Best Tools ‘08: Good feel, better eyes
TOWER GROVE — The community poll on the best tools in the National League began with a few obvious skills. Best Hitter. Best Power. Best chances to get an early consensus.
Today’s two tools aren’t nearly as obvious. They are:
- BEST BUNTER
- BEST STRIKE-ZONE JUDGMENT
As mentioned Friday, the blog will feature over the next several weeks the same ballot that Baseball America distributes to managers around baseball. Each manager is asked to identify the three best players in his league at the “tool”. Some of the tools ahead are Best Curve, Best Infield Arm and, the final blog entry, Best Defensive Outfielder. We’ll go two-by-two until the last line of the ballot, Best Manager.
Today’s is tricky, but you can start with some obvious selections, like Juan Pierre or Willy Taveras for the bunter category or local hitter Albert Pujols for best strike-zone judgment. There are, as ever, darkhorses for each tool and these tools are wide open for surprises (read: plate discipline and … Pat Burrell). I’ll be back with bunters in the comments, but for now I’ll use the usual blend of eyeballing the game and scanning the statistics to go with these three for strike-zone judgment:
- Albert Pujols, Cardinals
- Brian Giles, San Diego
- Chipper Jones, Atlanta
Leave your rankings in the comments below and, if you haven’t already, fire off your top three at the previous Best Tools ‘08 entry: Best Hitter. Best Power.
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
Strike Zone Judgement:
1. Albert Pujols
2. Kosuke Fukudome
3. Chipper Jones
Best Bunter:
1. Juan Pierre
2. Willy Taveras
3. Jose Reyes
Best bunter:
1. Eddie Gaedel
2. Ty Cobb
Does anybody bunt anymore? Seriously, I’d have had a bunter answer 25 years ago, when I was 14, but I couldn’t even say, now.
As with probably every category, there are definitional ambiguities. Does best bunter have to be some jackrabbit who bunts for hits, or could it be a pitcher who is iron-clad at moving runners? I think Greg Maddox has a pretty solid track record, for example.
Best strike zone judgment is a pretty straightforward standard, but it’s more complicated when you try to measure it. Low strikeouts is one measure, but some guys (Juan Pierre, Eckstein, Ichiro) avoid Ks by not taking a lot of pitches and swinging for contact, putting the ball in play without drawing a lot of walks. Some heavy hitters draw a lot of walks even without a strong grasp of the strike zone. Other guys who know the strike zone will increase their strikeouts by swinging for power instead of contact. (Pujols isn’t per se trying to hit home runs, but he it trying to murder the ball. Imagine how rarely he would strike out if he were hitting purely for contact, a la Cobb or Carew. He’d hit .450 with about 15 strikeouts a year.) So perhaps the ratio of walks to strikeouts is a good stat to measure strike zone judgment.
Strike Zone Judgment:
Jack Cust
Troy Glaus
Chipper Jones
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=4&season=2008&month=0
Best Bunter:
Carlos Gomez (Twins)- sheer numbers
Jacoby Ellsbury - Percentage converted
Jose Reyes - Both
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=2&season=2008&month=0
BTW - Fangraphs might be the best baseball site on the web. There is an amazing amount of data to be found there and the writing is usually top notch as well.
Fuhrig,
Those are the stats I checked after writing a short list of guys I wanted to check out. I also looked at a few others, like how difficult a guy is to strike out and over at Bill James Online they have a stat on “plate discipline”. I went sniffing around that statistic when I wanted more information on David Wright and Pat Burrell.
But really, you have to mix the stats with what your eye tells you.
Same with bunting. I do wonder if there’s a pitcher who belongs on the list.
dg
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I just realized my bunting link is to the wrong page. Here is the correct link to bunt hit leaders:
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=2&season=2008&month=0
Crap. That didn’t work either.
Strike Zone:
1. Derrick Lee
2. Yadi Molina
3. David Wright
Bunting:
1. Juan Pierre
2. Jose Reyes
3. Aaron Cook (13 Sac Bunts thus far this season)
Strike Zone:
1) Pujols
2) Brian Giles
3) Yadi Molina
Bunters:
1) Juan Pierre
2) Jose Reyes
3) Willy Taveras
Happy Birthday to my Dad!
Best Hitter-Pujols, Chipper, A-Rod
Best Power- Howard, Pujols, Hamilton
Best Bunter- Eckstein, Furcal, Maddux
Best K-Zone Judgement- Pujols, Chipper, Derrek Lee