the game. While tracking pitch counts does represent some progress in following the game of baseball, no longer is it enough and it is time for everyone, who considers himself or herself to be a baseball aficionado, to start paying more attention to how many pitches are thrown per inning.

Total pitch counts, like other counting statistics, are set up to deceive. Simply knowing that a pitcher threw 112 pitches tells nothing. We still need to know how the pitcher arrived at that number of pitches. Did the pitcher throw a complete game or did his manager foolishly allow him to throw 112 pitches in only five innings? Furthermore, we are unable to make any sort of educated guess at how well the pitcher pitched. However, if we had known how many pitches per inning had been thrown, no chapters would be missing from the story we could tell.

In order to illustrate how much more important pitches per inning are than total pitch counts, I took, for the 2007 season, the five pitchers with the most starts from each of the thirty baseball franchises and ran correlations that allowed me to discover how closely tied pitchers per inning and total pitch counts are to batting average, on-base percentage, slugging average, gross product average (OBP*1.8+SLG/4), fielding independent ERA, strikeouts per nine innings, walks per nine innings, and home runs per nine innings. When there were two pitchers for a team that had the same number of starts, I used the statistics for the pitcher with more innings as a starter.

Overall, the correlations were overwhelmingly stronger for pitches per inning pitched to the aforementioned eight statistics than they were for total pitch counts. Of the eight baseball statistics I used for comparison, total pitch counts only had a stronger correlation for the category of home runs per nine innings (.187 to .148); that was also the closest any of the correlations were to each other. Decisively would be the operative word to describe the victory pitches per inning had over total pitch counts.

Individually, it was much of the same story. Of the 150 pitchers I looked at, only ten (Randy Wolf, Jorge Sosa, Miguel Batista, Justin Germano, Kyle Kendrick, Vicente Padilla, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Gil Meche, Brian Bannister, Nate Robertson, and Matt Garza) had five or more of the eight statistics that were more strongly correlated with pitch counts than pitches per inning.

As the average of 16.1 pitches thrown per inning for the 150 pitchers demonstrates and any pitcher will also tell you, pitchers are only conditioned to throw a certain number of pitches in a row. That number is usually somewhere between 13-16 pitches and with each successive pitch thrown, the pitcher will lose effectiveness and will most likely be more prone to injury. Since all of the correlations for pitches per inning are positive, the more pitches thrown per inning, the worse the pitcher becomes.

Armed with this knowledge, a baseball enthusiast will be able to predict how well, or poorly as the case may be, a pitcher is going to do when he throws a high number of pitches (17 and above) inning after inning. Also, if a pitcher inexplicably suffers a decline in performance, look first at his pitches per inning to see if he is struggling more to get runners out. More than likely, he is. Total pitch counts have had their day and now it is time to make room for pitches per inning.

Correlations are as follows with pitches per inning first and total pitches second: batting average (.579 to -.417); on-base percentage (.671 to -.372); slugging percentage (.517 to -.407); gross product average (.631 to -.416); fielding independent ERA (.609 to -.363); strikeouts per nine innings (.148 to .187); walks per nine innings (.756 to -.217); home runs per nine innings (.419 to -.282).

Clemens and Steroids

This whole article presupposes that Roger Clemens started using steroids or human growth hormone (HGH) or any other performance enhancing chemicals in 1998 and continued using these illegal supplements throughout the rest of his career, which so far seems to have ended after the 2007 season. Following this premise, Clemens then had fourteen clean seasons and ten seasons where he was juicing. Now, it is already apparent that Clemens never had the complete body transformation Bonds experienced nor did he ever become a superhuman pitcher, but it is important to try to establish where and if Clemens was helped by the illegal supplements if he indeed took them.

After looking at Clemens' 623 pitching starts, one notices immediately that the steroids did not make him a better pitcher. Actually, in his last ten seasons, Clemens failed to match five of the most important pitching statistics in a statistically significant manner: his fielding-independent ERA (3.18 to 3.53), walks allowed per nine innings (2.74 BB/9 IP to 3.14 BB/9 IP), home runs allowed per nine innings (.60 HR/9 IP to .76 HR/9 IP), strikeout-to-walk ratio (3.12 K/BB to 2.73 K/BB), and average innings pitched per start (7.3 IP to 6.4 IP). Even though these drops in performance are not as steep and sheer as some of the mountains Bear Grylls scales on Man vs. Wild, the only reason the numbers are even as close as they are is because Clemens spent three seasons in the National League, or as some have put it, the junior varsity league.

