FG on Fox: Bartolo Colon’s Historically Bad/Improved Hitting
With the news that Bartolo Colon signed a one-year, $7.25 million deal with the New York Mets, we once again have a chance to talk about the skill set of one of the most beloved players in baseball. Add onto that the fact that his new contract includes a $50,000 bonus if he wins a Silver Slugger Award, and we’re perfectly set up to talk about the most loved aspect of one of the most loved player’s game: his performance at the plate. Any chance to talk about Colon is a good one. A chance to find a new angle on Colon’s hitting is the El Dorado of baseball writing.
The search for that city of gold could start in any number of places. Especially over the past few years, we’ve seen highlights of Colon’s exploits with the bat, from his helmet doing everything it could to escape the perch atop his head, to him legging out infield singles. He’s a human highlight reel when he gets a piece of maple in his hands, and it would be very easy to simply embed a few videos of his at-bats here and call it a day (I’ve linked to them instead).
Let’s dig a little deeper, however. One question we can answer is where Colon ranks among all pitchers who have accrued (or endured) their fair share of plate appearances. We all know of the jokes about him at the plate, and the at-bats in which he simply seems to have better things to do. But is Bartolo really one of the worst hitting pitchers of all time?
Owen Watson writes for FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. Follow him on Twitter @ohwatson.
I’m also a human highlight reel when I get a piece of maple-cured ham in my hands too.
Feliz Navidad!
Bat in one hand, maple-cured ham in the other.
Problem solved.
A middle aged, overweight athlete’s pursuit of a dream that has always eluded him. Does he have the courage to pull it off against all odds?
Hint: Probably not.
Ron Herbel or even Sandy Koufax were pretty bad too.
In the chart, that dot way down on the bottom with the lowest OPS+ is Herbel. Koufax is more nondescript, hanging out in the top right surrounded by the likes of Jack Billingham, Bob Veale, and Clay Kirby.
Herbel batted .029/.065/.039, showcasing a relatively strong eye and power but atrocious contact abilities that let him down. A shame.
Colon is 144% worse than a league average hitter? What does that mean? 100% worse sounds like it means Colon would have no hits, so what does 144% worse mean?
OPS+ is supposed to be the sum of OBP+ and SLG+, but it’s also supposed to be 100-indexed instead of 200-indexed, so we subtract 100 after taking the sum. The minimum possible value of each indexed component is zero, so a hitter who never gets on base will have OPS+ of -100. Rather than writing this off as “200% worse than an average hitter,” you can think of it as “100% worse at getting on base, and 100% worse at slugging”, where 100 and 100 obviously add up to the 200-percentage-point deficit noted.
Likewise, an OPS+ of -44 means some combination of components, such as 68% worse than average OBP and 76% worse than average slugging, that add up to 144.
Wow, Cy Young had 35 Triples in his career batting, that is amazing. I wondered if that is a record for a pitcher? Nope, Walter Johnson had 45 career.
Too bad Dontrelle Willis didn’t pitch forever like those guys. He had 6 career triples in just 1/6 as many at-bats as Johnson.
At that rate he would have only had 36 though.