Helton Fouls 'em Off

Baseball fans love foul balls.

I'll have to admit however that despite having attended a couple hundred major league games I've never myself caught one. The closest I ever came was a game at Turner Field, when sitting in the loge section just to the first base side of home plate in the first row, a foul ball flicked off my oustretched fingers as I leaned down towards the field. Oh, and I was also almost killed by an Andre Dawson line drive at Wrigley Field but that doesn't really count since I was attempting to catch that one and was instead cowering behind my seat down the third base line.

In any case, I'll bet you're all wondering what players hit the most foul balls in 2006. Wonder no more. The top 20 are.

Name                 Fouls   Pitches    PA    F/PA     F/P
Todd Helton            563    2553     649   0.867   0.221
Grady Sizemore         556    3014     751   0.740   0.184
Alfonso Soriano        537    2840     728   0.738   0.189
Michael Young          534    2802     748   0.714   0.191
Chase Utley            528    2927     739   0.714   0.180
Matt Holliday          517    2413     667   0.775   0.214
Jeff Francoeur         513    2277     686   0.748   0.225
Derek Jeter            503    2691     715   0.703   0.187
Brian Roberts          497    2419     630   0.789   0.205
Adrian Beltre          494    2572     681   0.725   0.192
Carl Crawford          493    2314     653   0.755   0.213
Carlos Guillen         476    2372     622   0.765   0.201
Adrian Gonzalez        475    2460     631   0.753   0.193
Magglio Ordonez        474    2286     646   0.734   0.207
Chad Tracy             473    2649     662   0.715   0.179
Johnny Damon           472    2743     671   0.703   0.172
Hanley Ramirez         470    2798     700   0.671   0.168
David Wright           468    2601     661   0.708   0.180
Kevin Youkilis         463    3004     680   0.681   0.154
Vladimir Guerrero      461    2101     665   0.693   0.219

Personally, I'm not surprised that Todd Helton takes the top spot. Helton missed 14 games in late April and early May to what was diagnosed as "acute terminal ileitis". He then perhaps pushed himself too hard and played in 48 straight games upon his return never really regaining his form. In watching him in it certainly appeared as if his timing was a bit off thereby fouling off a tremendous number of pitches. Note that you see other free swingers in this list including Helton's teammate Matt Holliday, Alfonso Soriano, and uber-free-swinger Jeff Francouer.

I'll bet you also didn't know that Ronny Cedeno fouled off 14 of the 27 pitches in 4 plate appearances against Fernando Nieve thereby taking the top spot in fouls per plate appearance.

As far as pitchers are concerned here are the top 20 in fouls per plate appearance.

Name                 Fouls  Pitches     PA    F/PA     F/P
Jonathan Papelbon      258    1023     257   1.004   0.252
Rafael Betancourt      227     899     231   0.983   0.253
Russ Springer          223    1008     240   0.929   0.221
David Aardsma          208     962     225   0.924   0.216
Neal Cotts             230    1031     251   0.916   0.223
Rafael Soriano         215     981     241   0.892   0.219
Scott Baker            327    1441     377   0.867   0.227
Bob Howry              271    1298     314   0.863   0.209
Jose Valverde          188     924     223   0.843   0.203
Jason Frasor           180     932     215   0.837   0.193
Curt Schilling         696    3244     834   0.835   0.215
Mariano Rivera         244    1101     293   0.833   0.222
Chris Young            610    3025     735   0.830   0.202
Scott Proctor          353    1594     426   0.829   0.221
John Maine             300    1511     365   0.822   0.199
Jonathan Broxton       262    1305     320   0.819   0.201
J.J. Putz              248    1215     303   0.818   0.204
Jeremy Accardo         243    1217     297   0.818   0.200
Billy Wagner           242    1242     297   0.815   0.195
Alan Embree            180     823     221   0.814   0.219

Not sure what this means if anything other than perhaps pitchers with hard breaking stuff induce more fouls.