Once the National League seasons are removed from the equation, the differences do indeed become slightly larger in favor of Clemens' first fourteen seasons, more evidence as to why the National League is a far less scary place for pitchers, especially since there is no designated hitter there. Instead of the second numbers in the parentheses in the preceding paragraph, the statistics change to 3.71 fielding-independent ERA, 3.27 BB/9 IP, .86 HR/9 IP, and 2.65 K/BB. Therefore, most of Clemens' resurgence in the second part of his career had more to do with the league he pitched in than any increase in his ability to get hitters out.

If there is any way steroids or HGH helped Clemens, it was only to lengthen his career. The supplements certainly helped him in no other way, not even allowing him to maintain the numbers he put up in the earlier part of his career.

Untimely Barry Zito-Mark Buehrle Post

Scott Boras is without a doubt this earth's version of Grima Wormtongue. Known as a baseball superagent, Boras is allowed entrance to the doors of general managers across Major League Baseball, and he uses his time with them to whisper falsehoods about the worth of the players he represents. Most of the time he whispers these misleading statements enough times into the general managers' ears that they begin to believe his astronomical contract demands and at least one agrees to pay at least close to what Boras tells them. One example among many is the way in which Boras hoodwinked the San Francisco Giants into giving Barry Zito a seven-year, $126 million contract, ostensibly for him to become the staff's ace. Even being a Barry Zito fan since he was one of the big three pitchers for the Oakland Athletics (along with Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder), I knew the contract was exorbitant, and during the season when the Chicago White Sox provided Mark Buehrle with a contract extension on July 8, 2007 worth $56 million over four years, the money handed out to Zito became even more farcical.

What makes Zito's contract make the Giants look as if they do not understand how to correctly identify a player's worth is that Barry Zito and Mark Buehrle are basically the same pitcher with basically the same skill set and player profile. Both pitchers are left-handed and possess similar statistics plus less than a year separates them in age.

Before Barry Zito signed his albatross of a contract, he had started a total of 222 games. In those games, Zito allowed hitters to bat .232 BA/.309 OBP/.365 SLG/.230 GPA. In staying just with those numbers that Zito has the most control over, he amassed a 4.32 fielding-independent ERA, 6.90 K/9 IP, 3.52 BB/9 IP, .93 HR/9 IP, and 1.96 K/BB.

On the other hand, before Mark Buehrle signed his John Hancock to his newest contract extension, he had started 221 games, only one less than Zito. He allowed opposing batters to hit .267 BA/.308 OBP/.416 SLG/.242 GPA; during those games, he also compiled a 4.31 fielding-independent ERA, 5.21 K/9 IP, 2.02 BB/9 IP, 1.05 HR/9 IP, and 2.58 K/BB.

As one can see, Zito and Buehrle have only a .01 difference between their fielding-independent ERAs and they have reached their numbers in slightly different ways. Zito gave up less home runs than Buehrle and Buehrle countered that disadvantage by having a better strikeout-to-walk ratio so they are equally good at controlling the parts of pitching for which a pitcher is most responsible. A large part of the reason why hitters put up a higher slugging percentage against Buehrle than they did against Zito comes down to the ballpark effects of the stadiums where they pitched. Buehrle's home stadium, U.S. Cellular Field, is a moderate hitter's park and Zito's former home stadium, McAfee Coliseum, is a slight pitcher's park, which means it is easier for batters to get extra base hits against Buehrle just like they have done.

Another reason why the White Sox's deal with Mark Buehrle makes more sense and is a more intelligent deal than the one the Giants gave Barry Zito, besides the fact the White Sox will be paying Buehrle an average of $4 million less per year, is the length of the contract. Neither pitcher looks like they will have a long, productive career and at least the White Sox will avoid paying huge sums of money to a pitcher no longer worth his contract.

Tulowitzki Updated

Having his work cut out for him was how I described the quest I gave to Troy Tulowitzki without his apparent knowledge or permission, the quest to match his idol Derek Jeter's offensive career at the least and hopefully to be able to post numbers that surpass Jeter's own. Eighty-five games after I first matched Tulowitzki's career to Jeter's, Tulowitzki is still managing to hold his own against Jeter, although he is falling behind Jeter slightly.

