A Look At the Hitters ... and More

How are the Bulls hitters doing this year?

One answer is, good enough to win most of their games. But to take a little closer look here's a chart with numbers for the current roster.

click on chart for a larger image

The players are sorted by their wOBA, Weighted On-Base Average, a sort of pumped up on-base average that provides a better picture of a player’s performance than just batting average. Also displayed is the traditional batting average number, which, mostly, tracks wOBA.

The players marked with asterisks “*” are on Tampa Bay’s 40-man roster. The numbers in parentheses are the plate appearances for each batter. The sources for the data are Stat Corner and Baseball Reference.

A couple of things jump out.

The infield isn’t doing very well at bat. Russ Canzler is the only infielder (other than Lobaton) hitting above the team average. Four players are below the Mendoza Line. The sample size is way too small to jump to any conclusions regarding Felipe Lopez, but he has not done too well since his arrival.

Should we start worrying about J.J. Furmaniak and Robinson Chirinos? In a word, yes, even though they are very different players. J.J. is a veteran who can be expected to climb back up into the middle to high .200’s BA. Chirinos is a bit different because expectations were set so high coming out of spring training and because he’s on the 40-man. Nevertheless, Chirinos is more likely to be judged on his defensive skills than his hitting.

I worry more about Leslie Anderson than any of the others. His play at first base seems to be improving, but he simply is not getting on base enough. That said, his hitting has been very timely. His 14 RBIs count for something.

Webworld

• The News & Observer (the News & Observer? I know. I am as shocked as you all) did an interesting piece on Justin Ruggiano.
• Triangle Offense has a good interview with visiting reliever J.P. Howell.