52 Weeks, 52 Books

As we head down the backstretch of month one in our marathon towards the finish line, even the most adamant of us that preach patience with our teams need to dust off the desk once again and start taking a look things. The season is easing into a canter and players are fast approaching the 100 at-bat mark meaning it’s easier for to analyze how our players are performing from the still smallish samples we have at our disposal. As the at-bat totals climb the rate statistics won’t be subject to such wild fluctuations with each 1-for-10 slump or 5-for-10 surge.

The following article is less about making moves based on the past and more about shedding some light on what we might be seeing from a group of players in the coming month of May. I analyzed the past three years of data to determine who the top May hitters are during that stretch. I took everyone that posted an .850 or better OPS in May of 2005, 2006 and 2007. From there, I looked how frequently the players appeared. If a player appeared only once, they were done as I was looking for players that consistently smack the ball around in May. Performing in one of the past three Mays can be written off as a fluke.

There were 45 players that hit the .850 or above OPS mark in two of the three seasons and you will learn about them very shortly. Eight of those 45 (18%) turned the hat-trick. The positional breakdown delivers 21 outfielders, 14 corner infielders, six middle infielders and four catchers/designated hitters. The point of this exercise is to shed some light on the players you can reasonably expect a surge from as the calendar turns over to May. It is by no means a guarantee that these players will perform in this May as they have in past Mays, but the data set is large enough to make it worthwhile (read: fun) to look at for fantasy owners. Also, some of the players on the list might be currently struggling and thus increase their candidacy for a buy-low trade.

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The bulk of this 45-player list is superstars and established players, so don’t expect a list of players you can troll the waiver wire for in hopes of riding a hot May up through your standings. If anything, this list was constructed to offer peace of mind to those worry easily in this game we play. A hot month can jump-start a season and erase a slow start. Heck, Ryan Braun didn’t even need an April to put together an MVP-caliber season last year. There are definitely some players in this list that are currently slumping enough to raise concern for their owners. There are sometimes various degrees of validity to slumps of superstars, but those are usually injury-related. So if your stud isn’t in the news for various maladies that could be affecting his performance, then he is likely just in a slump that he will assuredly come out of during the season.

It could be May, it might be June, but as the adage goes: hitters hit. OK, enough preaching, let’s get back into some specifics about the list. A team breakdown suggests that opponents of Boston, Detroit and the New York Yankees had better watch out. Of course, I’d have suggested they watch out even without this list. Only seven teams don’t have a player within the list of 45 and the most surprising tidbit to come out of that fact is that one of the seven is NOT the San Francisco Giants (their representative will surprise you even more!) The light-hitting Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics and San Diego Padres are all on the list of seven to the surprise of no one. The lack of representation from the Tampa Bay Rays is actually a bit of surprise despite their ineptitude as a team in recent years. Though thinking through it now, their budding stars have not really been around long enough to have strung together a few Mays in a row. The Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers round out the list of seven. For those keeping track, that is three-quarters of the American League West to make the no-show list.

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I have now exhausted the content of this article that focuses on everything but the players involved, so let’s get to the meat of it all. Since the entire chart of 45 players with 13 columns of data apiece isn’t viewer friendly to the format of this article, I’ll break it up in three groups of 15 and countdown from 45 to 1, sorted by OPS:

• Note that I included the extra base hit percentage so you can get an idea of how many doubles and triples each batter had to go with the home runs that you can see listed. I found this to be more useful than keep the double & triple columns.

• Though .850 was the cutoff to qualify for the study, you will see that three of those ended up on the list actually have OPS below the .850 mark. Each of these three players had two seasons that qualified for the study, but clear their third year of May statistics took them below the threshold I was looking to achieve.

• Mike Cameron’s presence could bode well for his owners as he doesn’t even begin play until April 29th after serving a 25-game suspension for amphetamine use.

• Though he made the list, Adam Dunn doesn’t necessarily heat up in May. He hits for a ton power and takes the walks that we expect him to take. Both of these outcomes inflate his OPS to give him a spot on the list, but factoring in the .222 average almost eliminates the goodness of the home runs and runs batted in. As always, in an OBP league Dunn is a monster!

• Pat Burrell is not getting much press because of superstar teammate Chase Utley’s play, but Burrell has been white-hot to start the season. He often starts off the season well, but not this well. Many are attributing his hot start to the off-season marriage and the fact that he is a contract year.