Whereas after the first ninety-five games of the two shortstops' careers, their hitting statistics were near mirror images of each other, after the first one hundred seventy contests in which they played, Jeter has opened up a slight advantage over Tulowitzki. Through Jeter's first one hundred seventy games, Jeter hit .319 BA/.373 OBP/.439 SLG/.277 GPA and Tulowitzki hit .284 BA/.352 OBP/.454 SLG/.272 GPA. Tulowitzki clearly has more power as evidenced by his isolated power of .170, which is far and away above Jeter's isolated power of .120. Of course, Jeter can make the retort he is a better overall hitter than Tulowitzki because his gross product average (a more accurate version of OPS) is five points higher.

Truthfully, Tulowitzki is probably not even that close to Jeter as a hitter. Playing for the Colorado Rockies and therefore playing the majority of his games at Coors Field already gives him a decided headstart over Jeter, whose home ballpark is not exactly kind to right-handed hitters, and the fact Tulowitzki could not translate that headstart into a clear victory is evidence of Tulowitzki's inferiority. Due to the Rockies employing a humidor suppresses the run-scoring environment so Coors Field is not quite the launching pad it used to be does not mean it has stopped favoring hitters completely. In fact, when Tulowitzki's home-road splits for his first one hundred seventy games are calculated, his gross product average for home games is 25.3% above his gross product average for road games (.302 to .241).

As I stated earlier Yankee Stadium does not help out right-handed hitters and Jeter's home-road splits during the one hundred seventy contests lends further credence to this statement. Jeter's gross product average on the road was actually superior to his home gross product average, 15.2% superior (.296 to .257). Being such a productive hitter on the road is an impressive feat because not every ballpark is created equally so it is immensely more difficult to perform well when a hitter has different backdrops and light angles and other variables to contend with.

If Tulowitzki wants to be as good as Jeter, he will have to prove his good hitting statistics are not because of his home park; hitting better on the road is a must for him. Luckily, he has a long career ahead of him to figure out how to do so.

Where Pitches per Plate Appearances Matters Most (Pt. II)

Last year during my exhaustive research into finding out where pitches per plate appearance matters most, I made the prediction that the correlation data I uncovered during the 2006 season probably followed the same patterns for every baseball season no matter the year or the era. With the 2007 regular season having been completed for more than a month now, I figured it was finally time to put my spreadsheet where my mouth was and see if a prediction I made turned out to be correct.

Once I inputted the last player's data and looked at all the correlation coefficients, I discovered that I had been right in making a prediction, although I could not see I was exactly surprised by the results since they only made sense. Once again, the data set with the highest positive correlation to pitches per plate appearance was a statistic I came up with last year, which was to take the difference between a player's on-base percentage and his batting average. The correlation coefficient was not as high this year as last year, but at .745, it is still nothing to sneeze out and still a remarkably high correlation once you think about the different variables that result in a hitter getting on base.

Not only was the same data set the highest both years, but the correlation coefficients for the other six data sets were in the exact same order for each year. Coming in with the second highest correlation was weighted on-base average (.274) and the other correlation coefficients ranked in this order: gross product average (.265); isolated power (.209); slugging percentage (.099); batting average (-.187). One should remember when looking at numbers that the closer the correlation coefficient is to zero then the less of a relationship the variables have with each other, the closer the correlation coefficient is to 1 the more directly proportional the variables are, and the closer the correlation coefficient is to -1, the more inversely proportional the variables in question are.

Impatient hitters, or hitters with a low number of pitches seen per plate appearance, are making themselves less productive by keeping their on-base percentages lower than it should be in three ways. The first way is these players are putting too much faith in their ability to hit safely as a way to get on base. No player whose batting average makes up most of his on-base percentage is going to be a consistent player. In addition, by swinging at balls early in the count take away the option of drawing a walk, almost as if a walk is not a manly or exciting enough way to get on base. Lastly, there is no guarantee a player is swinging at the best possible pitch for him to drive when he puts the ball into play too early, which is why isolated power (slugging average minus batting average) has a higher correlation coefficient than both slugging percentage and batting average. The more patient hitters will have the most extra base hits.

