Currently Historic: Farewell, Bobby Abreu
by Jason LindenAugust 09, 2012
Last week, we had some excellent comments. One, in particular, I'm just going to quote and we'll start tracking these next week. So, here we go, hats off to Paul G. who gave us all this wonderfulness:
Here’s a few oddball stats you can track:
HBP (BATTER)
There is Top 20 action in the career records. Jason Giambi is currently 12th with 175, three behind Andres Galarraga. Alex Rodriguez just moved up to #15 all-time to tie Kid Elberfeld, but that achievement also broke his hand so I wouldn’t congratulate him on that accomplishment else he break his other hand on your anatomy. Derek Jeter sits at 17th with 162 and could potentially pass both A-Rod and Kid this year. Next up for A-Rod would be Carlos Delgado with 172. To get into the Top 10 would take 183 to tie Jake Beckley.
Out of the Top 20 is Chase Utley with 141 in 26th place. He would need to get up to 154 to reach the Top 20 and I doubt he could get hit that many times and not go on the DL again.
Quite a few players have “earned” HBP 100 this year or are close to doing so.
HBP (PITCHER)
Jamie Moyer and Jamey Wright are just outside of the Top 20 career. Moyer is tied with Silver King for 21st place with 146. Jamey Wright sits in 23rd with 145. Bert Cunningham and Adonis Terry are tied at 19th with 148. Moyer plunked two batters this year before his release; Wright has hit three so far.
There is also a selection of brand names that hit #100 this year.
WILD PITCHES
AJ Burnett has 127 to his name and needs 6 more really wide ones to tie John Harkins at #50 career. No, I had never heard of John Harkins either.
SACRIFICE FLIES
Alex Rodriguez is two away from 100 career SF. The record is Eddie Murray with 128. Chipper Jones is at 96, a few others active in the low 90s.
INTENTIONAL WALKS
Albert Pujols is at 262 career Intentional Walks, third all-time behind Hank Aaron (293) and Barry Bonds (688). I seriously doubt he could get to #2 this year, but he has finally found his swing. Todd Helton needs 3 more to reach 187 and tie Harold Baines at #20 all-time.
GIDP
Derek Jeter and Paul Konerko are knocking on the Top 20 door for career GIDP. Tony Perez holds that spot at 268. Jeter has 261, Konerko 258.
Thanks, very much, Mr. G. I'll keep on top of the relevant numbers starting right now.
I want to start with Bobby Abreu.
Last week, Bobby Abreu got his walking papers. This new broke after I had finished the column, so I updated it, but I didn't do a full write up.
Bobby Abreu has 286 home runs. He has 565 doubles. He has 398 stolen bases. Bobby Abreu got on base nearly 40 percent of the time. That's pretty impressive. He led the league in doubles once. He led the league in triples once. That's it.
And that, somewhat obviously is the rub on Abreu. He's the classic "good at everything" player. Who just never did anything that quite set the imagination on fire. Which is a shame. Because Bobby Abreu was a really, really excellent ballplayer for a long time. He has a pretty decent Hall of Fame case. If he shows back up on some team or other. I'll gladly go back to tracking his exploits.
Adam Dunn keeps on keepin' on. Though his TTO pace is still slowing (he didn't even homer last week and still has four to go to get to 400). He is now 31 strikeouts away from 2000. That should happen by about the end of the month. He is currently ending his plate appearances in a homer, strikeout, or walk 58 percent of the time and is on pace to finish with 400 even. He is also on pace to finish the year with 236 strikeouts. Those would both be records.
He really needs to pick it up. If we're lucky, next week, he'll make an appearance in John Barten's Awards column with four homers, eight walks, and 10 strikeouts or something. Seriously, though, he has been slowing down his historic pace and another week or two like this will make the attainment of those records a dicey proposition. We'll be watching with baited breath.
Aroldis Chapman saw his K/9 rate dip just a bit more this week to 16.77. That's still inhuman and well beyond what anyone has done in a comparable number of innings.
There has started to be some Cy Young talk about Chapman. Which is interesting. His 2.9 WAR does put him in the top ten in the NL, but he's still well off Johnny Cueto and R.A. Dickey. Does he get extra credit for the high leverage situations? I don't know. I do know that Chapman is ridiculously good. Interestingly, all of his earned runs come from one seven day period. If you take out that week. Well, let's just say it's probably NSFW.
Jim Thome! You're out for a month! There's no way you're breaking Reggie Jackson's strikeout record this year. Please come back next year.
The Red Sox, they are teasing us. They hit a bunch of doubles this week and are back on pace for 366, which is within shouting distance of the record. You're back on the watch, Red Sox, but you're living on borrowed time.
With regard to ARod, I'm just going to re-post this same passage every week until he comes back, so we don't forget about him: If Alex Rodriguez gets back on the field (no reason to think he won't), he'll pass Andres Galarrage for fourth all-time strike outs, Ty Cobb for seventh all-time in RBI, and Tris Speaker for 11th all-time in runs. Sure bets every one of those.
Derek Jeter is now 15th all-time in runs scored. He needs 15 more to get to 14th all-time. He's also now seventh all-time in singles with 19 more needed to catch Honus Wagner. There are some things I can probably do better than Honus Wagner could. None of them involves hitting a baseball. He needs 11 hits to get to 13th all time. He could do it with a good week.
R.A. Dickey continues to be second in the strikeout race. As was correctly pointed out in the comments last week, he would be the second knuckleballer to lead the league, but the first to do it by striking out batters at this high of a rate.
Ryan Howard needs nine more homers to get to 300. I still think that's a pretty sure bet. Nine homers in not quite two months seems like a simple enough thing for Howard.
Jimmy Rollins still needs 10 steals to get to 400. Jose Reyes now needs only three.
Todd Helton is done for the year, and so is our tracking of individuals hitting two-baggers.
The season is getting shorter every day. Just about 50 games left now to see who will manage something historic.
Jason has too many irons in the fire. He fancies himself a fiction writer and also writes about the Reds at Redleg Nation, books at Elephants for Bookends, and everything else at The Winesburg Eagle. Email him at winesburgeagle *at* gmail or follow him on Twitter @jasonlinden
<< Return to Article