Contributor: Bombykol
It says a lot about ESPN's stranglehold on American sports culture that Dustin Pedroia is now a household name. Yes, he was American League R.O.Y. in 2007. Then again, so was Angel Berroa four years earlier; the former Royals shortstop has yet to attain such widespread recognition (because he's dreadfully shitty). Pedroia is a very good major league baseball player, but he is hardly alone in that regard. Fellow AL East second basemen Brian Roberts, Aaron Hill, Robinson Cano and Aki Iwamura are also very good big league players; in fact, all but Iwamura have handily out-performed Pedroia in 2009. And none of them can claim to be the best second baseman in the American League--that distinction falls to Ian Kinsler. Now, this is not intended to discredit Pedroia, it is rather meant to serve as a passive-aggressive lambasting of the East Coast sports media. Pedroia does a lot of thing extremely well on a baseball field, still, players such as him come along relatively frequently. They only garner substantial accolades, however, when they happen to land in a major media market. Want evidence? A "scrappy," former Red Sox second base prospect surfaced in the National League Central several years ago, whereupon he clobbered 53 doubles, won a batting title, and recently recorded a six-hit game. If this had been Pedroia, the six hit outburst would have lead SportsCenter (and therefore superseded the Coors Light 'Six Pack of Questions' on "What's wrong with Papi?"). As it was, Freddy Sanchez's performance was little more than an afterthought...it didn't even earn comparable air-time to Jacoby Ellsbury's wholly uninteresting 12 put-out game, which any sane person would have let pass unnoticed just a few nights earlier. And then yesterday afternoon, a player bearing an even greater semblance to Pedroia had what was essentially his break-out performance in an otherwise dismal '09. He is a relative unknown, and as such, did not earn more than a mention on last night's Baseball Tonight. Still, many would be surprised to know than on a per-AB basis, Mike Fontenot nearly matched Dustin Pedroia's production during his grossly-overrated, "banner" 2008 campaign. How can this be, and how does Fontenot remain unknown outside of Wrigleyville (and Baton Rouge), owned in a measly 12.0% of ESPN fantasy baseball leagues? More importantly, why is he still fighting for at bats with the likes of Aaron Miles, Bobby Scales and Andres Blanco?
It says a lot about ESPN's stranglehold on American sports culture that Dustin Pedroia is now a household name. Yes, he was American League R.O.Y. in 2007. Then again, so was Angel Berroa four years earlier; the former Royals shortstop has yet to attain such widespread recognition (because he's dreadfully shitty). Pedroia is a very good major league baseball player, but he is hardly alone in that regard. Fellow AL East second basemen Brian Roberts, Aaron Hill, Robinson Cano and Aki Iwamura are also very good big league players; in fact, all but Iwamura have handily out-performed Pedroia in 2009. And none of them can claim to be the best second baseman in the American League--that distinction falls to Ian Kinsler. Now, this is not intended to discredit Pedroia, it is rather meant to serve as a passive-aggressive lambasting of the East Coast sports media. Pedroia does a lot of thing extremely well on a baseball field, still, players such as him come along relatively frequently. They only garner substantial accolades, however, when they happen to land in a major media market. Want evidence? A "scrappy," former Red Sox second base prospect surfaced in the National League Central several years ago, whereupon he clobbered 53 doubles, won a batting title, and recently recorded a six-hit game. If this had been Pedroia, the six hit outburst would have lead SportsCenter (and therefore superseded the Coors Light 'Six Pack of Questions' on "What's wrong with Papi?"). As it was, Freddy Sanchez's performance was little more than an afterthought...it didn't even earn comparable air-time to Jacoby Ellsbury's wholly uninteresting 12 put-out game, which any sane person would have let pass unnoticed just a few nights earlier. And then yesterday afternoon, a player bearing an even greater semblance to Pedroia had what was essentially his break-out performance in an otherwise dismal '09. He is a relative unknown, and as such, did not earn more than a mention on last night's Baseball Tonight. Still, many would be surprised to know than on a per-AB basis, Mike Fontenot nearly matched Dustin Pedroia's production during his grossly-overrated, "banner" 2008 campaign. How can this be, and how does Fontenot remain unknown outside of Wrigleyville (and Baton Rouge), owned in a measly 12.0% of ESPN fantasy baseball leagues? More importantly, why is he still fighting for at bats with the likes of Aaron Miles, Bobby Scales and Andres Blanco?
