As the regular season progressed, it seemed clear that several of the Titusville batters were underperforming. Rollins, Blalock, & Howard were all hovering around the Mendoza line. Run production was near the bottom of the league. What was going on?
With the end of the regular season, I can analyze this using the Legend’s excellent stats. I looked at the performance of my regulars compared to their 2007 MLB performance. (2007 MLB = 2008 ABL) I’ll assume that TPB is accurate in reproducing replay stats. I’ll select OPS (On-Base plus Slugging) as my metric, and I’ll include batters with more than about 90 ABs.
The Perfectos regulars lagged an average of 131 points below their MLB levels. Ouch! (Complete numbers are after the jump.) Rollins, Blalock, & Howard were all 200 points below. Ludwick & Castro weren’t much better. Only Pat Burrell managed to beat his MLB number.
OK, it’s not surprising that the ABL numbers are lower, since the batters are facing the cream of MLB pitching in the ABL. Is Titusville’s lag seen on other ABL squads? I ran the numbers for a few teams, some good, some not so good. No one comes close to Titusville’s underperformance. They range from -67 for St. Augustine to -38 for Tallahassee.
I looked for patterns, like sluggers doing worse than singles hitters, but I didn’t see anything.
Could the Perfectos from the Phillies be hurting because they play in a small MLB park? Doesn’t seem so. Howard did awful in the ABL, but Burrell did good.
So, maybe I’m wrong, but it sure seems like the Titusville batters got lousy rolls during the 2008 ABL season.
