First Month Heroes
Most teams have played about 30 games so far, so through the first baseball month of the season, let’s take a look at the guys who have performed the best at the plate. We’ll do it all-star team style, with one player representing each position. I’m using WPA/LI as the determinant for offensive production.
Catcher: Geovany Soto – 0.64
First Base: Conor Jackson – 1.49
Second Base: Chase Utley – 1.78
Shortstop: Rafael Furcal – 1.33
Third Base: Chipper Jones – 1.49
Left Field: Pat Burrell – 1.77
Center Field: Nate McLouth – 0.91
Right Field: Ryan Church – 0.75
Designated Hitter Hideki Matsui – 0.73
The thing that jumps out to me is that all eight position players represent the National League. Lots of NL hitters going nuts in April, but none more so than Chase Utley, who was clearly the best player on the planet for the first month of the season. Furcal, Chipper, and Burrell had special months as well, especially if you give Burrell credit for the fact that he leads the league in clutch hitting.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Eight position players
It’d be funny to see the opposite, or bottom, players in each of these areas.
Your wish is my command:
Josh Bard, Adam LaRoche, Robinson Cano, Troy Tulowitzki, Ryan Zimmerman, Garret Anderson, Andruw Jones, Jose Guillen, and David Ortiz.
And Dave, I love your work here. I too long to pay attention to teams that don’t suck
Very nice.
Something strange is going on in Atlanta. The Braves have players rankes #1, 2, and 3 in “un-clutchiness.” Francoeur, McCann, and Chipper are a combined -2.86 clutch wins. Yunel Escobar is #7 in the same category, giving the braves 4 of the bottom 7 in clutch. Weird.
First Base: Conor Jackson – 1.49
That Greg Colbrunn FA signing by the Mariners (at Bob Melvin’s insistence) just keeps paying dividends, doesn’t it? Think the Mariners could use a left-handed slugging 1B about now??