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Ray Flowers

By The Numbers

October 14, 2009 6:27pm CDT

"Numbers constitute the only universal language."
-- Nathanael West, Author/Screenwriter


0: The number of right fielders who hit .300 with 30 homers and 100 RBI (the closest was Kendry Morales, who appeared in 12 games in right in 2008 and therefore may have had eligibility there this season). As for full-time right fielders, only Andre Ethier reached the power numbers with 31 homers and 106 RBI, but his average fell well short at .276. Isn't right field supposed to be a power-hitting position?

1.80: The batter's eye, or BB/K mark, of Albert Pujols, the best in baseball. While that number may not mean much to you on the face of it, consider the following data points.

* Pujols struck out 64 times this season, and that was a four-year high.

* Pujols walked a career-best 115 times, including a career-high 44 times intentionally.

* Pujols' mark wasn't a career best, as he posted a 1.84 mark in 2006 and a 1.93 mark in 2008. To compare, Ryan Howard's three best seasons, combined, don't even measure up (0.60, 0.54 and 0.41 equal 1.55). Speaking of 1.55, the best mark this season in the AL belonged to Dustin Pedroia and he also bettered that mark at 1.64.

2: The number of big league hitters who had 10 homers, 40 doubles, five triples and managed to hit .300 this season. If you guess either one, you are a baseball fan to be reckoned with at a bar on a Friday night when baseball trivia comes up. Hell, if you can come up with the two names without doing any research, we at Fanball will give you a lifetime membership to Owner's Edge. OK, that's a fib, as I'm not empowered to offer that, but I'm just trying to drive home the fact that there is little to no chance that anyone gets this one right. Before the names, here are the numbers.

.330, 44 doubles, five triples and 25 homers
.300, 41 doubles, eight triples and 11 homers

Alberto Callaspo had a nice under-the-radar season for the Royals.
Because the first guys' average is so high, you likely got that one. It's the Kung Fu Panda, the Giants' Pablo Sandoval, who despite his girth is rather nimble on the base paths (it also helps to have "Triple's Alley" in right field in San Francisco, where he produced four of the three-baggers). The other batting line belongs to the Royals' Alberto Callaspo and who would have thunk that back at the start of '09? An assist goes to Kyle Elfrink, who posed the question to me which forced me to look it up. You can get Kyle's take on Callaspo at Looking Back/Looking Forward.

3.43: The ERA of the Orioles Brad Bergesen in 2009. I mentioned it recently in my 2009 Fantasy Awards piece, but that was actually the seventh-best mark amongst AL hurlers who tossed 120 innings this season. I'm still shocked, so I figured I would bring it up again.

3.52: The best groundball to flyball mark of any major league hurler who tossed at least 50 innings in 2009. It belonged to the Giants' Jeremy Affeldt. There were a handful of other hurlers who made it almost impossible to hit a flyball with a G/F of better than three - Sean Green (3.36), Peter Moylan (3.20), Brad Ziegler (3.16) and Mike MacDougal (3.00). If you wanted to hit a flyball, you would have loved to see Russ Springer on the hill thanks to his league-worst 0.31 mark. Three others posted a mark below half a point, and remember, the major league average is about 1/1 - Juan Cruz (0.44), David Aardsma (0.47) and Mark DeFelice (0.48).

6.43: The best K/BB mark of any hurler in baseball who tossed at least 50 innings this season. The mark belongs to Chad Qualls of the D-backs. As for starting pitchers, Roy Halladay led the way at 5.94, while the NL leader was Qualls' teammate Dan Haren at 5.87. Another Arizona hurler, Daniel Cabrera, had the worst mark in the game at 0.55. How putrid was that mark? Think of it this way. If Cabrera struck out 200 batters without allowing a single walk he would still be behind Qualls, and Haren, at 5.31.

11.3: The percentage of batted balls against Fernando Rodney that resulted in a line drive. Amongst hurlers who tossed at least 50 innings, that was the best mark in baseball. Two other hurlers were in the "11" club and deserve a mention with Matt Daily (11.5) and Jose Mijares (11.8), who did their thing pretty well. At the other end of the spectrum is the Giants' Brandon Medders, and if he were to cut his line drive rate in half, he would still be saddled with a mark behind the top arms, as he finished with a major league worst 26.9 LD-rate.

26.0: The percentage of flyballs that Mark Reynolds converted into home runs, the highest percentage in baseball. Only one other hitter was able to pull off the trick of more than a quarter of the flies resulting in big flies, and he also happens to be a prodigious long ball threat that loves the whiff. That's right, the man I'm referring to is Ryan Howard, who posted a 25.4 percent mark.

78.3: The percentage of pitches that were a fastball this season thrown by Mike Pelfrey, a league leading figure. The rest of the top-5 is as follows: Rick Porcello (77.1), Jeff Niemann (71.9), Clayton Kershaw (71.7) and Matt Garza (71.1). At the other end of the spectrum, Doug Davis used the heater only 25.5 percent of the time, and he was the only pitcher who qualified for the ERA title that failed to throw the fastball at least 31 percent of the time.

96.1: The average fastball speed of Ubaldo Jimenez, which led all pitchers who tossed at least 162 innings in 2009. This marked the fourth straight year that his average fastball was at least 94.6 mph, and it was also a career-best mark (his previous best was 95.8 mph in 2007). The slowest average fastball was the 84.7 mph mark of Livan Hernandez. The slowest mark for a lefty was 85.1 mph, which belonged to the aforementioned Doug Davis.

.291-34-85-92 with a .900 OPS: That is the projected batting line of Alex Rodriguez for 155 games if we extrapolate his current level of production in the playoffs (42 games). I've said it many times before, though few have listened - A-Rod's "failures" in the playoffs are completely overblown given the sample size of his postseason work. The numbers aren't as good as what we normally see from the guy during the regular season, as he has a career 162-game average of .305-42-128-126 with a .965 OPS, but how many guys are significantly better, or even as good, in the playoffs? Keep those sample sizes in mind before you go hanging an effigy of the guy.

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