• Several of the players in the bottom third of the list would benefit from continuing this historical trend including Casey Blake (.233 avg), Troy Glaus (0 hr) and Brad Hawpe (1 hr).

Next, we’ll look at the middle third which contains a fair bit more star power than players 31-45. However, this grouping also contains the list’s biggest surprise:

• As mentioned earlier, Chase Utley is steamrolling towards a Player of the Month Award at April wraps up. He has 10 home runs and an absurd 1.280 OPS. If he puts up another strong May, the league is in deep trouble!

• With a recent seven-game hitting streak from David Ortiz that has included three of his four home runs, he is heating up just in time to keep his hot May trend alive.

• Jose Castillo is no misprint; he did qualify for the list. In leagues where you might already be feeling desperate and willing to try anything, he might be a worth a flier to test the trend and see if it sticks. (Note: his 2007 May did see his hit .313, but that was it as he totaled just a .718 OPS. His 2006 May was spectacular with seven home runs, though. Buyer beware!)

• Utley isn’t the only one on fire that cracks the top 30: Conor Jackson, Chipper Jones, Alex Rios and David Wright are all paying large dividends for their owners thus far.

• Lyle Overbay welcomes May with open arms. He has yet to hit a home run this year and he has six in each of the past two Mays. He is one of the eight players that posted an .850 or better in each of the three seasons analyzed.

• Nick Johnson is finally healthy, but uncharacteristically struggling in April. He is still piling up walks, but not much else.

Finally, let’s look at the top 15. It’s star-laden with the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday and Miguel Cabrera, all of whom are 1st round picks/top-dollar players.
• Aging stars Magglio Ordonez, Gary Sheffield and Manny Ramirez do some of their best work in May. Ordonez & Ramirez are both on fire already, while Sheffield is banged up and struggling when he does play.

• A pair of second basemen cracked the top 15, but only relies on the long ball to power his fantasy value. Brian Roberts and Dan Uggla are overshadowed by Chase Utley (and rightfully so), but both join him and actually supersede him when it comes to May performance over the past three seasons.

• Jason Bay was a waste of draft picks and auction money for his owners a season ago, but when you look at the breakdown, May was his best month. He hit four home runs per month from April to August, but only twice did he top .695 in OPS.

• In the off-season, Albert Pujols’ elbow caused Y2K-like fear on the fantasy landscape. A month into the season, it has proven to be as innocuous as Y2K was some eight years ago. That said, his owners aren’t out of the wood yet. In fact, they won’t be until at least the All-Star Break. A primary source of the fear was centered around the fact that while he’d play and play hard while he could, he would shut things down at the first sign of pain. Provided health, he should continue his tear in May.

• Mark Teixeira, my pick for the National League MVP, is poised to breakout. He has raised his batting average by 40 points in the past week, but his home run pace is a little light at 30. Look for a strong May to propel to securing the Senior Circuit’s top player honors at season’s end.

There are the Top 45 performers in the month of May over the past three seasons. Even though most of the players in the study topped 250 at-bats, it is still difficult to say whether or not performing well in a particular month year-in and year-out is anything more than coincidence. If you buy into study, you can use the data to acquire some buy-low candidates and wait for their breakout next month. If you’re skeptical about the validity of what you just read, you can still use the data to your advantage by flipping some of these players for more than they’re worth by citing their impending breakout in May. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, this kind of study is what makes baseball such a great game. We gather piles and piles of data and analyze to see if we have anything. If not, it’s back to the drawing board.

I’m not dead and once March is done, you can expect several updates regarding baseball, reading and an assortment of other things. While I’m here, I have a strong recommendation for anyone interested in upgrading their email capabilities. It’s called Xobni and while I’ve only used the beta a little bit, I’m very impressed. See below to get invited:

Plenty of movement in the third version of my Top 100, but it is the same 100 from early February. At the top is the expected bump that Albert Pujols takes because of the increased injury worries. I’m absolutely a huge fan of his, but I can’t say the elbow isn’t troubling enough to take a 5-spot tumble. The four others behind him obviously get the one spot move and I also flip-flopped Carl Crawford and Grady Sizemore. Sizemore is more complete with the proven three-year base of power, while Crawford’s power remains filed under that fanciful “p” word. Granted, Crawford does offer more speed, but speed is more readily available than power on the landscape at large, so Sizemore gets the nod. Those were the only moves within the Top 20.

