According to Bill James ... wait, my head hurts
Statman cruncher Bill James writes in his latest book: "Those of us in the stat analysis community tend not to be bullish on Juan Pierre or anybody who even looks like Juan Pierre." But after further review, the Dodgers' newly converted left fielder isn't a bad player -- if he's leading off an inning. The problem, of course, is when he's not leading off an inning.
That an other mind-numbing information is what you get when you're taking the incredibly softbound "Bill James Gold Mine 2008" ($21.95, ACTA Sports, 317 pages) into the restroom to read while you're doing your business. The info will get you through some difficult moments, but it could have a warning: May cause internal bleeding.
Too many numbers, sorted into too many categories, revealing far too many things about baseball players -- still -- that too many people will pay too much money for.
So we'll save you a few bucks and excerpted a couple of things from this year's annual manual written by James, who is supposed to be featured on an upcoming episode of CBS' "60 Minutes," to keep your brain from exploding.
Did you know ....
==Back to Pierre, because we all know we need as much ammo as possible when debating his merits:
Last year, as a lead off man, he reached base 58 times (out of 173 times) and the team scored 69 runs (1.19 per inning). Of the 115 times he didn't reach, the team scored 27 runs (.23 per inning). In all the other innings by the team (1,288), the team scored 639 runs (.50 per inning). Pierre lead the majors in 2007 in runs scored after hitting a single (64). James also says he believes Pierre tied for the MLB lead in "vultured runs," where runs are scored after grounding into a forceout (thus replacing the runner who earned his way on base). He did that six times.
==Russell Martin isn't so fast. OK, the Dodgers catcher swiped 21 bases last year. But he, according to James, was 6-for-30 going from first-to-third on a single. He grounded into 16 double plays in 122 DB situations. He ran into eight outs on the bases, the most by any NL catcher. Take Texas catcher Gerald Laird. He was 4-for-10 on first-to-third; Minnesota's Joe Mauer was 8-for-18. Laird hit into only three double plays in 84 situations.
==Because Brad Penny used his changeup twice as often in 2007 than he did in 2006, his ERA was cut by more than a run. Of his 3,227 pitches, 2,292 were fastballs (71 percent), 404 were curveballs (13 percent) and 499 were changeups (15 percent). A year earlier, with almost he same number of pitches, he had 73 percent fastballs, 19 percent curveballs and only six percent changeups. He also eliminated the split-fingered and slider pitches between '06 and '07, according to those who track pitches.
==The Angels' Vlad Guerrero gook 139 pitches for a strike in '07. He also swung at 616 pitches outside the strike zone. "Would Guerrero be a better hitter if he tended to his strike zone? I doubt it," James concludes. Consider, of 2,037 pitches thrown to Guerrero, only 32 percent were in the strike zone. He really had little choice, which plays into his strength.
==The Angels of 2007 were 39-44 in games when they didn't hit a home run -- the best record of any team in baseball in that predicament.
==When Chone Figgins put the ball in play in 2007, he hit .404. That's .404 from the left side and .405 from the right.
==As for current players James considers Hall of Famers if a) they retired today or b) continued to play at the level they've been playing, here's how some familar names stack up:
-Eric Gagne: 0 percent present; 3 percent eventual
-Nomar Garciaparra: 5 percent present; 15 percent eventual
-Brad Penny: 0 percent present; 5 percent eventual.
-Jeff Kent: 50 percent present; 50 percent eventual: Likened him to Steve Finley and Luis Gonzalez -- met some standards of historically second-tier Hall of Famers, but did it by hanging around and piling up numbers.
-Mike Piazza: 85 percent present and eventual: "The best-hitting, worst-throwing catcher of all time."
-Pedro Martinez: 80 percent present; 90 percent eventual. Just had to include that for the Delino DeShields fan club.