Author: mattbandi

Each of the past two offseasons, I contributed to Graphical Player, a fantasy baseball annual put together by John Burnson of Heater Magazine. Let’s take a look at a few of my Graphical Player 2010 player commentaries and see how I did.

As you may have already seen, Baseball America has been unveiling Top 20 prospects list for each of the minor leagues in recent weeks. After revealing the International League today, they have covered each of the leagues that include Pirates affiliates. Let's see how the Bucs fared overall.

Your Monday evening reading, with appearances by Joe Posnanski, MGL and Jeff Zimmerman.

Here is a quick graph of all major league hitters with 300+ plate appearances in 2010. On-Base Percentage (OBP) is on the x-axis, with Isolated Power (ISO) on the y-axis. This covers the two most important aspects of hitting; reaching base successfully and maximizing the number of bases attained each time at the plate. The red square indicates league average (.325 OBP, .145 ISO). Each qualified Pirates hitter is labeled and indicated by a black and gold diamond. A few of the season’s best and worst MLB hitters are also labeled. Enjoy.

A few days ago, Bryan Smith of FanGraphs took a look at identifying which starting pitchers fit which numbered labels. In other words, he tried to classify each pitcher as a #1 starter, a #2 starter, and so on. Let's see where Pirates starters fit.

As I predicted in July, Neil Walker's high BABIP eventually fell back to earth. However, a dramatically improved walk rate helped keep him afloat once the hits stopped falling in for him. This bodes well for Walker's future.

Now that the season is officially over, here is a graph to visually display just how bad the Pirates were this year. The green line is the team WAR for each of the 18 losing seasons. I highlighted approximate replacement level (I used 48.5 wins for this) in blue and the unattainable 81 wins in red. I used the WAR from Baseball-Reference for this, as FanGraphs' version of WAR only goes back to 2002. As you can see, 2010 was the worst season we have seen during this losing streak.

Just a few quick thoughts, while I have a minute. Here is Neal Huntington’s statement, via Dejan Kovacevic at the PBC Blog.

If you are a regular Pittsburgh Lumber Co. reader, you may have noticed two things over the past couple weeks. 1.) I haven't been writing much, and 2.) The site layout has changed dramatically. Well, those two things are connected. I have spent much of my free time tweaking colors and adding new features. There is still work to be done, but I thought I should update everyone on some of the changes here at PLC.

Your Friday afternoon reading, with appearances by Kevin Creagh, Alex Remington and Richard Sandomir.

Last night, Brian Burres made his third consecutive impressive start since returning to the rotation on September 6th. Over that span, he has allowed just five runs and one walk in 20 innings, while striking out 12.

Your Saturday afternoon reading, with appearances by David Golebiewski, Cory Giger and Joe Posnanski.