Stats Entertainment!

Truth be told, I don't have the kind of mind that's really well-suited for the kinds of stats that a lot of baseball people get really geeked on, nor, as a general rule, am I a fan of posts about stats (or using "geeked" as a verb). Yet here we are. . . about to talk some stats.

The reason for this was because I recently came across a blog post from a site called Baseball Notes, or, if you prefer to believe the URL, somebaseballnotes.com... Either way, a seriously fucking plainly-named blog. They've turned me on to a little tool on Baseball-Reference.com-- which may be yesterday's news to the stat-head set, but since I have a life, is completely new to me-- that will break down all kinds of data about how any given team performed at each spot in the batting order. Upon closer inspection, this is actually kind of cool.

The nut of the post on Baseball Notes was that they've gone through this data team by team for 2007, and picked out which team had the highest OPS at each spot in the batting order. And for some fucking reason, your Toronto Blue Jays ranked first at the fifth spot in the lineup with a .939 OPS. Indeed, despite his shitty start, Frank Thomas turned in a pretty outstanding year by almost any other player's standards, and led the Jays to the top of this category. But a funny thing happened on the way to the painfully obscure stat. . .

It actually turns out that in the 56 games where Thomas batted fifth (and posted an OPS of .935) , the Jays' record was 27-29. However, for some reason that I figure needs exploring, Aaron Hill batted fifth for 34 games, posted an OPS of .946, and the team went 21-13.

Uh... can somebody get Gibbers on the phone?

How about another spot in the order? Well, I'm glad you asked. . .

The Jays, unsurprisingly, were much better when Alex Rios hit third than when Vernon Wells did. Yes, yes, Wells was hurt, but even his shitty .706 OPS for the whole season was better than the .652 he put up hitting third. Rios wasn't at his best in this slot either, but his .811 was a whole lot better than what Vernon did, and the team's record was 40-32 with him there, as compared to 26-36 for Wells.

Actually, none of the Jays thrived when hitting third last year, though anybody else's sample size is too small to really draw conclusions from it. But still, perchaps Scott Rolen makes sense there (though, for the record, Wells' OPS was .904 in the third spot in '06, and the team was 80-70 when he hit there).

Isn't this fun? Let's try another!

The sample size is small, but Rios really kicked fucking ass when he hit second last year (1.043 OPS, 10-8), though the team performed better with lesser (and lefter-- meuh!) hitters were there. Overbay and his .721 OPS out of that spot sucked some bag, but the team went 33-21 when he hit there. Sort of the same idea with Stairs (.898, 17-13).

OK... I'm sure you all can fuck around with this stuff as well as I can, so I'm not going to throw another thousand or so words at you here, but I'll give you at least a couple more things to chew on:

- Only a 77 PA sample size, but Gregg Zaun's OPS was 130 points higher than normal when he hit sixth (.882 compared to .752 on the season).
- The Jays' fifth, sixth and seventh hitters went .940, .844, and .886 in terms of OPS with runners in scoring position. No other slots topped .770.
- Do yourself a favour and avoid looking at the splits against right handed pitching.(That's going to kill this team again, isn't it?)

Crazy stuff, huh?

(OK, ... I'm really sorry for the stat bullshit everyone, but it was either this, or ape Blair's gem about a possible clubhouse monkey (get it?), or turning a throwaway quote from Joe Maddon to Tom Verducci into a thousand-word screed on why every lazy amateur "expert" writing off the Jays and getting all fucking pumped about those exciting, less-shitty-than-usual Rays seriously needs to go fuck himself. Maddon said that the Jays "probably have the best pitching staff in the division," FYI.)