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Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Manny being Pujols
With all the Manny and Delgado MVP talk, I wanted to do something really easy: look at the hot streaks of all the hitters and see how Manny really compares. Luckily for me, this has already been done by William Burke and Jay Jaffe at Baseball Prospectus. Great job guys!
Specifically, what Manny has done with the Dodgers was matched, and easily surpassed, by Pujols and Berkman earlier in the year. If you take out those 180 PA from Manny, Pujols, and Berkman (let’s say they are all a wash, even though Manny’s streak is the worst of the three), what do you get?
Manny: zero PA. Zero everything, naturally.
Pujols: 416 PA, .450 OBP. !!! That is, Pujols currently has a .461 OBP. If you take out his best stretch of play, when he had a .492 OBP, you are still left with a .450 OBP! That settles the argument right there, doesn’t it? What is more valuable to his NL team: Manny being in Boston, or Pujols having a .450 OBP?