Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Walking In the Minors (again)
One of the things I like to track is which of the Sox's minor league hitters is showing patience at the plate and drawing walks. A good rough cut-off for "patience" is about 1 walks per 10 at-bats (1 per 10 plate appearances is even better, but this will do). I started tracking it last year, and I found it useful to know which of the prospects you might hear about on soxtalk.com are patient hitters.
So far this year, it looks like patience is up among the farm system. Some of this is the introduction of patient, former major leaguers like Jeremy Giambi and Greg Norton into the system. But a lot of it is organic. Lots of folks at Birmingham and Winston-Salem seem to be getting the patience concept. But the winner of the "most walks" concept is Adam Ricks down in Kannapolis, who is providing a lot of value to the Intimidators despite his .216 batting average by getting on base 19 times via the free pass. Your hitting will come around, Adam...keep up the patience at the plate.
| Team | Name | AB | BB | BB/AB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charlotte | B Anderson | 83 | 9 | 0.11 |
| Charlotte | G Norton | 29 | 7 | 0.24 |
| Charlotte | J Burke | 81 | 9 | 0.11 |
| Charlotte | S Bikowski | 55 | 7 | 0.13 |
| Charlotte | M Spidale | 63 | 7 | 0.11 |
| Birmingham | A Gonzalez | 70 | 11 | 0.16 |
| Birmingham | J Fields | 82 | 9 | 0.11 |
| Birmingham | J Giambi | 11 | 2 | 0.18 |
| Birmingham | R Sweeney | 30 | 4 | 0.13 |
| Birmingham | D Blakely | 87 | 9 | 0.10 |
| Birmingham | G Reyes | 45 | 5 | 0.11 |
| Birmingham | C Haggerty | 27 | 6 | 0.22 |
| Birmingham | A Gray | 54 | 6 | 0.11 |
| Winston-Salem | L Daigle | 88 | 10 | 0.11 |
| Winston-Salem | M Schnurstein | 75 | 11 | 0.15 |
| Winston-Salem | M Myers | 61 | 10 | 0.16 |
| Winston-Salem | R Nanita | 72 | 11 | 0.15 |
| Winston-Salem | N Martel Jr | 29 | 4 | 0.14 |
| Winston-Salem | J Shaffer | 25 | 5 | 0.20 |
| Winston-Salem | N Hall | 11 | 2 | 0.18 |
| Kannapolis | J Hansen | 88 | 9 | 0.10 |
| Kannapolis | D Cook | 61 | 11 | 0.18 |
| Kannapolis | A Ricks | 74 | 19 | 0.26 |
| Kannapolis | C King | 57 | 8 | 0.14 |