Perhaps Fontenot's platoon days are nearing an end. The 5'8" infielder (finally) showed signs of breaking out of his season-long slump yesterday, going two for three with a walk, two extra base hits and two RBI. After the game, Lou Pinella announced that Fontenot would serve as the Cubs' regular third baseman in Aramis Ramirez's absence, a long overdue opportunity for the former LSU star to get consistent at-bats and, hopefully, to jump-start his season. Assuming Fontenot does not play abhorrently in the coming days, he should rightfully assume complete control of the starting second base job once Ramirez returns; this is not to say that he will, as Pinella has used a variety of second-basemen in 2009 (including Miles (.204), Scales (.250), Blanco (.111) and former LSU double-play mate and current starting SS Ryan Theriot).
Meanwhile, in Boston, Dustin Pedroia pushed his season average to .328. The aforementioned BoSox two-bagger won the AL MVP last year with an impressive, yet hardly-unparalleled season (think '07 Jimmy Rollins lite). The East Coast media responded by collectively declaring the Red Sox second baseman a low-level deity, an unlikely love-child of Pete Rose and David Eckstein. Now, Dustin is Fenway Royalty, Bean Town's guilded grinder, a talent-starved cardiomegaliac and God's own gift to baseball clichés (and balding 24 year olds).
Yet Fontenot, playing in a similarly adoring market (sans the omnipotent media presence), managed to fly under the radar, despite Pedroia-esque production over nearly 300 PA. How can this be, with bulldogs like Jay Mariotti on the beat? Cubs fans, continue drinking away your analytical reasoning skills; the rest of you, I believe a comparison is in order. In comparing Fontenot to Pedroia, it would be nice to establish a relatively 'even' playing field (we could use per AB production, but that wouldn't be terribly enlightening outside of the comp itself). Granted, Fontenot was (almost exclusively) a platoon-player last season, which nullifies the usefulness of a straight-up multiplicative extrapolation based on PA's (Mike logged only 25 PA versus left-handers all season). Still, extrapolating out Fontenot's numbers based on his splits is not difficult, and it provides some illuminating truths in regards to his fundamental homologousness with Pedroia.
Pedroia’s 2008 PA allocation: 726 total; 545 vs. RHP, 181 vs. LHP
With this knowledge at hand, the question becomes 'how do we think Fontenot would have performed given 545 PA vs. RHP's and 181 PA vs. LHP's? And to reach a quantitative answer, all that is needed are ratios. This was as straight-forward as they come for Fontenot's production against righties, as his 259 PA's in 2008 provided an adequate sample-size for extrapolation (545/259 = 2.10x, our multiplicative factor for "counting stats"). His performance against lefties, however, required a larger number of plate-appearances than the 25 he logged in 2008 in order to guard against the prospect of random-chance anomalies. To this end, Fontenot's career splits ('07-'09) were employed, consisting of 79 PA's versus southpaws (181/79 = 2.29x).
Fontenot’s selected PA allocation: 259 PA vs. RHP (’08), 79 PA vs. LHP (career)
2008 statistics vs. RHP (in 259 PA): 222 AB, 40 R, 67 H, 19 2B, 1 3B, 9 HR, 38 RBI, 2 SB, 0 CS, 32 BB, 45 SO, .302 BA, .393 OBP, .518 SLG, .308 EqA
Extrapolated 2008 performace against RHP (per 545 PA): 466 AB, 84 R, 141 H, 40 2B, 2 3B, 19 HR, 80 RBI, 4 SB, 0 CS, 79 BB, 95 SO, .302 BA, .393 OBP, .518 SLG
Career statistics vs. LHP (in 79 PA): 73 AB, 11 R, 18 H, 6 2B, 0 3B, 1 HR, 8 RBI, 6 BB, 21 SO, .245 BA, .305 OBP, .370 SLG
Extrapolated 2008 performance against LHP (per 181 PA): 167 AB, 25 R, 41 H, 13 2B, 0 3B, 12 HR, 18 RBI, 14 BB, 48 SO, .245 BA, .305 OBP, .370 SLG
We now can combine Fontenot's stats vs. righties and lefties into an integrated line for his hypothetical, 726 PA 2008 season. Below is the comparison of Pedroia's MVP season and Fontenot's expanded '08 campaign:
Pedroia (2008, over 726 PA): 653 AB, 118 R, 213 H, 54 2B, 2 3B, 17 HR, 83 RBI, 20 SB, 1 CS, 50 BB, 52 SO, .326 AVG, .376 OBP, .493 SLG
Fontenot (adjusted for 726 PA): 633 AB, 109 R, 182 H, 53 2B, 2 3B, 20 HR, 88 RBI, 4 SB, 0 CS, 93 BB, 143 SO, .288 BA, .378 OBP, .472 SLG
