Yesterday, I mentioned good pitching and bad hitting were complementary facts of this early 2007 fantasy baseball season. To help buttress that assertion, I ran the hitting stats for the top 100 hitters sorted by at-bats. In order to keep things simple (plus not spend too much time doing this as it will go stale soon enough), I have only listed the those players hitting less than .250.
Among these "luminaries" are just four players that I could reasonably see as still being available in the free agent pool of deep mixed leagues. In AL-/NL-only leagues, I cannot see any of them as free agents.
There are elite players in this group, notably Albert Pujols, but also top five-rounds/$25+ players like Gary Sheffield, Michael Young, Andruw Jones, Mark Teixeira, Alphonso Soriano, and Vernon Wells. There are more but the point has been set-up.
Pitching is doing so well because so many elite hitters are not doing well for some reason. Since I do not believe that something happened to these players' physical/mental abilites over the winter, I am going to go Cassandra on everyone giddy over the success of their pitching sleepers. Armageddon is coming!
FWIW, my AL-only team has five of the worst 48 offenders, and my NL-only team has three. My AL team would have more except Bobby Crosby and Elijah Dukes didn't make the Top 100 by ABs.
| Player | TEAM | POS | AVG | R | HR | RBI | SB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| G Sheffield | DET | DH | 0.122 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| M Cameron | SD | OF | 0.156 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| J Kendall | OAK | C | 0.157 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| S Stewart | OAK | OF | 0.176 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| J Pierre | LAD | OF | 0.180 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| R Zimmerman | WSH | 3B | 0.180 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| B Phillips | CIN | 2B | 0.182 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| A Pujols | STL | 1B | 0.186 | 7 | 3 | 7 | 0 |
| B Zobrist | TB | SS | 0.186 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| M Cabrera | NYY | OF | 0.190 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| M Young | TEX | SS | 0.200 | 7 | 2 | 9 | 1 |
| F Thomas | TOR | DH | 0.200 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| S Casey | DET | 1B | 0.200 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| A Jones | ATL | OF | 0.200 | 7 | 3 | 7 | 0 |
| B Roberts | BAL | 2B | 0.204 | 7 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| J Giambi | NYY | DH | 0.205 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 0 |
| S Drew | ARI | SS | 0.209 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| C Monroe | DET | OF | 0.214 | 5 | 1 | 9 | 0 |
| J Crede | CWS | 3B | 0.220 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| C Biggio | HOU | 2B | 0.222 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| G Matthews | LAA | OF | 0.227 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| T Pena | KC | SS | 0.227 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| K Greene | SD | SS | 0.229 | 8 | 2 | 4 | 0 |
| M Teixeira | TEX | 1B | 0.233 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| M Ordonez | DET | OF | 0.234 | 8 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| A Soriano | CHC | OF | 0.234 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| G Anderson | LAA | OF | 0.240 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| F Lopez | WSH | SS | 0.240 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| C Delgado | NYM | 1B | 0.244 | 5 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
| C Guillen | DET | SS | 0.244 | 7 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| J Jones | CHC | OF | 0.244 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| M Mora | BAL | 3B | 0.245 | 7 | 2 | 9 | 1 |
| V Wells | TOR | OF | 0.245 | 8 | 3 | 9 | 2 |