Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Random Scott Podsednik stuff
Posted by Chris JaffeHere's some random stuff I haphazardly found out while noodling at Baseball-Reference.com.
In his last 33 games, Scott Podsednik’s hit .258/.313./341 for an OPS of 653 (well, I get 654, but b-ref says otherwise, I guess they’re adding up SLG & OBP’s full numbers, and not just rounding off). For comparison, Josh Fields as a year-round OPS of 655 which gives him an OPS+ of. . . . 68. So that’s Podsednik over the last month.
In his first 19 games with the team this year, Podesednik hit .268/.303/.324 for an OPS of 627. Based on the OPSs and OPS+s of Ramon Castro and Josh Fields, I reckon that works out to an OPS+ of 61 for Podsednik.
In between those two stretches, Podsednik played 36 games in which he hit .340/.401/.455 for an OPS of 856. That’s Gordon Beckham territory right there, for an OPS+ of about 118. So, putting it another way
19 games: 61 OPS+
36 games: 118 OPS+
33 games: 68 OPS+
And of course the year before he had an OPS+ of 68 in 93 games. And this all ignores his rather underwhelming defense.
I knew Podsednik was playing over his head overall, but I didn’t realize he’s spent most of his time with the Sox playing at about the level he should. He's had one great spurt that prop him up, but otherwise he's been what one should've expected: an empty .260ish batting average.
It's a damn good thing for the Sox they just got Alex Rios. They managed to get about half a season of what was overall respectable production from Podsednik (.295/.349//387 on the year thanks to his hot spurt) without needing to use his season line completely crashed to earth.
History instructor by day, statnerd by night, Chris Jaffe leads one of the most exciting double lives imaginable; with the exception of every other double life possible to imagine. Despite his lack of comic-book-hero-worthiness, Chris enjoys farting around with this stuff. His new book, Evaluating Baseball's Managers is available for order. Chris welcomes responses to his articles via e-mail.