2013 Regular Season Review: THE FUN STUFF (The Hitters)

On Monday, the Tampa Bay Rays defeated the Texas Wranglers last night for the exciting opportunity to go to Cleveland, Ohio for a night of competitive baseball. What a treat. Last night, the Pittsburgh Pirates WON A PLAYOFF GAME against the Cincinnati Reds in the NL Wild Card game and will move on to face the St. Louis Best Organization In Baseball. Honestly, I’m still mourning the death of the ridiculous 2013 regular season and I probably will be for a while. In an effort to remember the year that was and because I spend so much time on FanGraphs anyway, I’m gonna just gonna go through a multitude of interesting statistical finishes throughout baseball and maybe possibly probably not say a few things about them. We will probably do some sort of CFB Awards post after or later in the postseason, but this is what I’ve got for now. And again, thank you based FanGraphs for being too good to be true.

Important:

  • Qualified hitters = minimum 500 PA’s
  • Qualified starters = minimum 162 innings pitched
  • Qualified relievers = minimum 49 innings pitched
  • Qualified defenders = minimum 900 innings at a position

I’m gonna do this in four parts: hitters, starting pitchers, relievers and crazy stupid defensive numbers.

We start with the guys that hit the balls with the bats.

HITTERS:

Let’s Talk About WAR:

  • Mike Trout completed his second consecutive 10 win season, finishing with 10.4 WAR. A healthy lead over second place Andrew McCutchen who finished at 8.2 WAR. A brief list of guys who Mike Trout has already surpassed in CAREER WAR: Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Nick Markakis, Justin Upton, Buster Posey, Ryan Howard (lolololololol), Marco Scutaro, Josh Willingham and Justin Morneau. Put it this way: there are only 55 players that have produced more WAR since beginning of the 2006 season than Mike Trout has since he came up. Mike Trout the best.

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These Cleats Are Made For Walking: Puig Approaches

This has been a fun journey this year, keeping track of walk totals on a weekly basis. It gives me an unexplained amount of joy to check FanGraphs on Monday mornings to see who’s been impatient this past week. Yasiel Puig, an undeniable fan of CFB, has clearly taken note of this and has decided to pitch in by allowing me to use his name, Yasiel Puig, in this post.

Thanks, Yasiel Puig. Thank you for not being unintentionally walked once through your first 50 major league plate appearances.

We’ll obviously be watching Yasiel Puig, like the rest of the world, in his KeppQuest to walkless nirvana.

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These Cleats Are Made For Walking: Jeff Keppinger Is Still Amazing

We’re about nine weeks into the 2013 season, and every player with at least 70 plate appearances have managed at least two walks. Doesn’t mean we can’t mock those at the bottom of my favorite leaderboard ! Let’s take a quick look.

Our all-time favorite Jeff Keppinger didn’t manage a single walk last week. He’s up to 190 plate appearances and still has only two walks. 

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These Cleats Are Made For Walking: Two Month Update

We’re a little under two months into the 2013 regular season. Last week, we mourned the loss of White Sox second baseman Jeff Keppinger’s epic streak towards OBP disaster.  And while his wRC+ remains at a staggeringly low 19, we can’t marvel at his incompetence quite as much anymore. However, he does remain the only qualified hitter in baseball with only two walks. And he’s up to 172 plate appearances. 

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