What We Learned In Week Three
We learned quite a bit last week, so we’ll go with an abbreviated intro and get right to the knowledge.
The Florida Marlins miss the Washington Nationals.
After starting the season 11-1 on the strength of six games against baseball’s worst franchise, the Marlins failed to win a single game this week once they were required to play actual major league franchises. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia both swept the Marlins, as Florida’s offense went into hybernation, posting a .218/.289/.330 line. Opening week sensation Emilio Bonaficio regressed to the mean faster than anyone could have expected, as the Pirates and Phillies held him to a pitiful .190 wOBA. Live by the BABIP, die by the BABIP.
The Boston Red Sox don’t need easy schedules to win a lot of games.
The anti-Marlins, the Red Sox proved that their early season struggles didn’t mean anything, as they went a perfect 6-0 this week to up their current winning streak to 10 games. They did it in impressive fashion, as well, beating the tar out of a decent Orioles team, thumping the Twins in Minneapolis, and then sweeping the Yankees over the weekend. Their offense was ridiculous – .338/.437/.612 over the six games they played. Essentially, they had a line-up of nine Albert Pujols‘ – it’s no wonder they won most of the games rather easily. Jason Varitek was their worst hitter, and he hit .200/.304/.500 for a .348 wOBA. When that’s your worst performance, you’re going to score a lot of runs.
Victor Marintez is back.
After a miserable 2008 season that saw him miss time with injuries and his power mysteriously disappear, Martinez is destroying the ball again. His season line stands at .397/.448/.654, and he’s already launched five home runs in 87 plate appearances – three more than he had all last season. His days as an everyday catcher are mostly behind him, as he’s splitting time between catcher and first base, but he’s showing that his bat will play even when he’s not catching. The Indians have had some problems in the early part of April, but Martinez is not one of them.
Albert Pujols is ridiculous.
Okay, maybe we already knew that, but if hitting .450 with three home runs wasn’t enough, Pujols also decided that he might as well lead the NL in steals. He stole three last week, just for the fun of it, tying him with Nyjer Morgan for most in the league in the last seven days. He’s posting a .489 wOBA, and if you’re wondering how the Cardinals have surged to first place despite some question marks on the pitching staff, just remember that the best player in baseball resides in Missouri. He could retire tomorrow and he’d be a Hall Of Famer. Pujols is just something else.
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Not that it made it any less painful or embarrassing, but the Sox thumped the Twins in Fenway, not Minneapolis.
I was about to say the same thing. No rainouts in the dome, and therefore very few doubleheaders.
i wouldn’t say any of the redsox games against the yankees were won “easily”.
hopefully someday people learn how to pitch to pedroia, i’m so tired of his gargantuan “swing for the moon” every at bat, it can’t possibly continue to work, can it?
You fail to mention that Pujols is doing all this with a .286 BABIP. By the way, how is he doing it given the low BABIP?
he’s the best player in baseball.
BTW, i think albert needs to not retire for another couple years to be eligible for the hall, just as an eligibility threshold, not to say that his accomplishments wouldn’t get him in.
Technically the minimum service time to be eligible for the HOF is 10 years but it apparently isn’t set in stone. Addie Joss was allowed in despite playing only 9 years in the majors. I don’t know if that has to do with the circumstances of his death or not.
The HOF dictates a 10 year minimum Major League service time for eligibility but they let Addie Joss in with only 9 years. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the circumstances of his death or not.
Homeruns aren’t affected by BABIP, of course, so as long as he keeps hitting them over the fence – he can get away with it.
Albert hasn’t been immune to the team-wide infield pop-up craze, and he’s hit a few easy flyballs off the end of the bat, but it seems from watching him day after day that just about every other ball has been put into play at line drive speeds. He’s hit a few grounders that were harder to make plays on than the majority of line drives. Give him just average luck at not hitting the ball right at defenders and his BABIP should probably be in the .380 range.
Oops sorry my computer kept crapping out on me. I didn’t mean to post it twice.
It will be a sad day when the Sportscenter opening headline will be something like, “Albert Pujols caught in PED scandal!”.
It’s going to happen. Mark my words. As talented as Dave is at scouting baseball, I am at deciphering which baseball players use/used PEDs. It takes a similar skill-set, just applied elsewhere.
This, of course, assumes that PEDs gives players increased performance, which it indeed does. Unless you lack the ability to rationalize. Or you are too much of a fan to make a subjective analysis. If that’s the case, welcome to Mars!
If you weren’t sure what level of credibility to give this self-proclaimed expert, the email address he provided was suckitcards@…
Yea.
“This, of course, assumes that PEDs gives players increased performance, which it indeed does.”
I have never seen such an eloquently argued point. The way that you back up your point with a misuse of the word ‘rationalize’ is breathtaking.
albert pujols (ISO)
2001: .281
2002: .247
2003: .308
2004: .326
2005: .279
2006: .340
2007: .241
2008: .296
i don’t see any of the tell-tale jumps in ISO sometimes associated with starting PED use or the sudden drops associated with discontinuing it. I see ordinary year-to-year variation.
when you consider that right in the middle of those years MLB introduced a PED testing regimen, you’d have to believe that albert had been juicing all along, somehow selecting back in 2001 a substance which would go undetected by the MLB testing regimen developed years later, or that he switched seamlessly over to a non-detectable PED.
of course, no one can refute that kind of allegation with absolute certainty, but your self-assessment as an “expert” doesn’t make me question his performance at all.
No one will ever post numbers like Pujols again without being accused of PED use. That doesn’t prove that they’re using PEDs. Ted Williams and Babe Ruth actually existed, and did so before steroids. Guilty of being in the same class of performers? Yep. And that’s been proven.
Of anything else, he’s innocent until proven guilty.
(BTW, I’d like to point out that Pujols plate discipline stats are just otherworldly for a guy that has his sort of power. It makes me wish that we could find out what sorts of contact percentages other greats have had because his are absolutely mind boggling when you consider that he crushes 20% of FB for homers. I wonder whether anyone has ever had a swing like that before. There are no drugs for plate discipline.)
Bonds walked more than he struck out while hitting for considerable power, even ignoring his dubious late career numbers.
Actually, PEDs can improve strike zone command.
I hope Pujols has a career year. It would be nice to have a sense of what people experienced when they saw Babe Ruth just towering over the rest of baseball.
How good is Albert Pujols? I would say he’s currently the best candidate to ever hit .400 (great discipline, few Ks, a lot of HRs where he can hit 1.000), the best in any given year to hit 60 HRs, the best to break DiMaggio’s hitting streak, the best to get to 4,000 hits and 800 HRs.
None of these is likely, but he is the person in baseball who has the best shot at all of them. A-Rod might decline rather quickly, and I’m not sure if I believe him when he said that he quit PEDs in Texas. From Yankees 2006 to Yankees 2007, given the pressure he was under, seems like a PED red-flag.
I would say Ryan Howard has the best shot to hit 60 homers. Especially in that hilarious ballpark he plays in.
Pujols is the best hitter in the world, but he walks too much to ever break DiMaggio’s hitting streak record. Remember the Cardinals play the Cubs fairly often, and Lou already said he’d intentionally walk Pujols every chance he got. Other managers may start to tend more in that direction too, never mind 140 or so opposing pitchers.