6 Week Summary - Tulowitzki On Fire

Troy Tulowitzi is off to a start unlike any other player in baseball. He's posting the highest batting average (.391), OBP (.497) and slugging percentage (.750) of any player in baseball and no other batter is even close. According to FanGraphs, he also has the highest WAR in baseball with 3.6 wins above replacement, 1.3 more than the next closest challenger, Mike Trout. But what's been most impressive for me has been his astronomical batter impact.

Right now, his Batter Impact is sitting at 26.9763, a full 5 points above Giancarlo Stanton, the nextbest batter as measured by Total BI. To put that in perspective, Chris Colabello is 5 points higher than Ryan Howard in the middle of the standings. Here's the top 25 (click to enlarge):

Now, I know you don't need batter impact to tell you that Tulo is having a season to remember. But it certainly can put his torrid start into perspective. Take a look at the gap in BI between him and the rest of the pack. If we assume that at this point in the season, with at least 150 plate appearances per player, the top players in baseball have a BI of around 13, we can see that Tulo has double that number! He is completely tearing apart the rest of the league.

Total BI is certainly a great way to measure players who have an excellent body of work but Average BI is better when accounting for the differences in plate appearances among players. Some batters simply have not received the same number of opportunities to bat as others. Looking at Average BI presents a new perspective and a new list of players who rank atop the league. Ignoring pitchers who may only have batted once or twice, the leaders in Average BI (min. 50 PAs) are:

1) Devin Mesoraco, CIN - 0.29

Mesoraco was doing great until he suffered his hamstring injury in April. Even then, he remains atop the leaders and it will be interested to see if he can maintain that 0.29 pace upon returning when even Tulowitzki can muster only an 0.17.

2) Troy Tulowitzki, COL - 0.17

Already covered him. I can't stress enough how mindboggling this 0.17 is.

3) Derek Norris, OAK - 0.13

Norris' 94 PAs are due to the fact that he shares his catching duties with John Jaso (0.009), but it may be smart for the A's to get rid of the platoon. Norris is batting equally well against both lefties and righties and the A's should commit to him fulltime, at least according to BI.

That's it for today but I can't end this week's report without giving a shout out to the bottom dwellers of the league. Zack Cozart remains at the cellar with a horrid Total BI of -15.25 (consider this: he hurts the Reds as much as Jose Bautista helps the Jays), but a special shout out to the San Diego Padres, who feature four of their 8 position starters in the Bottom 15 (Gyorko, Alonso, Cabrera, Venable). Here's to hoping they pick up the pace or Seth Smith, Chris Denorfia, and Yasmani Grandal may be the only 3 starters who actually help the Padres score runs.