Printer-friendly

August 31, 2004

Prospectus Matchups

Jim's Up To Something

by Jim Baker

BEST AMERICAN LEAGUE MATCH-UP (Best combined records with both teams being over .500): Anaheim @ Boston

In which we stumble into a matchup relevant to a wild-card race. Not only do these two teams have the best combined records of the 15 matchups in the early part of the week, they are also the two hottest squads in baseball. The Red Sox are 12-1 of late and the Angels are 12-2.

Compare and contrast: among the 15 Angels players with the most playing time, only Jeff DaVanon and the now-activated Troy Glaus are drawing one walk every ten at-bats. The Red Sox, on the other hand, have ten of their most-active 15 over that mark. That helps explain how a team can lead the league in scoring in spite of a wiped-out Trot Nixon season and only a month's worth of at-bats from Nomar Garciaparra, replacing them with a combined 500 plate appearances from Gabe Kapler and Pokey Reese.

Boston has out-walked Anaheim 1.5:1. The Angels are in dead last in the American League in walks with 348, a number that looks even worse when you consider that it includes a league-high 39 intentionals. They do make up for this somewhat by leading the league in getting hit by pitches, an advantage they promptly squander by having the second-most sacrifice bunts in the league. The Angels also compensate with a pretty good theft record. (Oddly, the teams with the five best stealing rates in the AL are, in order, one through five in total steal attempts.)

Come to think of it, the Angels are always up to something. In fact, let's invent a new stat to measure that. We'll call it the U2S number: U2S = Up To Something, acronymed in the Prince style. U2S means how often a team is doing something on the basepaths. It's a little number you can quickly do yourself to see how busy a team is on the once they get to first base. It combines steals, caught stealing, sacrifice hits and sacrifice flies. Not surprisingly, the Angels are the busiest in the American League with 1.78 such events per game. Let's see if you can guess the three least-busiest in the league…poke yourself in the eye with a slide rule if you didn't say:

Boston
Toronto
Oakland