Oct 222009
In preparation for the debacle that was game 2 of the NLDS I did a quick survey of how Cardinal hitters hit high velocity LHP fastballs. With that data in hand I went down the path of looking at all hitters against all high velocity fastballs (for the purpose of this look >94 mph). For the study I only looked at players that had put 50 balls in play over the time frame I was looking at (2008-mid Sept 2009). First the list of best SLGCON
| SLG Rank | Player | SLGCON |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Adam Dunn | 0.984 |
| 2 | J.D. Drew | 0.962 |
| 3 | Ryan Howard | 0.896 |
| 4 | Prince Fielder | 0.893 |
| 5 | Chase Utley | 0.820 |
| 6 | Joey Votto | 0.808 |
| 7 | Nick Swisher | 0.806 |
| 8 | B.J. Upton | 0.779 |
| 9 | Carlos Quentin | 0.774 |
| 10 | Torii Hunter | 0.771 |
And the worst
| SLG Rank | Player | SLGCON |
|---|---|---|
| 177 | Bobby Crosby | 0.193 |
| 176 | Juan Rivera | 0.241 |
| 175 | Kenji Johjima | 0.250 |
| 174 | Cesar Izturis | 0.260 |
| 173 | David Eckstein | 0.278 |
| 172 | Jason Kendall | 0.278 |
| 171 | Jeremy Hermida | 0.280 |
| 170 | Mark Kotsay | 0.291 |
| 169 | Yadier Molina | 0.292 |
| 168 | Magglio Ordonez | 0.300 |
And the notable Cardinals
| SLG Rank | Player | SLGCON |
|---|---|---|
| 23 | Ryan Ludwick | 0.707 |
| 24 | Albert Pujols | 0.700 |
| 30 | Matt Holliday | 0.659 |
| 41 | Mark DeRosa | 0.616 |
| 67 | Skip Schumaker | 0.556 |
| 82 | Troy Glaus | 0.518 |
| 169 | Yadier Molina | 0.292 |
| NA | Colby Rasmus | 0.556 |
| NA | Rick Ankiel | 0.388 |
Just thought these might be interesting. For a point of reference MLB average over the sample was 0.510. A more interesting look might be to do run values and expected run values, and I hope to have those incorporated into my database soon.
