This week’s question was sent in by Andrea Trento: We all saw Barry Bonds’s ridiculous weekend, but lost in his home-run barrage has been the fact that he has seven singles so far this year. That’s 22 home runs, 10 doubles, and seven singles. His isolated slugging is .593, thanks to an .898 slugging percentage…
One of the things we’re always yammering about is control of the strike zone. We evaluate players based on their on-base percentage and walk rate and pitchers by their strikeout-to-walk ratio. We emphasize–some would say overemphasize–plate discipline for hitters and control for pitchers when we talk about minor leaguers, and often tout players for no…
Before getting into this week’s column, I would like to make a pair of comments regarding last week’s feature on the amazing Ichiro Suzuki: I stated that, assuming Ichiro could continue to get hits in 95% of his games, that his chances of fashioning a 57-game hitting streak were extremely high. I did not mean…