There was a bit of shifting amongst the bottom five of the next 20 with Carlos Guillen and Manny Ramirez being the beneficiaries with two and three spot jumps, respectively. Nothing too groundbreaking, but just some run of the mill shuffling that will continue to occur as I read more and Spring Training kicks into full force. In the 41-60 block, there was a lot of minor shuffling as a result of big moves down for Hunter Pence (7 spots) and Shane Victorino (11 spots). As I mentioned earlier, speed is more plentiful than originally thought making a jack-rabbit like Victorino a bit less appealing when viewed against the likes of mashers like Garrett Atkins, Brad Hawpe and Hideki Matsui. Pence’s drop was a combination of his journey through a plate glass window and the fact that I may have rated him a bit too highly out of the gate given the lack of sample size to judge him.

A group of middle infielders in the 61-80 group took a tumble with Michael Young taking the brunt of it (12 spot drop). Aaron Hill and Edgar Renteria joined him with four spot slides. Having been through more drafts since the last update, I’m seeing scarcity in the outfield if you don’t act early and often, so Vernon Wells and Jason Bay are beneficiaries. The same outfield scarcity issue took control of the 81-100 block as all but five players moved spots. Delmon Young, Matt Kemp, Jeff Francoeur and Andruw Jones all enjoyed strong gains in the latest Top 100.

Juan Pierre was the only outfielder in this group that took a hit and again, it is because his key asset (immense speed) is no longer as rare on the fantasy landscape. Rickie Weeks and Alex Gordon both saw upticks as they leapt over a group primarily contained of pitchers. Felix Hernandez took his second straight dip in the Top 100, but it’s not because I dislike him in the least. I actually like him a good bit in 2008 and no starting pitchers passed him this time around, instead it was the aforementioned hitters.

And now, for version 3.0:

I hate being sick. I’m sure everyone does, so it seems to go without saying, but I said it anyway. I started feeling a bit out of sorts on Wednesday and then when I woke up on Thursday morning, I was a wreck. I made it alive (as evidenced by this post) and went back to work on Friday. I was about 75% over the weekend and I’d put myself around 80% today. I could tell I was sick because I sat through an entire awards show! I watched the 2008 Oscars last night and they were OK. Through the magic of DVR, I was able to skip through the musical numbers, which I couldn’t have cared less about.

The show itself was nothing extravagant, but moderately entertaining. I was pleased with a large portion of the 2007 crop of movies, which is probably why I stayed tuned. Jon Stewart as host didn’t do much for me as his jokes are pretty predictable and kinda “blah” in substance. No Country for Old Men was the big winner of the night with several awards for the Coen brothers and a Best Picture nod as well. I’ve yet to see There Will Be Blood, which was thought by many to be the favorite for Best Picture, but I have Oil! by Upton Sinclair queued up to read.

While I loved Juno, I was surprised that anyone thought it had a legitimate shot at being the Best Picture. I did think that Ellen Page had a decent shot at Best Actress for her role in the film, but I would have been blown away had it won as the year’s top film. Page and others lost out to Marion Cotillard for her work in La Vie En Rose, which was a surprise to me. I haven’t seen that movie nor do I have any desire to.

The Bourne Ultimatum, one of my favorites of the year, won several technical awards. It’s not the kind of movie that finds its way into the nomination lists for the acting awards, but it was a great movie and deserved to be recognized. I am a huge fan of the series having seen all three movies and having read two of the books. I know there are more Bourne books out there, but I’m not sure if the series will continue in theaters.

Having watched an entire awards show for the first time in as long as I can remember, my thoughts on them remains unchanged: they are pretty boring. Last night wasn’t unbearable by any stretch, but I could have easily done something else (had I not felt like crap) and then just viewed the winners online throughout the evening.

I haven’t been posting all of the reviews, but I am actually reading! I’m off the pace a bit, but I am not worried about it. I’ve been investing a lot of time into my fantasy baseball research, which I think is a fair alternative to reading non-stop. I’m currently doing the Total Money Makeover and I’m really excited about the prospects of managing my money much better than I have in the past.

