Some Late Night Notes From Around the League

Let's start things off first with a look at three bits on the Braves:

Working the Count (No, not the blog...)

An interesting tidbit came into my mind after watching the Braves run-up Brandon Webb's pitch count early in today's game. Have the Braves had more or less success working the count this season? The answer may surprise you...

Here are the amount of pitches per plate appearance in their wins and losses, guess which is which...

(A) 3.723 P/PA
(B) 3.714 P/PA

Easy enough, right? Considering the Braves are averaging around 39 batters per game, the difference comes to just over a third of a pitch per game, so it's not like there has been a huge swing in wins and losses.

So, which are the Braves seeing more pitches in? If you answered losses, you were correct.

The Many Streaks of Kelly Johnson

If there was one thing Atlanta fans took away from the 2007 season it was that Kelly Johnson is just about as streaky as a hitter as there could possibly be.

Hell, it goes back further than that, actually. A lot of us have not so fond memories of the .227 OPS he posted in his first 36 ML plate appearances (including a .030 batting average). And what did he do in the following 112 PAs? He only put up a 1.046 OPS. Then, of course, he went on to end the season on a .220/.286/.357 skid over his final 186 trips to the plate.

Get the point? It was the same rinse and repeat process last season.

So, of course, Braves fans -- and their short term memory, god bless 'em -- get a little too excited and uppity when Kelly started hitting once he was removed from the leadoff spot two weeks ago.

But was it really because of his movement in the lineup, or were the seeds already being planted for him to begin another one of his many streaks over the course of the long season? Well, to the stats we go...

For starters, let's look at it in black and white -- what he did before the lineup switch and what he's done afterwards...

May 13th	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Before	136	.261	.328	.429	.757
After	39	.429	.462	.714	1.176

Can't argue with that, pretty stark difference.

But, you also can't argue with the fact there is a pretty big difference in 136 PAs and 39 PAs.

So, let's break it down a bit and look at Kelly some of Kelly's increments of 39 PAs so far this year.

Increment	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
First 39 @ Leadoff	39	.237	.256	.263	.519
Last 39 @ Leadoff	39	.314	.333	.486	.819

As you can see there, in the ten games or so leading up to the big shuffle, Kelly was showing some signs of coming out of the slump he's been in and out of this season. So, I wouldn't be so quick to say it's just because he was relieved of the stresses of hitting leadoff, but let's give it some time to see where he goes from here.

Things Are Heating Up For Tex

Last week I touched on how much Mark Teixeira has been struggling so far this season and how much the Braves are going to be in dire need of him breaking out of the slump he's been in. Could now be the time?

Teixeira	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	RBI
Last 8 Games	33	.379	.455	.483	.938	10

The scary thing is, those numbers are including the 0-for-11 he put up in the first three games of the Arizona series. Then again, when you are facing Doug Davis, Randy Johnson and Micah Owings, such things are to be expected. But then he goes and breaks out against arguably the best pitcher in baseball, Brandon Webb, and drives in four runs in the first two innings.

We can only hope it continues as the Braves head into Milwaukee and Cincinnati.

No Free Passes

While tracking the Tigers/Angels and Red Sox/Mariners games tonight, I came across two rather (un)impressive stats:

Player	PA	BB	PA/BB
Erick Aybar	160	2	80.00
Yuniesky Betancourt	182	3	60.67

Ouch. And Braves fans routinely complain about how Jeff Francoeur is still not where he needs to be in drawing walks? Well, I decided to take this a step further and see who the worst offenders were in this category with over 200 plate appearances.

Player	PA	BB	PA/BB
Kevin Kouzmanoff	227	6	37.83
Jose Lopez	219	6	36.50
Emil Brown	203	7	29.00
Miguel Tejada	222	8	27.75
Cristian Guzman	220	8	27.50
Freddy Sanchez	214	8	26.75
Ryan Zimmerman	220	9	24.44
Ryan Braun	215	9	23.89
Garrett Atkins	209	9	23.22
Jeff Francoeur	214	10	21.40
Khalil Greene	213	10	21.30

So, it could be much worse. Just imagine if the Braves had not one, but two players with over 200 plate appearances -- in the case of the Nationals and Padres -- who weren't drawing many walks. Even though Matt Diaz has only drawn three walks this season, he's still 67 plate appearances away from hitting the 200 PA mark.

Surprising Heavy Hitters

So far this season, there have been some hitters who have been absolutely killing the ball. They aren't quite the names you would expect, however. Who would have expected the Phillies would have two players in their lineup who currently have an isoSLG over .300, despite neither being Ryan Howard? Or how about one being an infielder for the Marlins? An outfielder for the White Sox? Here's the list of players who currently have 200+ trips to the plate and have put up an isoSLG over .300 so far.

Player	% XBH	isoSLG
Dan Uggla	61.40	.380
Lance Berkman	50.00	.374
Pat Burrell	57.45	.319
Chase Utley	51.67	.313
Carlos Quentin	44.00	.307

And there you have it.

More tomorrow, hopefully. I'm still working on the aforementioned clutch hitting project, so maybe I'll get around to posting it.