The HWC weekly stattracker: take two

I had originally thought about attempting a write-up on Derek Holland's illustrious beginning to his major league starting career for this weekend's post... but a multitude of far more established (and intelligent) others, such as Jamey Newberg and Evan Grant are way ahead of me there. At this point I'm pretty sure there's nothing left that I could tell you that hasn't already been said, other than the fact that Derek Holland's transition to the majors has for the most part been awesome beyond my wildest dreams.

So instead I'll just roll out another edition of the Hello Win Column weekly stattracker, as I continue to try and tweak this idea further. (Bear in mind that as with last week, all the stats are a day behind (as of Friday) since Baseball Reference won't update with Saturday's #'s till extremely early Sunday morning.)

WHO'S HOT

Elvis Andrus
Season: .292/.331/.458 (105 OPS+)
Since 5/16: .389/.421/.722 (5 G, 20 PA)

Of all the pleasant surprises on this team in 2009, Elvis Andrus continues to be the biggest one. The eye-popping defense, all the balls in the hole and up the middle that would've been singles in 2008 (and for pretty much the last 4-5 seasons) being turned into outs, the second-among-MLB-shortstops 4.2 UZR... that was predicted, if not expected by many, myself included (okay, so maybe not the second-best UZR part, but you get the idea). But if you had told me before the season started that Elvis Andrus was going to be this teams second-hottest hitter for the month of May, I probably would've laughed.

Granted, his .328/.368/.547 line over the first 18 games this month is somewhat inflated by the dazzling 4-5 performance he turned in on Friday (that one game added over 100 points to his May OPS - and 60 to his season OPS) but that doesn't take away from how stunning it is to see a 20 year old shortstop who skipped AAA entirely is putting up a .915 OPS in just
his second month in the majors (it's still over .800, even without Friday's performance). And while you obviously can't expect him to put up insane numbers like that over the long haul, the thing to take away from this kind of a performance is that Andrus has yet to look overmatched against major league pitching - meaning the biggest, and perhaps only real reservation about his insertion into the lineup this year (and in the future) is fast being laid to rest.

Michael Young
Season: .345/.386/.564 (146 OPS+)
Since 5/16: .320/.346/.360 (6 G, 26 PA)

Another pick from the "pleasant surprises of 2009" category would have to be Michael Young suddenly mashing like it's 2005 again. Though Young's reputation may not make it seem as such, MY is having just the second truly great offensive season of his career so far, leading all starters in OBP and SLG (only Andruw Jones, who has just over half of the number of PA's has bettered him in either category so far).

He's been the kind of awesome you kind of wonder will continue - and hope and pray that it does. And if it's going to, hope and prayer might indeed be necessary. I mentioned last time how his acchilies heel has been hitting with RISP and men on base, which continues to be the case - turns out that might not be his biggest fault. Delving a little deeper, a couple things that raised my eyebrow: not only is he rocking the highest BABIP of any regular (.382) on the team, while he's also third worst in P/PA (3.54, which is 22 points below even his career average). His walk rate (6.3%) isn't really too far out of line with his career norms, but it's still his lowest since 2004 (and his career walk rates aren't that great to begin with). So don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm trying to hate on Michael Young - it's just that as great as it's been, most of what he's done so far has been driven by a high BA, which in turn is driven by a ridiculous BABIP, and the 7th-highest line drive rate in the Majors. Which makes me worried we're going to see him on the other side of these posts before too long (which, in turn, people will probably blame on his bum foot instead of his unsustainable peripherals regressing).

David Murphy
Season: .231/.326/.359 (80 OPS+)

David Murphy is a guy I probably should've gotten to in the previous week's stattracker, but didn't. Not to worry though, that just gives me more of a sample size to work with this time.

