He's No Angel

There is an interesting article published on the Baseball Analysts site (which I recommend highly to anyone surfing the net for good baseball information). The article is about plate discipline, and author Dan Fox (who also has a good blog, by the way), takes a look at pitch-by-pitch data from 2005 for every batter who compiled at least 200 plate appearances.

Royals fans out there shouldn't be too shocked to learn that Angel Berroa took fewer pitches for balls than any hitter in baseball last year, and had the third-worst overall plate discipline. This, of course, didn't prevent the various Royals managers from batting Berroa either first or second in the batting order in almost fifty games, where he produced a predictably terrible batting line of .241/.282/.333 (that's batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage to the uninitiated). Batting in the bottom third of the order, Berroa was actually a productive player (.304/.347/.435), albeit one who depends far too much on his batting average and still doesn't make pitchers put forth any real effort.

Still, production is production, something the Royals desperately need, so as long as Angel produces those kinds of numbers, and Buddy Bell keeps him 7th or lower in the batting order, where he belongs, I'll be okay with Angel for another year or two.

Now if we can just get him to field better.