The majority of professional ballplayers in any sport are less than intellectually inclined and probably do not understand much statistical analysis so it is up to baseball teams, who are interested in making their players as best as they can be, to let their employees know how to increase productivity. Taking a lot of pitches will not improve a hitter's batting average, but it will allow him to improve their on-base percentage in relation to what his batting average has always allowed him to achieve.

Coco Crisp and Johnny Damon

When the Boston Red Sox replaced Johnny Damon with Coco Crisp before the 2006 regular season after Damon defected to the New York Yankees, the trading for and signing of Crisp made perfect sense. The Red Sox smartly refused to match either the number of years or the number of dollars Damon received from the Yankees (four-year, $52 million), fearing due to Damon's style of play that he would break down before the end of four years and be unable to earn his monstrous contract. Therefore, the Red Sox went out and found a cheaper, younger version of Johnny Damon, signing Crisp to a three-year, $15.5 million contract after he was already promised $1.75 million for the 2006 season.

Previous to the 2006 season, Johnny Damon had amassed a batting line of .290 BA/.350 OBP/.431 SLG/.265 GPA, statistics Coco Crisp had matched with his own batting line of .287 BA/.326 OBP/.424 SLG/.253 GPA and Crisp was and still is six years younger than Damon, making it more likely he would be able to sustain his level of production longer than Damon. Or so the Red Sox thought.

Unfortunately, Coco Crisp has failed to live up to expectations. Not only did Crisp only play in 104 regular-season games, but when he only hit an anemic .264 BA/.317 OBP/.385 SLG/.239 GPA, his worst hitting season since he played thirty-two games in 2002 when he was twenty-two years old. At the same time, Damon hit .285 BA/.359 OBP/.482/.282 GPA, making one wonder if the Red Sox had made a mistake in letting him go.

Then the second season of their respective tenures with their new teams began, the 2007 for those keeping count at home, something interesting occurred, not with Coco Crisp but with Johnny Damon. Crisp had another sub-par season when compared to his pre-2006 numbers, but now looks like the best he has to offer, when he only hit .268 BA/.330 OBP/.382 SLG/.244 GPA. Damon, though, experienced a drop-off in production, only hitting .270 BA/.351 OBP/.396 SLG/.257 GPA.

Factoring in each player's two seasons, there is no statistically significant difference in their batting averages, on-base percentages, slugging percentages, or gross product averages so neither team has gotten good performances from either of their outfielders or at least the production either team predicted they would receive.

If a winner has to be compared now between the Red Sox and the Yankees in this lackluster contest, it would have to go to the Red Sox for the simple fact they are devoting less payroll for Crisp's worthlessness at the plate while the Yankees are grossly overpaying for Damon. Then again, if Crisp is pushed out by Jacoby Ellsbury like the playoffs gave us a glimpse of happening, by the end of the 2009 season, maybe the Yankees will be the winners.

I'm Back (And Disappointed)

During my too long hiatus from this blog, I had multiple opportunities to become frustrated with the nation's sports coverage, leading me to hit the mute button almost every time I wanted to watch a sporting event if I did not want to end up banging my head against the wall. Case in point is the unnecessary uproar that was caused by Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Micah Owings going 4-for-5 with two home runs on August 18th in a contest against the Atlanta Braves. In the coverage concerning Owings's exploits, there was an overabundance of shock and surprise about what was neither shocking nor surprising, even if Owings does happen to be a pitcher.

Anyone willing to do his due diligence concerning Micah Owings or talk intelligently about that particular baseball game would have known that when Owings has a good day at the plate, the achievement should not be overly praised. Instead, it should be expected when you take into account the fact Owings has been both an outstanding pitcher and hitter throughout his baseball life.

When Owings was a freshman at Georgia Tech, he led the Yellow Jackets with a .593 slugging percentage, partially made up of the fifteen home runs he hit. As an encore during his sophomore season, also at Georgia Tech, Owings again led the Yellow Jackets with a .549 slugging percentage (15 home runs). Then, when he played his junior season with the Tulane Green Wave, Owings led that team with a .733 slugging percentage (18 home runs). These slugging percentages show that Owings possesses the quality of power hitting and knows how to handle a bat even if he did put up those numbers using an aluminum bat.

Only a person who does not know better would cry out from the mountaintop about Owings's two home runs. The rest of us, who know what Owings is capable of, are aware the real shocking event occurs when Owings has a terrible day at the plate.