Time Warp Baseball

[Carlton]

The Giants with their HR park, really don't need to worry about IF defense all that much

[DamnYankees]

Skeeter is really outdoign himself this year. He's only hitting .243, but becuase of his 33 walks, he has a .485 OBP. He's .001 away from doubling up his batting average. Has anyone ever done this? Had an OBP double his batting average? I'm sure some scrubs have done it in an at bat or two, but anyone over the course of the season? If not, whats the closest anyone has come?

The biggest difference I could find is Barry Bonds in '04, with a .362 BA and a .609 OBP. It's a huge difference, but not proportionally as large.

[tward13]

Originally Posted by Carlton

The Giants with their HR park, really don't need to worry about IF defense all that much

Sure we do. I've loaded up on GB pitchers and I'd like to catch the grounders they give up. The last thing I want are a lot of fly balls or extra baserunners.

[jdw]

> The Giants with their HR park, really
> don't need to worry about IF defense
> all that much

If you have a GB pitcher with so-so stuff, I'd hate to see balls going between the fielders before the next guy takes it deep. I think I'd rather give up dingers of the 1 run variety than the 3 run type.

They also have to go on the road for half their games, and win there. Here's 1950:

Home
45-32 Cards
42-35 Giants

Road
47-30 Cards
37-40 Giants

The Giants gave up 10 games on the road to the Cards, which is pretty amazing in an 77 game sample.

Lastly, this is coming from someone who's old park ratings where those of a very good HR from both sides (110 and 110), and always like to keep *great* IF like Pokey, Stuart and Alexander around. The Polo Ground are extreme in one direction (156 for RHB and 101 for LHB). Of course most of the batters in the league are right handed, but still... if it was thought to be very important to have strong glove men in an old HR park when building championship teams (and I'm recalling an "Defense wins Championships" comment in these threads), then one would think there's value for the Giants.

There options at 2B were:

* the terrific fielding but brutal hitting Fabbricatore.

* Mugford's horrid 1/10 defense and empty "good BA" offense.

* put Mugford's 5/10 3B glove across the diamond, and move Pursell's 4/10 2B glove to the pivot.

Not a lot of great internal options there.

Which meant looking around for an upgrade at:

(a) 3B and moving Pursell to a position he was weaker in

(b) 2B and kicking Mugford's brutal glove and overrated bat to the bench

(c) finding a SS that would allow them to move Howard to a position where he was +2 in range.

Perhaps if there was a bat available like Res Seelinger of the White Sox you would aruge that it would be okay for the Giants to roll his 2/5 .945 SS glove or 3/5 .975 2B glove out to one of those positions. Maybe... though we've yet to see you roll out such a defender for a full season (or several seasons) with such a brutal glove. I recall you complaining about Perly's 5/5 .970 SS glove after a month on a team you were trying to win a championship with.

I'm not sure if a strong bat/no glove player like Seelinger was on the market. We could ask Tom. One gets the feeling that Mike Fellner wasn't out on the market, so the great bat/passable glove types probably weren't as well.

Roth does appear to bring at least one positive to the table - an improvement of the defense at both positions up the middle over last year's team:

2B 1/10 .969 to 7/7 .968
SS 5/7 .971 to 7/8 .973

I suspect if he had Bado to play 2B, he probably would keep Howard at SS and eat 5/4 .977 defense at 2B and a 5/7 .971 glove at SS in return for Bardo's 30+ HR. But does anyone think Bardo's GM would part with him in the type of package that brought the Giants Roth, Blisit and Stahl?


John

[jdw]

> Skeeter is really outdoign himself this year.
> He's only hitting .243, but becuase of his 33
> walks, he has a .485 OBP. He's .001 away
> from doubling up his batting average. Has
> anyone ever done this? Had an OBP double his
> batting average?

Speedy Perly has a BA of .198 and an OBP of .410.

Actually, despite hitting that low, Speedy's .198/.410/.372/.782 is still actually valuable. Over the course of the season he won't keep it up. It's really sad because he's just 35 and one can take a look at Pookey Dorsey as an example of a hitter who kept up his talent for much longer. If he had not fallen off the cliff taking the talent bumps last year, Speedy was likely to finish no worse than #4 on the all-time Runs leader board, more likely #3. Now he's going to have a tough time cracking the Top 25 unless a rebuilding team like the Browns are willing to roll him out regardless of what he does until they find someone else. Of course that would trash his career .275 BA even more. Tough call.


