Fun fact for Wednesday
DMZ · July 9, 2008 at 1:38 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Willie Bloomquist leads all position players in OBP at .361.
He also leads all position players in lowest SLG percentage at .248
Willie Bloomquist leads all position players in OBP at .361.
He also leads all position players in lowest SLG percentage at .248
Wow! I’m thinking that when WFB starts in CF It could be argued that WFB would be most effective leading off. Ichiro! hit 3rd? Ichiro! does have an .844 career ops against LH pitching…. (I can feel the flames already!)
That is over a small sample size of 101 at bats.
That’s good enough to be a full-time DH.
I know, I know, WFB should be on the bench. But all that grit! He would be a perfect leadoff hitter! (sarcasm)
Is this Seattle Sports’ darkest hours?
I can’t even believe it almost.
I wish he was the Mariners’ biggest problem.
“Richie Sexson has reached base safely in 18 of his last 19 games. On Tuesday, he stroked a double in the fifth inning to give him an extra-base hit in consecutive games for the first time since April 6 and 7.”
Cite! Cite!
What’s sad is how much he’s catching up to Betancourt. I mean, SSS and all that, and Betancourt’s still the better shortstop, but it’s not quite so lopsided anymore, is it? Bloomquist is a bad fielder at SS, but is he that much worse than Betancourt? And, even though he has a much lower OPS, at least he gets on base, which the team desperately needs in a lineup full of ball-in-play free swingers.
All of which is to say I think Betancourt might be the team’s most underrated problem. He’s made no progress as a hitter and his fielding is in alarming decline. Sure, Vidro/Cairo/Sexson are all hurting the team more given their performance relative to replacement level, but that’s the thing: they can be easily replaced. Who’s going to replace Betancourt?
I’m actually writing a post about the team’s most unnoticed problem! Stay tuned.
oops.
“Shift in the trade market, by Geoff Baker”
DMZ: I know what the most unnoticed problem is. It’s gotta be Team Chemistry.
My first choice was a sudden dearth of shaving cream pies, but than I remembered that JJ got Clement the other night.
10- It’s Felix, isn’t it? He kills rallies by hitting grand slams and strikes out the side in 9 pitches before fans can make it back to their seats/couches.
So I went to the Baseball Hall of Fame over 4th of July weekend (a must see for any baseball fan, obviously), and in the broadcasting section (where Niehaus will be inducted, by the way, his “plaque” is going to be a laminated photo of him that’s about 5 inches by 5 inches, just something I thought was interesting) there is a display of things like Mel Allen’s microphone, a old ticker machine where they used to get scores, and a printer from the late 90’s for scoring and stat updates. The printout from the printer was from a random Mariners/Boston game and the stats listed the next 3 players up to bat as Ibanez, Reed, then Bloomquist (who was hitting a whopping .200 at the time). So bascially, in a weird roundabout way, Willie Bloomquist is “in the hall of fame”. Thought people might find that enlightening.
So…Matthew’s LL post that Willie should be starting over Yuni at shortstop was right!
/sarcasm.
Nice to see something about hitting, since we’ve lost the last three games by a combined score of 8-4, over 32 innings. So it’s not like the pitching hasn’t kept us in the games.
Last night, we had Bloomquist, Cairo, Sexson and Vidro all in the lineup, the perfect storm of putridity.
Looking at the art of the possible (i.e., they’re not going to just dump any of the four of them), I’m wondering if this isn’t the time to send down Burke and bring Balentien back up. Bedard is on the DL and doesn’t need his personal catcher, and Balentien’s .611 OPS is still better than Bloomquist, Cairo, Johjima, Vidro or Burke (by the way, why does ESPN list Felix as having a 1.000 OBP? He had a sacrifice bunt, his OBP is .500). And unlike any of those guys, who are proven major league non-hitters, he has real potential to improve by facing more major league hitting.
In the perfect world, I’d put him back in right, Ichiro back in center and Reed in left, with Raul as DH. In the likely Mariner world, he might be a DH or the left fielder against lefthanded pitching. But there’s no reason to have 3 catchers and no bench.
In predicting runs scored, .OBP is a much better predictor than .SLG. The more a player gets on base, the more times he will score a run. Ergo, as the Mariner with the highest .OBP, WFB is the team’s most valuable hitter, and the ‘F’ stands for Fabulous!
