Dear Devil Rays - you are smart, but only once a series...I don't like you and want you to stop winning. Leave the O's alone. If you were smarter, you would do it in each game of the series rather than just in one. And that is.....play Jeff Keppinger. I wish the O's had him. What a hitter. Not flashy...but what the Money Ball guys had in mind. If I could make a team out of the player universe, I would pick him. 2126 career at bats....143 K.....and a .280 career average. Pretty good type of bat to have around.
Let's compare Jeff's entire career to solely the 2011 totals. What's a typical number of ABs per year for a healthy guy? About 600? Here's the list of guys that had more than 143 K last year alone: Willingham, Uggla, Jay Bruce, MVP Matt Kemp, Werth, lesser Upton, Pena, K. Johnson 2B, Giancarlo, Danny Espinosa, not just an Anderson - but a Granderson, drum roll.....Ryan Howard and surprisingly Adam Dunn, Austin Jax, Mark Reynolds, and finally Drew Stubbs.
I mean, he's no Joe Sewell. Joe is the all-time leader in strike out percentage at 1.7%. Who in one season, averaged 167.7 ABs per K. Totally crazy stat! Jeff averages 6.7% for strike out frequency, which would put him at approximately 125th all time on this list: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hitting/histrkop1.shtml. But at this time he doesn't even qualify for this listing because of his total games played. He's in the low 600s right now for MLB games and they say he needs at least 1,000 career games to make the list. Maybe in a few years Jeff, I'm pulling for you. Hopefully the Rays will play you in 130 or so this year
For the record, Keppinger has 1 K this year in 52 ABs. (Alberto Callaspo already has 8 in 43 ABs)
Rays, keep using him.
For Phils fans, Juan Pierre has a career K frequency of 6.2% (103 on all time list) and Placido Polanco sits at 7.6% (166 on the list).
[Abreu to the Phils? Thoughts?]
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