> I'm sure some scrubs have done it in an at
> bat or two, but anyone over the course of
> the season? If not, whats the closest anyone
> has come?

Doc hit .248/.416/.373 in 1948.

I doubt too many have come close. We didn't have high end walkers along these levels until the post war. I don't have all the almanacs here at home, but the record for BB as of 1940 was 123 in by Tike Kaufman in 1930. There was a lower limit where players would get yanked out of the line up. Not a lot of players game up with great BB skills, but undeveloped contact skils, so the likelihood of a .200 BA joined with a .400 OBP *early* in a player's career were low. Going in the other direction, players taking a hit in contact tended to also take it in power, and by the time the average got down to the .200-.220 range, their SLG was so low they'd get yanked.

Prior to Skeeter and Kress, .440+ OBP in TWB were always driven by a combo of BA+BB where BA really was driving the bus. So a .220/.440 really wasn't too possible - just not enough BB in those days. Even a .200/.400 would be tough - not enough BB to get there, and the player would get kicked to the curb.

Someone like Doc or Perly could do in this year if (i) their BA drops sub Mendoza, (ii) they keep getting rolled out, and (iii) their Eye doesn't take a hit.

Skeeter is "Very inconsistent", so he can have months like this of not hitting for average. It's hard to think he'll hit .243 on the year. He did take a hit to power and Gap this season, though.

John

[jdw]

Ben Cook has a .209 BA and a .409 OBP this year. He is a better hitter than that, and probably not this large of a walker (despite his 10 Eye).

Back to Skeeter - he's starting to look more like a #1 or #2 hitter than the #3 hitters he's been in the past. I commented on that last season. He still gets on base like a monster. But his power has come down.

The Sox continue to bat Pelto in the #1 and #2 slots (this year #1) despite his dislike for BB's. He gets on less than Skeeter, is slower, and is a dumber base runner. Lutske is in the #2 hole, and is a much better hitter than Pelto. Of course Skeeter gets on, and is the faster runner.

Probably time to move Pelto on down and put that .460+ OBP in the lead off spot and let everyone coming up after him take shots at driving him in.


John

[metsgeek]

Originally Posted by jdw

Back to Skeeter - he's starting to look more like a #1 or #2 hitter than the #3 hitters he's been in the past. I commented on that last season. He still gets on base like a monster. But his power has come down.

The Sox continue to bat Pelto in the #1 and #2 slots (this year #1) despite his dislike for BB's. He gets on less than Skeeter, is slower, and is a dumber base runner. Lutske is in the #2 hole, and is a much better hitter than Pelto. Of course Skeeter gets on, and is the faster runner.

Probably time to move Pelto on down and put that .460+ OBP in the lead off spot and let everyone coming up after him take shots at driving him in

Have you been spying on me?

[canadiancreed]

did anyone else notice the page jsut "puked"?

[metsgeek]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

did anyone else notice the page jsut "puked"?

I don't understand your canadian humor

[canadiancreed]

Originally Posted by metsgeek

I don't understand your canadian humor

Nah I'll be nice

Serisouyl though I've been checking the site and it just popped up with " The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later."

This is not good news

[Carlton]

Originally Posted by metsgeek

Have you been spying on me?

Ouch, he's right though...Pelto is a great #3 hitter, his lack of HRS is made up with those doubles, which if you have a smart baserunner on 1st= runs

White Rhino would look good at #4...hint hint

[tward13]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

Nah I'll be nice

Serisouyl though I've been checking the site and it just popped up with " The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later."

This is not good news

Yep, just tried to get on the site. Says bandwidth has maxed. Damn you creed, too many posts in the forum!

[bigjas]

Creed broke the site. I knew those 10-15 posts a day would catch up with us sooner or later.

[pat]

It's sad, considering I have to answer several PMs. Lay low creed.

[canadiancreed]

It's sad, considering I have to answer several PMs. Lay low creed.

Your'e telling me. Yeesh.

And I was working on some good things too. Oh well

[ifspuds]

Ah well. The guy I wanted to trade for didn't clear waivers anyway. I'm not missing too much. :P

[Vris]

Curse you creed!

Now we have to go the conventional way? Emails? nah dont like that

[canadiancreed]

*wonders when the bullseye was slapped on my back* :P

[pat]

Anyone has the file? I haven't downloaded it yet, I'm such a lazy guy.

[Vris]

^^^
Same boat.