Winding Down
It might be football season, I’m not blind to that, but you know at BaseballGuys that I will always keep up the good fight, leave no stone unturned, in my attempt to help you to win a fantasy baseball championship. To that end, here are a few players who I noticed some pretty interesting things about last night when I was perusing the old box scores.
Everth Cabrera is a name everyone sort of kind of knows, kind of like when you look through an unfocused pair of binoculars. You know what you are looking at, but you just find it difficult focusing on the object. In the case of Cabrera we all know he is fast, but did you noticed that he’s stolen 41 bases, the highest total in the National League? Read that again. Cabrera leads the NL in steals.
Jarrod Dyson is even less known in many circles than Everth, and that’s saying something. In fact, he is one of three players in the game who has stolen 30 bases this year with less than 375 at-bats (Cabrera has 385 by the way). Emilio Bonifacio had 30 steals and 244 at-bats while Dyson has his 30 thefts while picking up just 283 at-bats (the other player is Dee Gordon who has 31 thefts and 302 at-bats). The speed has made Dyson a tremendous option in AL-only leagues but the fact that he has zero homers and just nine RBIs is shockingly terrible news is it not?
Chase Headley has gone deep 31 times this season. Thirty-one. The last two seasons Headley had 15 homers, and he had never hit more than 12 homers in a single season before this year. Amazingly, he’s blown past those totals this year. Look no further than his HR/F ratio. If you add up his HR/F ratios from the past three years – 7.6, 6.4 and 4.3 – you end up with a mark of 18.3 percent which is lower than his 22.1 percent mark this year. There is simply no way that Headley will be able to replicate that 22.1 percent mark next year, one that is more than double his 10.3 percent career mark. Moreover, Headley has actually seen his homer total increase to the level of stardom despite a career worst fly ball rate. A career-low. You can’t more than double your career home run mark when you are hitting fewer fly balls than ever before (31.4 percent this year versus a career mark of 35 percent). Be careful in 2013.
On television right now is a produce that helps you to make tortilla bowls in the oven. Does anyone really need that? I mean it might be nice to have for Cinco De Mayo or something, but for anything else, I just don’t see the need. I need my cabinet space to store my copious amounts of alcohol.
Hunter Pence has knocked in 104 runs this season. One hundred and four. Is this the quietest 104 RBI season that you have ever seen? I bet 90 percent of the folks out there didn’t know he had crested 100 RBIs. Maybe it’s because he’s split time with the Phillies and the Giants, but still, he’s had a pretty impressive season. Pence has knocked in 45 runs in 56 games with the Giants while helps one to look past his pathetic .229 batting average and .695 OPS with the team. Well, sort of. He’s done a few things poorly, his .257 batting average and .753 OPS are career worsts, but he’s also hit 24 homers, driven in 104 runs and scored 87 times. This is the 5th straight year he’s hit 22 homers and the third straight season that he has crossed the plate 84 times and driven in at least 91 runners.
Clayton Kershaw has a 2.58 ERA, the best in the NL (R.A. Dickey is next in line at 2.69). If Kershaw does indeed win the NL ERA crown he will become the first pitcher in the NL to have won two ERA crowns before his age 25 season going all the way back to 1893.
Giancarlo Stanton has 91 homers in his young career, the 6th highest total in the game for a player through his age 22 season (he’s tied with Ted Williams). Stanton’s season has been up and down as he’s been forced to play through injury, but it’s been a rather impressive effort as he’s gone deep 36 times with 85 RBIs an a .290 batting average in 120 games for the Marlins.
By Ray Flowers