/snark
With all our pitching injuries…I think sending Burke down would be a bad idea…
*grin*
Boston is looking for relief pitching AND a catcher…why not get two birds stoned at once…Burke to Boston for a truckload of prospects!!!
*grin*
I think Milendriel is right — Willie is a better hitter than Betancourt now, because I think 83 points of OBP is more valuable than 135 points of SLG. Especially on this team, where it doesn’t matter if you get extra bases because there’s no one on base in front of you and only outs coming up behind. Betancourt’s OBP is .278, which is just tragic. I wouldn’t object to some Willie at short now (since we don’t have a real one).
I’m a card-carrying WFB hater, but I’m giving him a lot of credit for learning how to take a walk — in a hostile environment for walk-taking, too. Having a higher OBP than Ichiro is, frankly, amazing. He’s still not a good player, but he’s surely an interesting one! OBP higher than SLG is pretty rare; 113 points higher is just freaky. All-time record? I doubt it. But it’s a highly unusual line.
I’ve said this before: Willie strikes me as a guy who could be a good hitting coach after his career ends.
This, and the myriad XBH streaks he’s on, have me hotly anticipating his trips to the plate now, which is something I never thought I’d say.
We sure love to talk about Willie B….
What are we gonna talk about next year when he’s not around?
*sigh*
He’ll be too busy as a motivational speaker, helping companies increase their grit level.
But yeah, Bloomquist isn’t even close to the worst value on this team right now.
I believe that honor goes to the Baconator…Pepe or Jose or whatever…
Willie is an on-first-base machine!
Maybe it’s about rally fries? OK, fessing up…I just really, really want to see Derek’s tirade on rally fries.
Sac bunts don’t count toward OBP, while sac flies do.
And another thing that made me go hmmm… WFB currently has the highest LD% on the team – 23.8%. (according to THT)
Dollar for dollar, I’d have to give the slight nod to MEGAVIDRO over the original recipe.
Wikipedia has an entry on OBP that explains the reasoning why sacrifice bunts aren’t used in figuring OBP.
(by the way, why does ESPN list Felix as having a 1.000 OBP? He had a sacrifice bunt, his OBP is .500).
We’ve had this discussion before. “Bunts (sacrifice hits since 1954), which would lower a batter’s on-base percentage, are not included in the calculation for on-base percentage, as bunting is an offensive strategy – often dictated by the manager – the use of which does not necessarily reflect on the batter’s ability and should not be used to penalize him. ”
It is a little weird, though. Tango has a sensible perspective:
But the stat is what it is. And what it is doesn’t include sac bunts.
Ichiro and Willie are chasing the same record, Ichiro now has 96 AB without an XBH. Willie’s streak is around 170 ABs, so Ichiro could possibly pass Willie’s extra base hitless streak by sometime in August.
Despite Willie’s success at getting on base his OPS is still a dismal .609, which of course means that if you wanted to get him more playing time the proper place would be DH, Vidro’s OPS is .571, not at short where Yuniesky is a relatively steller .662.
Personally I think the solution at DH would be platooning Clement and Felix. Felix’s ankle may not allow him to pitch right now, but damn, I’ll bet he can hit.
Unnoticed problem? OK, I’ll guess. The middle infield. But that might already be in the list of ‘noticed’ problems. And that is a long list.
By the way…I looked. Megavidro.com is taken. 🙁
It sure is nice of Willie to stay loyal to his hometown team, what with teams like the Yankees and Red Sox knocking down his door just to talk to him…
But megapepe.com is available as are all the other TLDs for megavidro 🙂
and mega-vidro.com 🙂
“Megavidro” sounds like one of Godzilla’s sworn enemies.
Megavidro sounds more lke a bad Eddie Murphy movie…
Has anyone seen tonight’s lineup yet?
I’m actually writing a post about the team’s most unnoticed problem! Stay tuned.
They have a problem we haven’t talked about!?!
Two guesses. As bad a manager as BoMel was with each successive replacement we’re found a way to get worse. We can’t even hire a replacement level manager.
Catching. Johjima is signed to a huge contract and may be done as a major league player. Clement is cheap and the #1 catcher but he’s not hitting so much now. AND, they’re filling a third roster spot with Burke.
Just a wild guess, but I doubt your ‘most unnoticed problem’ has anything to do with Ichiro.
Team L W PCT GB
Nationals 57 35 .380 –
Mariners 56 36 .391 1
Padres 56 36 .391 1
Indians 53 37 .411 3