I’m not averse to the whole reading two books at one time thing, so I’m also reading The New Kings of Non-Fiction. Both books are conducive to my busy schedule that has had less time for large blocks of reading time. I actually found this book by accident. I was walking around Barnes and Noble and it was on an endcap. The cover caught my eye and then when I looked and saw that it included stories from Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Klosterman, Michael Lewis and James McManus, it was an instant buy for me. These four have authored several of my favorite books. With 15 stories averaging about 25 pages apiece, it is easy for me to make time during lunch, on a break or grab an hour after work and knock a few out. As for TMM, I’ve been reading it usually in the mornings before work and when I’m conducting my business… ummm… elsewhere. I’ll leave it at that!

I finished version 3.0 of the Top 100, but it’s at home, so I’ll have to post it tonight when I get off of work. I don’t think there are many sweeping changes and I don’t believe anyone was added/dropped out from the last list. I hammered out a few more of the Top 100 pitchers and I’d love to have that started by this weekend and then all 100 unveiled a week from day. The last of the big magazines has been released with Rotoworld’s magazine hitting newsstands. I picked up a copy and went ahead and got one for my dad as well since there is little available in Harlingen. I’ll send that to him now so he can get going on his prep and then send him Baseball Weekly’s big fantasy pull out in March when it comes available. He’s been using it for years and he’s not about to change.

I found out yesterday that Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco are actually making a stop in Austin on April 30th. My brother, sister and I were already making plans to go to either Dallas or Houston to see them, but this is even better since now we don’t have to travel. The new CDs from both artists are excellent. As I’m writing this, I’m listening to West’s Graduation, but Lupe’s The Cool is getting run on my iPod about three or four times a day.

I’m eagerly awaiting my 2007 tax refund, which is scheduled to direct deposit tomorrow! Being in a commission-based sales job, I get taxed like crazy throughout the year, so it’s nice to get it back after the New Year. One of my resolutions, in addition to the reading, is to balance my budget and keep the finances in line much better than I have in the past. This refund is going to help me get out from under some of my debt and get into a nice rhythm. In order to get myself on track, I’ve purchased Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. I’ve been watching his show on Fox New Business for about two weeks now, though I was familiar with him prior to seeing the show. I agree with a lot of what he says and I think if I commit to the TMM, it’ll be extremely helpful towards getting my money under control. And by reading his book, I’ll be taking care of two New Year’s Resolutions at once!

Meanwhile, in terms of what’s going on here, I’m still writing the Top 100 fantasy baseball pitchers. I actually started at 1 with the write ups as opposed to going from 100 to 1 like I did with the Top 100 players. What that means is I’ll have to finish the entire list before posting any portion of it because I want to countdown again. It is just better from a suspense aspect! Some of you have emailed me asking when v3.0 of the Top 100 will be released. There are a few changes and it has been two weeks, so I will likely get the latest version up during this weekend.

On Sunday, my girlfriend and I are going to Dallas to see my Detroit Red Wings play the Dallas Stars, but I should have some free time on Saturday. It has been quite a while since I have seen a Red Wings game live. Hopefully my Detroit teams can make it 2-0 when I’m in attendance. For Christmas, she got me tickets to the Detroit Pistons-San Antonio Spurs game in January. Despite getting destroyed the night before in Dallas by the Mavericks, the Pistons stepped up and handled the Spurs soundly.

By the way, is there anything less interesting than this Roger Clemens-Brian McNamee fiasco? What an absolute joke. Everyone involved is coming out looking like a complete loser. Not a winner to be found. Not Clemens in his insistence that he didn’t use (you’re fooling NOBODY, Rocket!). Not McNamee with his inability to keep a story straight. And finally, not Congress for wasting taxpayers’ money and wasting their time on this debacle. What can come from this? What exactly are they aiming to achieve? And they wonder why many in the general public considers the government a joke.

And finally, I was dead wrong on my Super Bowl prediction. I have no problem admitting it. I was completely surprised and never envisioned that scenario playing out. Kudos to the Giants even though I actually wanted the Patriots to win the game.

We’re about 30 minutes or so from Super Bowl XLII with the New England Patriots chasing perfection and the New York Giants with their second chance at stopping them. Everyone seems to have a prediction for the game as it’s easily the single biggest sporting event in the world every year, and I’m not different. Frankly, there aren’t many surprises when it comes to my thoughts on how the game will play out. The Patriots struggled in four games, one was against an undefeated superpower similar to themselves (the Indianapolis Colts) while the other three were in cold weather (against Philly, Baltimore and the first meeting against New York). Today’s game in Arizona will be a climate controlled closed stadium meaning there won’t be any adverse weather to interfere with the Pats’ passing attack. That is bad news for the Giants.

