April 16, 2007
Offense Still Low
Offense is still down vs. last year, but the gap narrowed a bit over the weekend. Note that MLB is way behind in games played due to all the bad weather:
Offense through first two weeks of the season.
| Category | 2006 | 2007 |
| Games | 182 | 169 |
| Runs | 1854 | 1430 |
| R/G | 10.2 | 8.5 |
| Home Runs | 452 | 288 |
| HR/G | 2.5 | 1.7 |
Here's a list of slugging percentage trailers. Look at the number of big names in the bottom 40. Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, Mark Teixeira, Ryan Zimmerman, Carlos Delgado, Lance Berkman, Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey all make an appearance. And if you keep going, you see more big names that are slugging under .400. I would expect most of the people listed above to end up with pretty good seasons. What we may be seeing is simply a collective slump by some of the big guns.
Posted by David Pinto at
10:52 AM
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With the exception of Alex Rodriguez, I think you can chalk up the slow start for many power hitters to the extremely cold weather. This weather favors pitchers and singles hitters. The ball doesn't carry and its very difficult to get a good feel on the bat.
I've been to three games in Chicago this year - two White Sox and one Cubs and I can tell you it has been as cold as advertised.
interesting they all are slumping together
The trend is not limited to stars either.
The Royals have several players in the middle of their order (Gordon, Sweeney, Shealy and Teahen) with OPS's well below theri PECOTA projections, in some cases by nearly .400 points. That seriously hurts run production but I have hope in regression to the mean.
I'd be interested in seeing what the comparison is when we reach 182 games this year, because that just seems like a more sensible comparison point.