Bill James 2004 Handbook
I bought this book a few weeks ago and have been looking at it a lot recently. I thought I'd write a little about some of the statistics that jumped out at me.

Percentage of Pitches Taken...
Of course Barry Bonds was tops with 72.0. Some interesting players on this list were Scott Podsednik at number 7 (63.2%), Brady Clark at number 8 (62.1%) and Craig Counsell 10th (61.5%).

The Brewers have three players in the top 10 in percentage of pitches taken. There are a few ways to look at this. I'll lend my observations below...

-Podsednik and Counsell spent most of 2004 looking at strikes. Pods didn't walk very much and had a low AVG and OBP. Counsell hit the trifecta of offensive inaptitude, posting his lowest average, OBP and SLG in any season in which he received more than 304 at-bats. Counsell also set a career high with 88 strikeouts. This goes back to the "being patient" philosophy. "Patient" is such a poorly used term, but anyway you slice it, taking lots of strikes is not good. You're not going to be able to walk your way on base consistently in the Major Leagues. You have to prove that you can swing the bat. If you can't hit the ball they're going to come right after you and make you prove that you are worth pitching around. How many at-bats do you think Counsell and Podsednik each started 0-2 last season? I'd be willing to bet it was a lot. Both of them struggled at the plate and lost their confidence, which essentially goes hand-in-hand with aggressiveness at the plate (and for the millionth time, "aggressive" doesn't mean swinging at bad pitches, it means attacking good pitches to drive as opposed to watching them into the catchers mit, which Pods was a king at. I'd still be willing to bet he led all of organized baseball in "times staring at the umpire after a called strike").

-Despite all that "patient" hitting, the Brewers offense still sucked. Again, nobody is going to pitch around a hitter who is slugging .315 l(Counsell) or .364 (Podsednik). I think this overly conservative approach may have hurt the Brewers with men on base, because in those situations pitchers are just trying to get ahead. By sitting their with the bat on their shoulder the Brewers allowed pitchers to get ahead in the count and turn the tables back in the defenses favor. Barry Bonds is the most selective hitter in the game, how many fastballs does he watch go down the middle of the plate, especially with men on base?

Best OPS vs. Curveballs
If you were a pitcher, how would you get Geoff Jenkins out? Curveball in the dirt, right? Surprisingly enough Jenkins was second in the NL in OPS against curveballs. Albert Pujols was tops with 1.217, Jenkins was second with 1.192. This number just defies logic. Maybe this is why statistical analysis is so important. My eyes told me that Jenkins sucks against offspeed stuff...Either this is a statistical anomaly or my eyes have deceived me.

Pickoffs
Chris Capuano led the NL with 6 pickoffs. He only had 88.1 IP last season. Impressive.

Catchers ERA
Chad Moeller led the NL in Catchers ERA amongst regulars. His CERA was 3.67. I know catching Sheets and Davis was a big part of this, but still he caught a lot of scrubs too. He had a CERA of 3.96 in Arizona back in 2003, so maybe there is something to the fact he kept getting in the lineup despite having a terrible year at the plate in 2004.

Various Ben Sheets numbers
I can't really break Sheets' statistics down to one or two impressive stats. Sheets just put up so many impressive numbers that you have to look at them as a collective you really appreciate how outstanding 2004 for was for him.

7th in Opp Avg (.226)
2nd in baserunners per nine (9.00)
3rd in CG (5)
4th in IP (237.0)
2nd in K (264)
2nd in % of pitches in the strike zone (59.6)
4th in Quality Starts (24...tied with Doug Davis)
4th in K/9 (10.03)
2nd in OBP Against (.255)
7th in Hits/9 (7.63)
1st in K/BB (8.25)
4th in Fastest Average fastball (93.3)
2nd in NL Win Shares (20, tied with Pavano and Clemens)

And to shed a little light onto how much bad luck Sheeter endured in 2004, he lead the NL in tough losses with 11.

All right, well that's an hour or so of my life that I'll never get back. I'd highly recommend this book, it has so many statistics and it's so easy to page through the players and everything. Really, this book changed my life (okay not really).