The Stats Geek

Today the Stats Geek takes another look at the middle infielders. Everyone has a different opinion about what a team that's 16 games under .500 in August needs to do to win. I said yesterday I thought the pitching was lacking. The Stats Geek brings up another good point today, when Castillo and Wilson both hit well, we win. This kind of goes along with my line of thinking that we don't necessarily need more power if we get more production out of everyone in the lineup.

That means starting with Jack. Everyone expected a drop-off in the offensive categories after last year, but not quite like this. There is some promising stuff brought up by O'Neill though. Since April (when he was clearly bothered by his appendectomy, no matter what anyone says) he's been hitting .257. Since he's been dropped out of the 2 hole to the 8 slot, he's hitting .278. His defense, of course, has been superb and there's bunches of numbers to back that up. I think how Jack finishes at the plate this year will go a long ways towards telling us which Jack will show up next year. We don't need .300 with 200 hits, but if he hits .280 or so next year, he's more than worth it because of his glove.

Then we have Castillo. He's surprisingly below average in a lot of offensive categories among second basemen, but the NL second baseman crop is very strong this year. Still, as O'Neill says, he's only 24 and he's already surpassed most of his rookie numbers in less ABs this year, all while striking out less. He's getting better at the plate in front of our eyes and it might not be long until we see his name climbing up the lists towards the Marcus Giles's and Jose Vidro's of the world (Jeff Kent and Chase Utley are probably out of the question). And we know about his arm, and the double plays. What comes up next is something of a surprise, however. All last year, I thought it was a load of crap that we were being fed about Castillo's great defense (read some of my posts from April if you don't believe me). He was kind of the Kevin Young of second base in my eyes. He had poor range, so he made easy plays look hard and never even got to the hard plays, thus avoiding making himself look bad. I thought he was doing better this year, but the numbers don't bear that out. He's got the worst zone rating of any second baseman in baseball and the only second baseman with more errors are Soriano and Kent, perennial lead-gloves at second. The article doesn't even take into account the numerous mental errors he makes. One that immediately sticks out was in the Clemens game against Houston. With a runner on first and the Rocket at the plate, the infield was prepping for the bunt. As with most teams, the shortstop would be covering second. Clemens instead swang away, and hit what should have been (with his foot speed) an easy double play, except that Castillo had broken to cover second (with Jack already at the base). They didn't score any runs, but a team like us can't afford plays like that. There was also a play a couple weeks back that saw Jack snare a line drive and have an easy double play at second, only to find that Castillo hadn't covered the base. Castillo's still very young, and he's definitely improving (both in the field and at the plate) but he still has a long way to come.