Monday, November 1, 2010

Luke Scott: The Invisible Slugger, Part 2

From Roch Kubatko's post on MASN yesterday titled "Deciding the Top DH for 2010":

The Edgar Martinez Outstanding Designated Hitter Award will be presented next month, which makes sense, considering that we're down to our final day of this month...


The two leading candidates are Vladimir Guerrero and David Ortiz. One player looked like he was finished and didn't draw a tremendous amount of interest on the free agent market. The other player looked like he was finished once the season began and dealt with all sorts of speculation about being benched or released...


The ballot calls for members of the media to cast votes for first and second place. I just need to figure out the order.


While Roch lays out Scott's numbers, there is no case made for him to be on the ballot. Not once.

Some key stats for the trio overall in 2010:

OPS   wRC+  2B   HR     
Ortiz       .899   137   36   32
Guerrero    .841   124   27   29
Scott       .902   143   29   27  


And the trio's DH numbers only"


OPS   OPS+  2B   HR     
Ortiz       .908   140   35   31
Guerrero    .850   125   25   25
Scott       .955   152   19   23





Luke Scott trumps them all.

Now, given the closeness of their rate stats and the fact that Ortiz has more than 150 PAs more than Scott as a DH, you can make the argument that Ortiz should get the edge over Scott. But Guerrero? It's not even close. He certainly belongs on the ballot, if not the winnre of the award.

But Roch Kubatko, a guy who watched Scott all year long, doesn't even make a case for him. Scott's 2010 is going down as one of the most overlooked offensive seasons in Oriole history.

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