By Dalton Del Don – Senior Writer
When evaluating fantasy baseball players, it’s best to take into account skills above all else, but opportunity needs to be considered as well. While this isn’t as important as say football, when coaching, offensive line, etc. are much more important factors into someone’s success as opposed to baseball, which is essentially a bunch of one-on-one matchups, it’s still one more aspect that should be taken into account. Ballpark factors are obvious issues, but there are more underreported stats that I’d like to delve into as well – first up, let’s take a look at the batters who have been to the plate with a lot (or a few) of baserunners on throughout the season so far:
Bobby Abreu – He leads major league baseball, having batted with 177 men on base this year. Despite that, he doesn’t have an RBI in his last nine games and just 22 for the season. For his career, his batting average actually increases 48 points when the pitcher is out of the stretch (.278 to .326), and he did miss all of spring with an oblique injury. He’s been truly awful thus far, but if he can turn it around, he’s in position to be a top-5 outfielder.
The top-5 rounds out like this: No. 2 – Carlos Lee (173), No. 3 – Chase Utley (170), No. 4 – Justin Morneau (168), No. 5 Andruw Jones (165).
J.J. Hardy’s 44 RBI are especially impressive. He’s tied for third in the league in runs batted in despite batting with just 128 men on base so far, a number good for 89th in the league.
Albert Pujols sits at No. 92, as he’s batted with just 127 runners on base in 2007.
That amount, however, would make Barry Bonds jealous, as he ranks 190th, with a miniscule 95 ROB. Six players on his own team have a higher number! Wonder if that has anything to do with Rich Aurilia batting third so often. Yorvit Torrealba has had more opportunities to drive in runs this year for crying out loud.
Others who have had a ton of opportunities to bat with runners on base that you might not expect include Jason Bay (164), Josh Willingham (154), Eric Chavez (153), Casey Blake (152) and Adam LaRoche (150), who are all in the top-20 so far and sit ahead of David Ortiz, who is almost certainly going to see more opportunities in the future as he’s finished in the top-10 of the category in each of the past three seasons.
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