Yeah, the season numbers don't look like much. An 0-23 streak to start the season will do that to your numbers. Many a Rusty Greer comparison fell victim to that streak as well. Which is kind of amusing, because thanks to that streak, they actually might be realistic for the first time in Murphy's career. It appears being unable to hit the ball 23 straight times might've actually been a good thing for Murph, because it's allowed him to add a new weapon to his arsenal: discipline. His 12.8% BB rate is second on the team to only to Andruw Jones, and more importantly it's almost double what it was his first two seasons here in Texas. He actually leads the team in P/PA with 4.32.

And oh yeah, since that 0-23 streak ended, he's hitting .321/.375/.500.

That's right folks: the Murphinator is back, and he's reloaded. With walks. I never thought I'd say this in regards to a Ranger team whose biggest problem has been getting on base, but... David Murphy needs more playing time. If for no other reason than to see if this newfound patience is for real.

WHO'S... NOT

Ian Kinsler
Season: .287/.358/.556 (135 OPS+)
Since 5/16: 0.87/.222/.130 (6 G, 27 PA)

So yeah... I guess at this point Ian is no long "maintaining a torrid pace". In fact, he's gone careening into a brick wall - he sat yesterday, and I'm told you could almost see the little cartoon-style stars circling his head down in the dugout.

So what's happened? What was the name of that brick wall the size of the Hoover Dam? Well, as you may have heard by now: road trip!

For whatever reason, Kinsler has not hit very well away from the Ballpark in Arlington this year. In fact, with the exception of last season, not ever, really. He's a career .249/.319/.409 hitter on the road, and so far this year the split has been at it's most extreme: .165/.224/.308 in the road greys.

Truth was, Ian was doing fine up until our latest road swing - he was still hitting .302/.387/.556 for the month, and had 7 walks in his last 7 games. Since hitting the road for Detroit however, he's gone on a 1 for 18 bender that's sent those monthly numbers plummeting to .247/.330/.444. Our next homestand can't come soon enough.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia
Season: .252/.308/.405 (86 OPS+)

Saltalamacchia is really beginning to frustrate me. Last year he forgot how to hit for any sort of power and was terrible against lefties - but he learned how to walk and that, coupled with his numbers against righties boded well for the future. This year, he's forgotten how to walk and stopped hitting righties, leading to a small plummet of his OPS+. But hey, he's been great defensively... so one step forward, two steps back.

On the bright side, he is showing a little better eye of late... he has 7 walks this month after taking just two the entire month of April. That's still not nearly enough to fix his on base problems however, as his average has plummeted to .226 in May (from .276). Despite a crucial homer Friday, his slugging has plummeted too, down to .358 (from .448).

The problem appears to be that while he's maintained most of his patience (4.03 P/PA) he's lost his batting eye. His contact rate on pitches in the strike zone (z-contact% of 83) is actually up slightly, but the problem is he's swinging at 35% of everything out of the zone (career high o-swing%) and only making contact 41% of the time (career low o-contact%). In some cases, there is a difference between just being patient and being selective, and lack of selectivity is what's killing Salty right now.

Chris Davis
Season: .209/.272/.453 (86 OPS+)
Since 5/16: .000/.100/.000 (6 games, 20 PA)

So much for Chris Davis's May rally. Since we looked at him last time, Davis has dropped into an 0 for 18 (it's actually up to 0-22 after yesterday) slump that has dropped him back to square one, and people back to questioning his ability to hit major league pitching. I don't really know what to say about Davis at this point except you still have to stay the course with him for the time being, IMO - he's still been stellar defensively at least, and Hank Blalock still sucks at getting on base too (although his 3-4 yesterday will have helped that some).

I'm just going to to stay patient, and enjoy wincing in pain at those mind-bending splits he does on the receiving end of Elvis Andrus throws for now. Either Davis will break out of his sophomore slump over the summer, and we'll have one helluva young 1B/DH combo with him and Justin Smoak... or Smoak will simply arise to the throne himself once he's ready. Either way, the outcome doesn't seem like a bad one.