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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Saturday, July 07, 2007
NL Rookie of the half-year—Hunter Pence, Astros
After seven years of making some of the worst rookie-of-the-year predictions in the history of the internet, we might finally have gotten one right this year. It definitely seemed risky, back in spring training, to pick a member of the Round Rock Express to win any kind of award in the major leagues. But there was just something about the energy units Pence emitted all spring that caught our eye. Now here we are, three months later, and this guy is making a charge at leading the league in hitting and slugging. And if he can maintain his .347 batting average, it would be the highest by any first-year National League hitter since the immortal George Watkins in 1930. So Hunter Pence isn’t just the rookie of the year. He’s the future of the Astros. Apologies to: Ryan Braun, Josh Hamilton, Troy Tulowitzki.
And more Stark…Injuries, box score lines ... and funny quotes.
Repoz
Posted: July 07, 2007 at 07:51 PM | 19 comment(s)
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1. Russlan will never be fond of Jason Bay Posted: July 07, 2007 at 08:20 PM (#2432196)First prize: On the prospect of meeting his countryman, Daisuke Matsuzaka, for the first time in the big leagues: "I hope he arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul. I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger."
I find major fault with only two of Stark's picks - the ones for the NL MVP and NL LVP. While Holiday has been good enough to make my ten-place ballot, he's not a reasonable MVP candidate at this choice. I see only two players who deserve consideration - Barry Bonds and Chase Utley. As for the NL LVP, I'll never understand what about Pat Burrell inspires such irrational hatred - while obviously he's been disappointing, he's not even a particularly negative force for his team. The obvious choice for NL LVP would be Adam Kennedy.
Why not? He leads the National League in Runs Created (per BB-Ref) and has the same WARP1 as Bonds (5.2) v. 6.0 for Utley. Most (but not quite all) of Utley's lead is in fielding - if you don't trust BP's fielding ratings, it seems pretty reasonable to see Holliday as a viable MVP.
John Maine: 109.2 IP, 3.78 FIP
John Smoltz: 105.2 IP, 3.17 FIP
Maine has been fabulous and definitely deserves a mention, but Smoltz is plenty deserving himself.
John Smoltz: 105.2 IP, 3.17 FIP
FIP is a good tool to predict how a pitcher will do in the future, not how he has done so far this season. Maine has been better than than Smoltz in the first half. Will Smoltz have better numbers at the end of the year? Likely, although Maine continues to make me look bad for doubting him.
Matsuzaka's recent success has brought him fairly even with Guthrie in VORP.
I'd think Dice K is still the favorite when all is said and done, though.
Lou Piniella won the 1969 AL RoY for the Royals after being drafted by Cleveland then bouncing through Washington, Baltimore, back to Cleveland, to Seattle, and finally to Kansas City getting cups of coffee with Baltimore and his 2nd stint with Cleveland.
Where are Pedroia and Willits in VORP? I don't think you see rookie hitters with OBPs over .400 very often.
Also, just for the record, you can buy Okajima T-shirts.
You think Stark does research for his pieces? C'mon.
What's this supposed to mean? Aren't Japanese names easy to spell? In their English transliterations they're more or less phonetic (OK, "Daisuke" isn't that obvious).
Adrian Gonzalez?
Did he write this column in May? Gonzalez is now at .265/.338/472, and is on pace for 27 HR, 98 RBI, 87 R and 0 SB. I know Petco is a hard place to hit, but come on... those aren't MVP numbers.
And where's John Lackey?
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