Monday, January 12, 2004
BITING LOCKE
I'm totally stealing this one from KJR's David Locke, but here's what he did during a commercial break on his show...
He went to ESPN.com and did a little stat split hijinks. Now we know John Olerud had an off year especially in the power realm last year. We also know that there's certain positions on a baseball team where other teams usually have pretty powerful hitters. These stats, though, are just wrong...
If you include the "underqualified" (not enough at-bats, I just realized I don't know how to filter those out) first basemen over all of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball and sort their 2003 statistics by home runs, John Olerud is 33rd with 10 home runs in 539 at-bats. The players that are 34th through 40th had the folowing numbers of at-bats: 330 (JT Snow), 202 (Hee-Seop Choi), 272 (Shawn Wooten), 183 (Brian Daubach), 197 (Julio Franco), 113 (Jeff Liefer), and 254 (Lyle Overbay).
The point is clear: John Olerud had one of the weakest first base bats in baseball last year. Olerud was 33rd. Some teams have TWO FIRST BASEMAN (by ESPN criteria) that had MORE homers than Olerud had in 539 frigging at-bats.
So the question is this, and I need to get to homework, so I can't research it right now: with the twenty or so more home runs that the Mariners should be getting out of the first base position (but aren't getting), can we say that this 20-homer disparity has been overcome by the moves that have been made this offseason?
Still, though, the bottom line is that the Mariners need way more pop out of first base, hence our incessant and futile Sexson in 2004 campaign from earlier this offseason, and the Sports and B's Miggy Hot Stove campaign (you know, to replace the no-bombs at first base with some bombs at short).
He went to ESPN.com and did a little stat split hijinks. Now we know John Olerud had an off year especially in the power realm last year. We also know that there's certain positions on a baseball team where other teams usually have pretty powerful hitters. These stats, though, are just wrong...
If you include the "underqualified" (not enough at-bats, I just realized I don't know how to filter those out) first basemen over all of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball and sort their 2003 statistics by home runs, John Olerud is 33rd with 10 home runs in 539 at-bats. The players that are 34th through 40th had the folowing numbers of at-bats: 330 (JT Snow), 202 (Hee-Seop Choi), 272 (Shawn Wooten), 183 (Brian Daubach), 197 (Julio Franco), 113 (Jeff Liefer), and 254 (Lyle Overbay).
The point is clear: John Olerud had one of the weakest first base bats in baseball last year. Olerud was 33rd. Some teams have TWO FIRST BASEMAN (by ESPN criteria) that had MORE homers than Olerud had in 539 frigging at-bats.
So the question is this, and I need to get to homework, so I can't research it right now: with the twenty or so more home runs that the Mariners should be getting out of the first base position (but aren't getting), can we say that this 20-homer disparity has been overcome by the moves that have been made this offseason?
Still, though, the bottom line is that the Mariners need way more pop out of first base, hence our incessant and futile Sexson in 2004 campaign from earlier this offseason, and the Sports and B's Miggy Hot Stove campaign (you know, to replace the no-bombs at first base with some bombs at short).
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