I have thought a lot about the game and come up with a few scenarios in which the Giants could pull off the huge upset. Generally, these involve injuries and multiple turnovers for the Patriots, in other words, extremely special circumstances. Meanwhile, all things being equal, it is easy to envision a Patriots victory over and over again. The Giants have made it this far despite being predicted to lose in every game of the playoffs despite being given less of a chance with each passing game. Plaxico Burress pointed out how they lost to the Cowboys (twice) and the Packers in the regular season before beating them in the playoffs, so perhaps they can complete the trio with a win in the Super Bowl after the Week 17 loss to the Patriots.

I just can’t see it. In fact, I like the Patriots in a walk. I’m hoping for a great game that comes down to the wire as well as a great batch of commercials as the past few years have collectively been pretty awful, but I’m only holding my breath for the latter. Speaking of the commercials, the company I work for, Dell, is airing their first ever Super Bowl commercial scheduled to run right after the end of the first quarter. It’s based on our Red Campaign in support of the fight against AIDS. I look forward to it and hope to see some creative and humorous ones as well. But I digress… as for the game, my prediction of the Patriots to win big has me landing on the final score at:

Patriots: 45
Giants: 21

I was searching through some stuff on Google about baseball, specifically the book The Baseball Economist, which I read last year. I was very pleased to find out that my review got clipped and placed on J.C. Bradbury’s site among the featured reviews. Now I know it’s not some huge deal and it was placed up there some time ago since I reviewed the book months ago, but it was definitely cool to come across while surfing through Google. I can’t wait for Bradbury’s offering, assuming he has something else in the works.

I did some significant re-working to the initial Top 100, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given how early the first version was released. My most egregious omission is doubly painful since I’m such a huge proponent of this guy, but fear not, Ian Kinsler debuts in v2.0 with a very solid ranking. Given how much I love speed-combo guys and how many times during the capsules I mentioned that 2B wasn’t the barren wasteland it once was, I chalk it up to little more than a ball-drop on my part.

Only one other debut as Cole Hamels cracked the Top 100 with a vengeance checking in at #85. The two that paid for Hamels’ and Kinsler’s entries were Mike Lowell and Jim Thome. I have got nothing against either player and they both offer a pretty solid set of numbers, but one of the key factors with a list like this is with a lot of these guys, you are looking for them to improve upon a foundation that they have previously laid out. Now that isn’t the case with every guy because I still left plenty of oldies on the list, but just think about the four guys in question, are you taking Hamels and Kinsler or Lowell and Thome?

Some big tumblers within this first update were Miguel Tejada as the steroids issue looks like it could be clamping down on him, also I bumped Daisuke Matsuzaka quite a bit not because I’ve soured on his ability and projections for 2008, but more so because I like others ahead of him after further review into the starting pitching landscape. Aaron Hill is a favorite of mine coming into the season, but I feel I was a little overzealous with his initial ranking, so I tempered things and bumped him down to #73.

Anyway enough chatter, here is version 2.0 of my Top 100 Fantasy Baseball Rankings:

This book reminded me of how I feel about Michael Moore. Frankly, I can’t stand the man. While he does have a lot of good ideas, his presentation, laden with vitriol, ruins everything. This book had plenty of solid ideas, but when it consistently resorts to bashing the country instead of constructively criticizing some legitimate errors, it is easy to tune out the message. After awhile you’re left wondering why John Tirman doesn’t just move out of the country if he hates it so much. His hang up on SUVs was rather annoying, as well.

The book is ridiculously subjective to Tirman’s liberal leanings, which also became more annoying as the book continued. It’s not that I’m completely averse to a political book having a particular lean, nor is it the first time I’ve read a book that sits on one far end of the spectrum. It’s just that Tirman purports the book to be an objective analysis of problems within America. With potshot after potshot, many of the core issues in the 100 ways are clouded.

Overall, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the book because Tirman seemed more focused on being funny, taking his shots and making sure we know who deserves to be blamed for all the wrongs across the world, instead of educated on what went wrong and how to ensure the same mistakes aren’t made in the future. I didn’t hate the book, but it certainly didn’t meet the expectations I had when I bought it back in late ‘06.