League Leaders- AL edition

Continued league leaders

AL Hitters
Batting Average (I know I don't like it, but...)
Victor Martinez .400
Miguel Cabrera .378
Adam Jones .370

Yes, I only included this category because I love Victor.

At Bats
Aaron Hill 167
Vernon Wells 160
Alex Rios 158

No coincidence that all 3 are Blue Jays and the BJ's currently lead the majors in offense.

Runs
Adam Jones 35
Marco Scutaro 34
Nick Markakis 34
Brian Roberts 31
Jason Bay 31

3 of the top 5 are Orioles, but the orange birds remain last in the AL East. Could be because they have given up the most runs.

Hits
Victor Martinez 58
Aaron Hill 58

Nobody else above 50.

RBI
Evan Longoria 46
Jason Bay 38
3 others tied at 33

Longoria has been a Yankee and Red Sox killer this season, but has also been a steady producer everywhere. Only included Bay because I think he's my brother's new favorite player. Bay won him a beer from me in the Red Sox Indians-Series.

Stolen Bases
Carl Crawford 24 (0 caught)
Jacoby Ellsbury 16 (4 caught)
Chone Figgins 15 (2 caught)
Bobby Abreu 13 (0 caught)
BJ Upton 11 (2 caught)

Crazy to see Abreu running again, since he doesn't seem to like to do that in the outfield. Of course the lead is Crawford who is single handedly winning the steals category for me in 2 of 3 leagues. More importantly, he's stolen more bases on his own than 16 other MLB teams (9 AL teams).

Extra Base Hits
Longoria 27
48 hits total (11 HR, 16 Doubles). I suppose this has something to do with his really high RBI. Over half his hits are better than singles. Awesome.

Hit by Pitch
Carlos Quentin 8
Kelly Shoppach 8

Get on base any way you can.

AL Pitchers
Roy Halladay 61 (8 starts)
Zach Greinke 60 (8 starts)

Both are averaging well into the 8th inning and doing so with impressive results.

Strikeouts
Justin Verlander 69
Zach Greinke 65

If I was doing both leagues at once, I would point out that both league leaders have the intials J.V. (Javier Vasquez leads the NL with 67K).

Losses
Cliff Lee 5
Jose Contreras 5

Lee's ERA 3.00, Contreras's ERA 8.19

Saves
Brian Fuentes 9
Frank Francisco 9
Jonathan Papelbon 9

Frankie Frank has yet to give up a run this year, but looks to be out for a bit due to nagging injury. Of these 3, only Fuentes has blown a save (2 actually).

Complete Games
Greinke 4

Only 13 pitchers have thrown complete games and only 4 have thrown more than 1 this season. It's Greinkes's Cy Young to lose at this point.

Wild Pitch
Scott Kazmir 6
Gavin Floyd 4
AJ Burnett 4

Not much to say here. I'll end this post now.

Wright Stuff

Of course moments after I wrote that Wright was in the caught stealing more than successful attempts he goes out and steals 4 bases, taking him out of the category completely.  Got to love baseball.

League Leaders

Thought I would just post the top few players for some stats to date. This post is NL leaders only.

NL Hitting
RBI
Pujols 35
Cantu 33
Fielder 32

I will point out that all 3 names are pretty awesome for various reasons. Poop joke, the reply "Can too", and the irony of a huge 1B being named for something he's only okay at.

Runs
Pujols 33
Soriano 30

Hits
Ryan Zimmerman 51
Orlando Hudson 50

I like hits better than batting average. Because the number of hits is cooler. Try to defy that logic.

Triples
Matt Kemp 4
I certainly would not have guessed it was Kemp. Also wouldn't have guessed that 22 other National Leaguers have at least 2 triples.

More caught stealing than stolen bases (SB/CS)
David Wright (5/6)
Elijah Dukes (2/6)
Troy Tulowitzki (2/3)
Joey Gathright (1/2)
Adam Rosales (0/2)
Chris Dickerson (0/2)

There's a bunch of others that are 0 for 1.

There are 30 NL'ers who average more than 4 pitches seen per plate appearance.

Total Extra Base Hits
20 each by Raul Ibanez, Alfonso Soriano, and Ryan Zimmerman

Hit by Pitch
Chase Utley 6
Jason Kendell 5
Ryan Braun 5

Would never guess that I would see Kendall on a list with Utley and Braun.

Ground Into Double Play (or inning killer)
Andre Ethier 10 (in 36 games)
Geovany Soto 9 (in 28 games)
Ryan Zimmerman 8 (in 33 games)

I guess I should be less surprised that there are a bunch of decent players on this list because that means their teammates are getting on base in front of them.

NL Pitching
Strike Outs
Peavy 61
Santana 60
Lincecum 58
Javier Vazquez 57 (didn't expect that)

Losses
Doug Davis 5 (Glad he beat the thyroid cancer of a year ago. Not a joke, am really glad for him)
Peavy 5
Ian Snell 5
7 guys with 4 Losses, but the one of biggest note is Dan Haren, who has an ERA of 2.09. The rest of the 4 loss guys range from 4.73 to 5.79

Wins
5 guys with 5, but the best is Bronson Arroyo who has an ERA of 7.02.

Holds (cause everyone loves these)
Carlos Marmol 10 (3 saves)
JJ Putz 8 (another great name)
Jason Motte 7 (was supposed to be a closer, but apparently is a holder)

More to come from the AL.

More on the unsungs

Long time ago, I meant to point out how awesome www.baseball-refernce.com is and I again missed my chance with the Conchords post.

One of my favorite features of baseball-reference is the similarity scores it assigns to each player.  It finds other players with similar stats playing the same position at the players age.

For Sanchez, there's not a lot of good ones, with the only ones I knew immediately being Robinson Cano, Alex Cintron, and Johnny Estrada.  Funny though that many people know Cano, despite his rather awful 2008, and so few still know Sanchez.

For Markakis though, the list is far more interesting.  The direct comparisons include current players Juan Riveria, Andre Ethier, Kevin Youkilis, Rocco Baldelli (who the guest kid announcer on NESN called Baldy last week), and Cliff Lee.  What?  On further inspection, the Cliff Lee mentioned is not the reigning Cy Young Winner, it is actually a ballplayer from 1920's.

On Markakis's similar through age 24, he's got some good career prospects, as it lists the likes of Vernon Wells, Ellis Burks (one of my personal favorites), and Carlos Beltran.  If he can pull off the production of any one of them, you'd have to want him on your team long-term.