Please, Alphie, take a walk!

[nyy26wc]

It helped that Lawrence was able to hit some s.

This isn't that good of a response, but I just wanted an excuse to use the Homer icon.

[NetShrine]

Excellent usage Lee! Kudos. It will be copied, here out, for sure.

[NetShrine]

For the record, the AL mark for fewest BB (500 AB+) in a season is 6 - - George Stovall, set in 1909.

NL mark is 9 - Virgil Stallcup in 1949.

Soriano, at this point is 0 BB/82 ABs, I believe............

[nyy26wc]

Your numbers are correct.

Also, in the next week, I will be introducing a new feature on my website. I'm going to have a complete daily staistical report, with lots of sabermetric stats.

[mainsr]

We're at an interesting point in baseball's evolution - the sabermetric stuff that many of us read in Bill James' Baseball Abstracts is finally being put into use, 15+ years later. Some teams - the Yankees and the A's, to name two - understand the importance of OBP. (Empirical studies have shown OBP to be the ONE offensive statistic that is best correlated to run production.) Other clubs don't have a clue; that's why Tony Womack leads off for the Snakes and Cam Bonifay figures he got a steal when nobody else was bidding on Derek Bell and Pat Meares. I give Soriano two years to draw at least 50 walks. If he doesn't, he gets traded to Pittsburgh for Brian Giles (or to Detroit for Gabe Kapler, or to the Angels for Troy Glaus, or the Expos for Vlad Guerrero, to name 3 other organizations that don't understand the value of walks), where he'll be put into the leadoff spot and everyone will scratch their head over why he doesn't score 100 runs.

[NetShrine]

That's why I think it's cool that Rusty Greer is batting lead off for Texas - - maybe it will start a trend?

'Tho, Boggs was an OBA machine, and slow, and he didn't lead the way to OBP over speed at the one slot.

[mainsr]

The Angels used to have Brian Dowling lead off. That's an OBP-over-speed move. It also predates Disney and Mickey Hatcher as batting coach.

[BuzzBuzzard]

Originally posted by NetShrine


Allow me to offer two:

Tony Fernandez, .........


Tony Phillips, ...........

After how many seasons in the majors did it take for these guys to be sefl-taught? The point I am trying to make is that in even these rare occurences it takes a lot of maturity for players to teach themselves any sort of plate discipline if it is not part of their early career make up.

[NetShrine]

Alright, there's no hope for this Soriano guy. Should we have him killed?

[BuzzBuzzard]

It aint hopeless, but just don't assume it to be a given (see also; Ordonez, Rey)

[nyy26wc]

Originally posted by NetShrine


Tony Phillips, in his 1st eight big league seasons, usually had an OBA near .330 - - then, at age 31, he went from a guy who was usually good for 50 BB a year to 100+ a year.

I've taken another look at Phillips's career. The idea that he just learned strikezone judgement at the age of 31, in the 1990 season, is a myth.

Phillips was good at drawing walks before that. Phillips was averaging 11.37 BB/100 PA before that time. That's a rate of 34% above average.

Then, 2 things happened--

1) Phillips's batting average improved, which led to his OBA improving and people starting to notice him more.

2) His walking skills, which were very good before, got even better. In this respect, he was similar to Sosa. It would be a myth to say Sosa just became a power hitter in 1998. Prior to then, he wasn't the power hitter he's been since then, but he had a almost entirely constant record of being a good power hitter before then. That's also what was happening with Phillips.

[mainsr]

It would seem to me that if a guy makes the majors when he's 23, can't take a walk, and then starts getting BB's at 27, he's been coached. When it happens at 31, he's done a good self-assessment and taken matters into his own hands (like Sheffield).

[BuzzBuzzard]

I happened to flip to the Yankee game yesterday right as Soriano got his first big league walk. Props to Soriano and the big smile he had on his face when he got down to 1st. It was fun to watch. The stadium crowd that knew what was going on gave him a big, lasting cheer and even the Yanks hitting coach made it up to the top step to clap.