FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

Monday, November 13, 2006

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.

No comments: