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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Wednesday, January 29, 2014Berkman announces retirementto pursue slaw enforcement.
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1. Rants Mulliniks Posted: January 29, 2014 at 07:28 PM (#4648325)For a guy that was really more of a pull hitter (from both sides and going from memory), I think it was because his swing was incredibly quick. He didn't have that long, gaping swing you'd normally associate with a pull hitter. He was incredibly good at staying back on the ball and holding that swing the last fraction of second - both leading to his walk totals, but also meaning he was really good on identifying and getting a pitch he could drive. If anything, I think yanking the bat through the zone undersells him, he'd whip it through the zone, lightning quick. To my novice eye, that's what made him such a great hitter - and why he was so successful in never getting 'figured out'... You had to work him and make an entire ABs worth of good pitches. If you didn't, he'd get the one he knew he could whack and pounce on it. Of the power hitters I've seen in lifetime, I think he had one of the quickest swings I ever saw - I don't know that I'd call it a particularly short stroke, just an incredibly fast swing without sacrificing extension and weight shift (in fact, emphasizing them, as you said with his tendency to open up wide).
Didn't stop you for the first 15 years.
Mantle 801 (crikey)
Chipper 558
Berkman 422
Murray 388
Rose 367
Singleton 327
R Smith 310
Bernie 297
Raines 290
Beltran 249
So 3rd greatest switch-hitter. However, by oWAR, he drops to 11th in a virtual tie with Simmons.
Berkman vs. Murray is an interesting case of peak vs. durability. Murray has 68 WAR but just 27 WAA while Berkman has 28 WAA but just 52 WAR. The difference is primarily Murray's age 33-41 seasons which were 5000 PA for 12 WAR (-4 WAA), with 5 of those 12 WAR coming in his very good age-34 season. Murray wasn't adding a lot of value but did add over 1200 hits and 171 HR. (Unrealistically) add that to Berkmans totals and you get a guy with 3100 hits and 537 HR.
It's not a perfect comp of course -- Murray was full-time from age 21 while Berkman wasn't full-time until the middle of his age 24 season. Houston likely made a mistake there:
Berkman
age 22 at AA-AAA: 302/422/566 (mostly AA)
age 23 at AAA: 323/419/518 (half-season, mid-July call-up)
age 24 at AAA: 330/476/563 (144 PA, not on opening roster, maybe super 2 games)
He got only 7 starts in his first 25 games on the roster at age 24 then was pretty much full-time from late May. Didn't hit well in his age 23 call-up or the start of age 24 in ML but in his first month as a regular, he hit 351/404/660. There was however a strange stretch from mid-Aug to mid-Sept where he got only 8 starts in 26 games. He'd hit 300/380/570 on the season to that point and hit 280/400/540 during this stretch so god knows what they were thinking -- he was starting every few days so it doesn't appear to be injury-related.
He lost playing time mainly to Roger Cedeno. Not one of Dierker's brighter decisions. Cedeno had been the "big" offseason acquisition -- Derek Bell and Hampton for Cedeno and Dotel. He was injured for nearly 3 months, returning on Aug 18. In fairness, it was a good Cedeno season with an OBP over 380. With Alou, Hidalgo (one of his big years) and Bagwell around, there was legit competition for playing time. Maybe if Cedeno had been healthy at the deadline they'd have moved him -- they did trade him right after the season (an Ausmus trade). The 281 PA they gave to Daryle Ward that year are a bit harder to justify.
OBPs in the 2000 Astros OF: Cedeno 383, Berkman 388, Hidalgo 391, Alou 416. Add Bagwell 424, Meluskey 401 and Biggio 388. And don't stop there, from the bench: Spiers 386, Caminiti 419, Eusebio 361, Lugo 346.
The team's line (pitchers included) was 278/361/477 which was good for a team OPS+ of just 104. In 2013, that line would have been good for a 131 OPS+ on the Astros. :-)
VERY quick swing and he was great at dumping those pop flies into the crawford boxes, too
in the late 90s/early 2000s the astros had a policy of keeping players in the minors/on the bench so as to get them a late start and the prime of their 6 years (at least i THINK that is the justification) and they did it with a LOT of guys
the owner didn't really like giving young guys the job at the beginning of the year and sticking to them and too many guys had a ridiculously late start even with incredible numbers at AAA (see jason lane, for just 1 example)
berkman is a very intelligent guy who likes to play dumb jock (at times) and gives a really GREAT interview. a lot of fans objected because he didn't always give monotone, emotionless face biggio type bull durham answers - like a True Professional does
he wasn't ever FAT, by the way. and yes he DID gain weight from his rookie year. at least the criticsz call it fat and not roids
Um, Sizemore.
Player dWAR PA OPS+ Rfield WAR/pos G SB Pos
Larry Walker 1.3 8030 141 95 72.4 1988 230 *9H/387D45
Mike Piazza 1.0 7745 143 -63 59.2 1912 17 *2DH/3
Duke Snider -5.9 8237 140 -22 66.6 2143 99 *89H/7
Bob Johnson -5.9 8050 139 18 57.2 1863 96 *78/3495H
Norm Cash -9.2 7914 139 39 51.9 2089 43 *3H/97D
Lance Berkman -11.7 7814 144 -18 52.0 1879 86 3798D/H
David Ortiz -17.5 8249 139 -14 44.0 1969 15 *D3H
Dang, Larry Walker was a great player when held to the light properly :)
The three Bs won one pennant in Houston and almost won another. Did they underachieve? Probably not. It's incredibly hard to win the pennant, to paraphrase Ron Washington.
And one last thing: that list is actually centered on Berkman: IOW there's nobody with a career of roughly that length and an OPS+ between 144 and 149. He's the top hitter among his own comps, though he has one of the shorter careers among those centered on him, too.
Murray through age 37 and 11,048 PA's is at 411, a bit closer, but still a LOT more playing time to get there. Top 10 seasons are a big edge to Berkman, too, even giving Murray some credit for 1981. Was it easier to compile high Rbat seasons during the high offense era Berkman played his prime in relative to Murray's era?
I got Norm Cash as a very close comp when looking at it this morning, and he's on your list as well. I think he's a pretty good match for Berkman, but neither are HOF (unless for one's personal HOF you have lower playing time standards, which I think is perfectly reasonable; seems to me the actual HOF places too much emphasis on longevity).
you could throw giambi and delgado into the mix too.
in terms of rbat it probably was easier to put up high/low raw counts. The variance should be higher in high scoring eras. war would at least partially adjust with a higher rar to war conversion factor.
Thanks Walt!
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