(Fontenot (2008, actual numbers): 284 PA, 243 AB, 42 R, 72 H, 22 2B, 1 3B, 9 HR, 40 RBI, 2 SB, 0 CS, 34 BB, 51 SO, .395 OB, .514 SLG)
Thus, it becomes evident that at-bat for at-bat, Pedroia and Fontenot were very similar players in 2008. Any advantage that Pedroia had by virtue of a higher batting average (30 more hits in only 20 additional AB's), would have been essentially nullified by Fontenot's superior patience at the plate (43 additional walks). Pedroia did, however, produce better power numbers than Fontenot, but this should be taken with a giant grain of salt due to the 'Green Monster effect.' Over the course of his career, Pedroia has hit a whopping 55 points higher in Fenway, to go with a 46-point bump in on-base average, and a dizzying increase of 88 SLG% points; this is in no small part due to a ridiculous .356 BABIP in Boston (again, a staggering 61 points higher than on the road). In a more objective comparison, Pedroia grades-out as the better base-runner, although his both his '08 SB total and percentage were likely aberrational; Dustin has swiped a mere 15 bags in 218 contests held outside of the year 2008, and has been successful on only eight of twelve attempts this season.
Now, it should be noted that Fontenot, strictly a platoon player, is likely to have slightly inflated numbers against southpaws. This is because Fontenot is usually removed from the game when faced with a challenging lefty matchup. When he is allowed to stand-in, it is likely that the situation is stacked in his favor, at least to a degree. Take, for instance, a situation in which he is set to face a mediocre LH mop-up reliever (i.e. Glendon Rusch) in the eighth inning of a 12-1 blow-out, or a LH middle-reliever who has trouble getting left-handed batters out (i.e Dan Meyer); allowing Fontenot to bat in these situations increases his odds of success, as opposed to if he were forced to stand in against Pedro Feliciano. Whereas Pedroia will certainly be in the lineup to face C.C. Sabathia when the Yankees come to town, Fontenot will be a cheerleader when the Cubs square off against Johan Santana; Pedroia is thus consistently being put in a more difficult situation to succeed (at least against left-handers) than is Fontenot. It is difficult to ascertain what degree of inflation these intricacies engender, nevertheless, they are worth keeping in the back of your mind while examining the splits.
Moving on, extending the comparison to additional [select] statistics reveals further relationality between the two players:
Pedroia: .307 EqA, .336 BABIP (.328 career), .167 ISO, 120.00 RC
Fontenot: .308 EqA, .355 BABIP (.332 career), .210 ISO, 139.72 RC (adjusted for 726 PA)
Ditto the defensive statistics. Fontenot, in addition to grading out as a superior defensive second baseman, also has the versatility and arm strength to play both short and third, further increasing his value (though it should be noted that Pedroia did come up as a SS):
Pedroia: (448 A, 6 E) 10.5 UZR/150, 7.4 RngR, 2.7 ErrR
Fontenot: (143 A, 1 E) 18.1 UZR/150, 3.4 RngR, 1.4 ErrR
Again, I will explicitly reiterate that which may not be obvious: my intent here is not to minimize Dustin Pedroia's credentials as a very good, although not-quite-elite major leaguer. Rather, I'm simply attempting to uncover empirical evidence to support claims that the national media's bukakke party with the BoSox has gotten completely out of hand. This is no fault of Pedroia's, he is simply the benefactor. Nevertheless, in cities west of the Eastern Seaboard, there are many magnificent baseball players performing at extremely high levels and playing the game in a manor similar to Pedroira. Chase Utley, Dan Uggla, Freddy Sanchez, Alberto, Callaspo, Ian Kinsler, Orlando Hudson, Augie Ojeda, Mark Ellis...these guys are consummate professionals, each of them playing their respective tails off on a nightly basis, hustling out grounders, leaving their feet on defense and charging headfirst into any catcher bold enough to block the plate. And these are just a few players at one position (second)! So to Crasnik, Bryant, Shaughnassey and Co... Get your heads out of your asses, pony up sixteen dollars for a month of MLB.TV, and start channeling your inner Lewis and Clark...I guarantee as you venture west into the great unknown, you'll be pleasantly surprised with what you find.
