Every year, Bronx Banter correspondent Christopher DeRosa puts out an annual for his friends called “The Baseball Procrastinator,” in which he chronicles the previous season in baseball. DeRosa includes sharp and entertaining book reviews in his annual–my favorite part, to be honest. DeRosa doesn’t only cover books that were released last year, he reviews books that he just simply got around to reading. Well, I find them so enjoyable that I asked if he’d modify a grouping of this year’s batch for you guys here at Bronx Banter. He has, and so here they are. Enjoy.
2005 Readings in Baseball
By Christopher DeRosa
Bill James Handbook 2006 (Cabrera cover)
They do a great job with the leader boards in this book. They’re so extensive that they’re not just a vehicle to see who did better than who, but to see how different players play the game.
You can use the Handbook to break down questions like, who was a better leadoff hitter, Derek Jeter or Johnny Damon? Not only overall, but specifically as a leadoff hitter, Jeter gets on base more than Damon, .391 to .367. Another job of the leadoff hitter is to take some pitches. Jeter led the AL in pitches seen with 2883. Jeter also led the league in ground ball to fly ball ratio. Is that someone you’d want hitting first, or second with possibly a man on? The book has a new baserunning report. Who scored a higher percentage of times when reaching base? Damon, 38% to 34% for Jeter. But Jeter was much better going first-to-third, doing so in 42% of such opportunities (18/43) vs. 19% for Damon (6/31). Jeter was also better at scoring from second base, 15 times in 21 chances, as opposed to 22 out of 34 chances for Damon. Damon did score 7 times in 10 chances from first base, Jeter 5 times in 10 chances. Damon was the better percentage base stealer, 18-1 vs. 14-5.
More Yankees: It’s fun to see Mariano’s across-the-leader-board domination of the reliever stats. He led the league in save percentage (91.5), relief ERA (1.38), lowest opponents’ batting average (.177), lowest opponents’ on base percentage (.235), lowest opponents’ slugging percentage (.230), retiring the first batter faced (.831). He was also 4th in he league in opponents’ batting average with runners on. He was the 3rd hardest pitcher for lefties to hit (.177), and the 5th hardest for right-handers to hit (.176). No one else was so high on both lists. He was tied for 3rd with 43 saves, tied for 4th with 7 relief wins, 10th in relief games (71), and 7th in relief innings (78.1).
After years toiling near the bottom of the league, Derek Jeter has moved all the way up to 2nd in the AL in range factor, and he won his second Gold Glove! After watching him all year, I don’t really think he deserved it, but it is a kind of funny payback for yet another season of relentless Jeter-bashing from the baseball hipsters.
Jason Giambi took the most pitches in the AL (Abreu led the NL). He led the league in secondary average, at .523. He had the highest offensive winning percentage of any AL hitter other than Travis Hafner, ahead of Manny, A-Rod, and Ortiz. He was the most effective hitter in the league versus sliders. Not bad for a guy Selena Roberts wanted them to release.
