A little over a year ago, I made this post, an update of how our old buddy Jason Botts was doing over in Japan (I'm also somewhat proud of it, as the post was a hit over on Rangers mega-blog LoneStarBall). The highlight of the post was this video:
And until now, that was the last I had heard from him. In case anyone is still wondering, Botts had a stint with the White Sox in spring training this year, but was released on March 17th after going just 1 for 12. It will be interesting to see where he lands.
Showing posts with label Jason Botts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jason Botts. Show all posts
Monday, April 26, 2010
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Thursday: BABIP Revisited
To follow up on yesterday's post about BABIP for pitchers I thought we could examine the statistic through an offensive lens. It works slightly differently for hitters: the league average of .300 is not always helpful when examining a hitter's BABIP. For instance, Ichiro has a career BABIP of .356. Instead of being the result of a terrible amount of luck over his entire career, this is due to the fact that he is a terrific hitter. On the other hand, it has been shown that (up to a certain point) pitchers have little to no control over their BABIP. In other words, hitters have much more control over their BABIP than pitchers do. Nevertheless, extraordinarily high or low BABIPs can still be used to predict future performance.
Most of the BABIPs for Rangers hitters from 2008 were as expected, but the following cases were somewhat surprising:
Milton Bradley: 2008 BABIP: .396 Career BABIP: .326
First of all, I expect a hitter of the Milton Bradley variety to have a high BABIP to begin with: he works the count to wait for the right pitch (4.00 PPA in 2008), swings and misses a lot (25.7% of the times he swung in 2008), and he mashes the ball when he does connect (.563 SLG in 2008). It certainly helped that he stung more line drives (24.7% LDs, more than the previous 4 seasons). But it doesn't matter who is being considered: George Brett, Tony Gwynn, Ted Williams, Ichiro Suzuki; a .396 BABIP is incredible (and most likely unsustainable). Especially when considering that Milton's 2008 mark was 70 points higher than his career BABIP. I concur with Bill James, who predicts that Bradley's 2009 BABIP will regress to a .341 mark (much closer to his career total). This means, of course, that Bradley probably won't hit .321 again. Fortunately for the Cubs, however, that still isn't too shabby.
Ramon Vazquez: 2008 BABIP: .355 Career BABIP: .315
To Vazquez's credit, he did hit more line drives in 2008 than ever before in his career (27.3% LDs) and significantly fewer fly balls (26.4% FBs compared to 35.6% in 2007). His luck started to catch up with him at the end of the season, however, as he hit .208/.317/.226 in August and .133/.235/.200 in September. Look for his BABIP to regress to .315 and for his batting average to return to his career average of .257.
Other players with notable BABIPs, but not enough career data to be significant:
Chris Davis: 2008 BABIP .353
Jarrod Saltalamacchia: 2008 BABIP .388
Taylor Teagarden: 2008 BABIP .409
Jason Botts: 2008 BABIP .222
Most of the BABIPs for Rangers hitters from 2008 were as expected, but the following cases were somewhat surprising:
Milton Bradley: 2008 BABIP: .396 Career BABIP: .326
First of all, I expect a hitter of the Milton Bradley variety to have a high BABIP to begin with: he works the count to wait for the right pitch (4.00 PPA in 2008), swings and misses a lot (25.7% of the times he swung in 2008), and he mashes the ball when he does connect (.563 SLG in 2008). It certainly helped that he stung more line drives (24.7% LDs, more than the previous 4 seasons). But it doesn't matter who is being considered: George Brett, Tony Gwynn, Ted Williams, Ichiro Suzuki; a .396 BABIP is incredible (and most likely unsustainable). Especially when considering that Milton's 2008 mark was 70 points higher than his career BABIP. I concur with Bill James, who predicts that Bradley's 2009 BABIP will regress to a .341 mark (much closer to his career total). This means, of course, that Bradley probably won't hit .321 again. Fortunately for the Cubs, however, that still isn't too shabby.
Ramon Vazquez: 2008 BABIP: .355 Career BABIP: .315
To Vazquez's credit, he did hit more line drives in 2008 than ever before in his career (27.3% LDs) and significantly fewer fly balls (26.4% FBs compared to 35.6% in 2007). His luck started to catch up with him at the end of the season, however, as he hit .208/.317/.226 in August and .133/.235/.200 in September. Look for his BABIP to regress to .315 and for his batting average to return to his career average of .257.
Other players with notable BABIPs, but not enough career data to be significant:
Chris Davis: 2008 BABIP .353
Jarrod Saltalamacchia: 2008 BABIP .388
Taylor Teagarden: 2008 BABIP .409
Jason Botts: 2008 BABIP .222
Sunday, February 01, 2009
My Life in Japan: The Jason Botts Story
We all remember Jason Botts, right? The onetime Rangers prospect who put up monster numbers in the minor leagues, but never could produce at the big league level? In case you missed it, he ended up in Japan playing for the Nippon-Ham Fighters.
I was always a big Jason Botts supporter. Since I live in Norman, I frequent Redhawks games and over the years saw Botts play upwards of 40-50 games at Bricktown Ballpark. Because of the time he spent at AAA and his monster numbers, he was a crowd favorite. It was hard not to root for the guy whose JumboTron portrait was replaced with a picture of Chewbacca (and at 6'5" and 250 lbs, its not too hard to believe that Botts was a Wookie). I was hopeful that he would translate his minor league success into a steady big league gig.
Today I was reading last year's publication of the Baseball Prospectus annual, and mused at their comments on Botts:
"Once again last year, Botts put up big, big numbers at AAA only to turn into a pumpkin once Texas gave him a shot at the big leagues . . . He could be huge in Japan one day."
At the time this seemed to be a comment characteristic of the BP writers' dry-witted sarcastic humor, until I did an internet search for Botts today. His 2008 numbers in Japan are only slightly better than his "pumpkin"-like performances with the Rangers (.254/.327.423 according to japanesebaseball.com). What I encountered next, however, were two YouTube videos: one was a Jason Botts music video, and one was an entire stadium chanting "Ja-son-Bot-tsu".
Perhaps Baseball Prospectus was not only sarcastic, but prophetic as well.
I was always a big Jason Botts supporter. Since I live in Norman, I frequent Redhawks games and over the years saw Botts play upwards of 40-50 games at Bricktown Ballpark. Because of the time he spent at AAA and his monster numbers, he was a crowd favorite. It was hard not to root for the guy whose JumboTron portrait was replaced with a picture of Chewbacca (and at 6'5" and 250 lbs, its not too hard to believe that Botts was a Wookie). I was hopeful that he would translate his minor league success into a steady big league gig.
Today I was reading last year's publication of the Baseball Prospectus annual, and mused at their comments on Botts:
"Once again last year, Botts put up big, big numbers at AAA only to turn into a pumpkin once Texas gave him a shot at the big leagues . . . He could be huge in Japan one day."
At the time this seemed to be a comment characteristic of the BP writers' dry-witted sarcastic humor, until I did an internet search for Botts today. His 2008 numbers in Japan are only slightly better than his "pumpkin"-like performances with the Rangers (.254/.327.423 according to japanesebaseball.com). What I encountered next, however, were two YouTube videos: one was a Jason Botts music video, and one was an entire stadium chanting "Ja-son-Bot-tsu".
Perhaps Baseball Prospectus was not only sarcastic, but prophetic as well.
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