Was alerted to this by my brother. This is my favorite part:
This is pure wonder. It is hard to play virtually every day for two months and not draw a single walk. How does he do it? Well, Peña Jr.’s secret is simple (pay attention, kids): He swings early and often. He has come to the plate more than 300 times this year, and he has only let a pitcher get three balls on him 25 times. Do you realize how amazing that is? If they changed the rules so Peña only needed three balls to walk, he would still be fifth on the team in walks.
And as far as Posnanski's comments about not "walking off the island", I did a little research into this general question back in December of 2005. You can read the results here:
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1 comment:
I ran Pena's stats last year through my sensitivity/response bias measure (I need Retrosheet data to do it, but the numbers are pretty consistent from year to year). Last year, his response bias was 1.11 (swings too much, although he's not a crazy-free swinger), and a sensitivity rating of .87 (pretty good). He made contact on 88% of his swings last year.
I wonder what would happen if I looked at response bias by birthplace.
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