Brewer's pitchers batting

After a dismal season at the plate by the Brewer's pitchers Ned decided that only the starting pitchers would take batting practice and they would do so every day. We are now in the home stretch of the season so we can take a look to see if this move by Ned has payed off. Last year the Brewer's pitchers hit an abysmal .097/.119/.113 (that is batting average/on base percentage/slugging percentage in case you were wondering) dead last in the NL. This year the pitchers have picked it up a bit to the tune of .141/.164/.177, good for 11th in the league. Now some blogs would leave it at that and call Ned a genius. Well not this one (and apparently not this one either). You see last years team had the hack-tastic Doug Davis at the plate whiffing away. He has been replaced by a respectable hitting pitcher in Jeff Suppan. Also, Yovani Gallardo, who is an excellent hitter, has been added to the staff. So, how much credit should this extra BP really get?

For that we will look at the hold overs of the rotation and see how they have preformed at the plate. We will look at their stats for this year and compare them to last years stats and their career numbers. Obviously a small sample size warning on all of these numbers. First up is the ace of the staff, Ben Sheets.

Sheets
2007 .079/.079/.079
2006 .030/.059/.030
career .078/.117/.081

Sheets has been a terrible hitter from the word go. In his seven years in the big leagues Sheets has only hit above .100 one time in his career. He has one extra base hit (a double) in 359 major league at bats. 2005 and 2006 were beyond bad though as he put up OPSs of .065 and .089! Seriously, I probably could do better than that given the amount of practice time he had. This year he has picked it up a bit but still is slightly below his career numbers.

Bush
2007 .135/.158/.189
2006 .177/.190/.226
career .158/.175/.208

Bush's career numbers are a bit misleading because he only had two at bats before coming to Milwaukee last year. His numbers are down a bit across the board and his .135/.158/.189 line is a bit surprising since he was a college catcher before moving to the mound.

Capuano
2007 .242/.286/.333
2006 .118/.143/.132/
career .162/.192/.205

Cappy has really shined this year at the plate (though it hardly makes up for his poor year pitching). A pretty mediocre hitter during his five year career he is hitting for average and some power with a home run already this year.

So one pitcher has been better than last year but below his career numbers, one pitcher has been worse than last year, and one pitcher is having a career year. It looks like we should take a look at the two newcomers, Jeff Suppan and Claudio Vargas to see how they are doing before we rush to any judgments about the success of the extra BP for the pitchers.

Suppan
2007 .091/.130/.091
2006 .218/.295/.236
career .186/.230/.208

Suppan has been a decent hitting pitcher for his long career but has really had a tough year at the plate this year. He is well off his solid 2006 campaign and also below his career numbers. Maybe the magic of Dave Duncan is wearing off.

Vargas
2007 .114/.114/.143
2006 .098/.098/.157
career .080/.096/.103

Claudio has been slightly better than last year and an upgrade over his career numbers. He has spent all five of his years in the NL so he should be used to batting by now.

So it seems really hard to tell looking at these numbers what effect the extra BP has had. Getting rid of Doug Davis and his .046/.075/.046 line seems to account for most of the increases in the 2007 pitcher's line. Adding Gallardo's .217/.250/.261 line, in limited at bats, has helped as well. Gallardo hit very well in the minors so you can expect that to continue. Ned should probably look to him first if he needs to have a pitcher pinch hit. Even though there isn't a clear result from the extra BP it does seem to make sense just to have your starting pitchers taking all the BP time because they are getting the lions share of the at bats.