Sea Dogs Batting Leaders

Let's have a look at the top offensive performers for the Sea Dogs this year. I've set 15o plate appearances as the cutoff for team leaders. It's an arbitrary cutoff that I set so we can include Dustin Pedroia and Scott Youngbauer in the discussion. At the botton, I'll choose the Biggest Surprise, Biggest Disappointment, and Offensive Player of the Year for the Sea Dogs.

Batting Average: Pedroia .324, Youngbauer .311, Kenny Perez .285, Chris Durbin .282, David Murphy .275. Not the most meaningful batting statistic, but people recognize it, so I've included it here.

On Base Percentage: Pedroia .408, Jeff Bailey .381, Youngbauer .360, Durbin .344, Jeremy West .340. OBP is a more informative stat. Getting batters on base is the leading indicator of a team's ability to score runs. The first three on this list all spent less than half a season in Portland.

Isolated Discipline: Bailey .131, Jared Sandberg .102, Pedroia .083, Raul Nievez .082, Sheldon Fulse .078. This measures a batter's ability to draw walks. Nievez and Fulse are suprises here. Both did well to find outher ways to get on base, as their batting averages (.209 and .175, respectively) were well below par.

Slugging Percentage: Youngbauer .549, Pedroia .508, Bailey .462, Durbin .457, Brandon Moss .441. Youngbauer is the surprise leader here. He arrived a couple of weeks following Pedroia’s promotion to Pawtucket and his bat was huge down the stretch.

Isolated Slugging: Youngbauer .248, Bailey .212, Pedroia .184, Sandberg ,179, Durbin .175. 24 of Youngbauer’s 51 Sea Dogs hits went for extra bases. Sandberg’s season was a disappointment. A former major leaguer, he seemed to be slotted below his talent level, especially after his hot start garnered him EL Player of the Week honors for the first week of the season. It was a slow decline to a .233 batting average from there on out, however.

OPS: Pedroia .915, Youngbauer .908, Bailey .843, Durbin .801, Moss .778. Again with the part-time players. Pedroia could very well have kept up the pace over a full season, but it is unlikely that Youngbauer would have (indeed, he only posted a .628 OPS over 41 games in Akron). Durbin is a surprise amongst the “full season” Dogs, as he didn’t have the prospect pedigree of guys like Moss, West and Hanley Ramirez.

GPA: Pedroia .310, Youngbauer .299, Bailey .287, Durbin .269, Moss .262. Basically the same measurement as OPS, only weighting OBP a little higher and stating as a ratio that has the familiar scaling of batting average.

Runs Created: Moss 75, Murphy 70, West 66, Sandberg 64, Durbin 62. This stat combines performance with playing time. Murphy was given the player of the year honors for the Sea Dogs because he did well in BA and RBI, but Moss’ favorable walk rate and slugging percentage give him the advantage here.

RC/27 outs: Pedroia 8.1, Youngbauer 7.3, Bailey 6.3, Durbin 5.7, Moss 5.3. This is right in line with OPS and GPA.

Counting Stats:

Plate Appearances: Moss 568, Sandberg 538, Murphy 535, West 533, Ramirez 519. These were the guys who stayed healthy (and on the roster) all season.

At Bats: Moss 503, Murphy 484, West 472, Ramirez 465, Sandbery 463. Sandberg drew more walks, so he drops down the list.

Hits: Moss 135, Murphy 133, West 126, Ramirez 126, Durbin 111.

2B: West 32, Durbin, Moss 31, Sandberg 29, Murphy 25. The Sea Dogs had a lot of guys who displayed gap power, resulting in a lot of doubles and not a lot of home runs. Other than Sandberg, all of these guys are young enough that these doubles might translate into homers in the coming years.

3B: Ramirez 7, Youngbauer 5, Moss, Murphy 4, West 3. Ramirez had all of his triples by the end of May. Both he and Youngbauer have good power and good speed.

HR: Sandberg 18, Moss 16, Murphy 14, Durbin 12, West 10. I think that we expected more home runs from this team. Team leader Sandberg was tied for 13th in the Eastern League.

RBI: Murphy 75, Sandberg 71, Moss 61, Durbin 57, Ramirez 52. Murphy started slow, but hit well with runners in scoring position all year, and surpassed Sandberg late in the season. Despite his 22-RBI month of August, Jeremy West fell short of the top 5.

SB: Ramirez 26, Fulse 14, Murphy 13, Pedroia, Kenny Perez 7. Ramirez is an exciting base runner and used his speed to great advantage this season.

Walks: Sandberg 62, Moss 53, Murphy 46, West 41, Ramirez 39. Ramirez has a rep for being an “impatient” hitter, but his walk totals don’t really support that. He’s not Barry Bonds up there, but he’s no Shea Hillenbrand either.

Strikeouts: Sandberg 131, Moss 129, Alberto Concepcion 86, Murphy 83, West 76. I saw Moss strike out four times in a game three times in a week. When he stopped worrying about the K’s late in the season he went on a tear and won the EL Player of the Week honor for the final week of the season.

Biggest Surprise: David Murphy came into the season with a sub-700 OPS and five home runs in about 150 professional games, but he came back with arguably the best season among all Sea Dogs players. However, his pedigree as a #1 pick precludes him from this honor. Chris Durbin came in with very little prospect pedigree and he posted similar numbers to Murphy, albeit in less playing time due to injuries. However, the award goes to Scott Youngbauer, who I had very little hope for based on his previous AA experience, but who got on base and provided power along with a smooth glove at second base.

Biggest Disappointement: As discussed above, Jared Sandberg raised hopes early but hit poorly for most of the season. Stefan Bailie suffered through injuries all year and hit only 147/197/302 before retiring, this after posting a 954 OPS in 37 games for the 2004 Sea Dogs. However, the award goes to Hanley Ramirez, whose 271/335/385 paled in comparison to the 310/360/512 line he recorded following his promotion last season.

Player of the Year: Brandon Moss and David Murphy ended up basically neck-and-neck in the race, but neither really distinguished himself. I'm going to go a bit outside the box and give the award to Dustin Pedroia, who played only 66 games but finished with 53 runs created - only 22 behind Moss, who played more than double the games for Portland. Pedroia is an exciting player who makes contact, draws walks and has surprising pop. His mid season promotion does not detract from the fact that he was, by far, the best hitter in the Portland lineup this season.