November 9, 2007

Loaded

Baseball Reference's Stat of the Day notes that in 2007 Jason Varitek led all major league players in plate appearances with the bases loaded with 32 (he batted only .200).

Mike Lowell was second with 31, and Julio Lugo was not too far down the list with 26.

The Red Sox loaded the bases 239 times in 2007. The second-best American League total was Oakland -- at 185. Fifty-four fewer times. Cleveland was third (178) and the Yankees were fourth (175).

More SOTD fun:
Trying to answer the question of how often a cleanup hitter hits a "natural" grand slam with the 1-, 2-, and 3-spot hitters on base ahead of him

Players with 100 (!) extra base hits in a season
The 100 XBH hits list is solid evidence that despite the greatness of David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, they remain light-years away from Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

8 comments:

Rob said...

Silver Slugger Awards were announced, and guess who wins #4. THE BEDAZZLER!

AL:

1B - Carlos Pena, TB
2B - Placido Polanco, DET
3B - Alex Rodriguez, MFY
SS - Derek Jeter, MFY
OF - Magglio Ordonez, DET
OF - Ichiro, SEA
OF - Vladimir Guerrero, LAA
C - Jorge Posada, MFY
DH - FLO
____________________

NL:

1B - Prince Fielder, MIL
2B - Chase Utley, PHI
3B - David Wright, NYM
SS - Jimmy Rollins, PHI
OF - Carlos Beltran, NYM
OF - Carlos Lee, HOU
OF - Matt Holliday, COL
C - Russell Martin, LAD
P - Micah Owings, ARI


Heh. Silver slugger for pitchers. Owings certainly deserved his, though.

laura k said...

despite the greatness of David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, they remain light-years away from Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig

Lou Gehrig must be the most underrated player of all time. People even forget to mention him when they talk about underrated players!

Amy said...

So it was not just my imagination. Tek really did seem to be always at bat when the bases were loaded. I cannot begin to decipher that page of stats, but I wonder how many times he was up with the bases loaded or at least with RISP and two outs. It seemed to happen again and again (and sadly, rarely did he get the hit or walk in those situations).

allan said...

You can click here for his 2007 batting splits.

About halfway down is his "bases occupied" stats. .227 average with men on base and .286 with the bases clean. A whopping .219 average with RISP and .132 with a man on second.

Here is the entire Sox roster batting with RISP, arranged by AB. Tek had the 7th most AB (not sure where he ranks with PA, probably about the same from looking at everyone's BB totals).

SoSock said...

Very Cool
Every time you post a link to BB Ref. I find myself hanging around there playing for a while. Tweaking your report, trying things of my own. I am something of a stat freak, after all. I still have LL scorebooks piled up in here from 15 - 18 yrs ago.
I guess I'm going to break down and subscribe, altho the last thing I need is something else to distract me from business.
Also cool that I saw 3 ML game this year, and got to see 2 of the Silver Slugger winners hit home runs - Flo & Beltran
Later

Amy said...

If I am reading this page of stats correctly, it looks like Tek batted .162 with two out and RISP. Pretty miserable, which was my sense. What I can't figure out from these statistics is whether he was in that position more than other players generally are. It would make sense, given where he is in the batting order.

I just am not very statistics literate and get overwhelmed by all those numbers on one page.

Thanks for the info!

allan said...

Here are all MLB players in 2007 arranged by most AB with 2 outs and RISP.

Torii Hunter had 93 to top all players.

Varitek was 36th with 74 AB. Yes, he hit .162 and slugged .270.

Amy said...

Thanks, Allan. It does seem that Tek had the lowest BA of the Sox players on that list when there were two outs and RISP.

Next season I have to learn how to use that statistics site. This season I learned how to blog and how to insert HTML text into a post. Next season, bigger and better things!