Players of the Month

The starting point for the offensive player of the month is OBP. If a hitter does not make outs, he is likely having a pretty good month. I set the minimum PA to 90, and the first thing I noticed was that the person at the top of the chart only had 64 PA. I thought I typed in the minimum PA wrong, but then noticed this was Mike Trout, who walked 22 times, was hit by a pitch three times, and hit two sacrifice flies for 91 PA. He also got on base to the tune of .484. He was just ahead of Joey Votto at .472. A large number of players posted OBPs of .400 or better in May.

Trout also posted the highest slugging percentage of the month at .797. What’s really amazing about that number is that Trout hit just .297. So he posted a .500 isolated power. Fourteen of his nineteen hits went for extra bases. If the opposition had not taken the bat out of his hands seven times with intentional walks, he might have driven in over 30 runs in the month. My main problem with picking Trout this month is that he only played 20 games. So he didn’t have as much a chance as other players to regress to the mean. Still, it was an impressive 20 games.

No one hit .400 in the month, but Carlos Correa topped the BA chart with a .386 mark. Correa was near the top of the OPB and slugging charts, too. He played a lot, collecting 39 hits and 14 walks. He scored 24 runs and drove in 26, both setting and clearing the table. Justin Bour led the majors with 11 home runs, and Charlie Blackmon gets the extra-base distribution award, as he hit six doubles, a major league leading five triples, and six home runs. Correa had the best overall line, however, so Carlos Correa wins Baseball Musings Offensive Player of the Month for May 2017.

On the pitching side Lance McCullers blew away the field in terms of ERA, posting a 0.99 mark in 36 1/3 innings. Note that is a low innings total for six starts. The Astros do not allow him to go deep in games. His three-true outcomes are all good, but none of them blow you away as top notch. Chris Archer led the majors in K per 9 IP with 13.05 K/9, with Chris Sale and Max Scherzer also coming in above 12 K per nine IP. None of them dominated all three categories. The best might have been Jeff Samardzija, with a 10.84/0.22/0.89 K/BB/HR per nine line.

It is tough to argue with McCullers’s ERA this month. Lance McCullers wins Baseball Musings Pitcher of the Month for May 2017.

Congratulations to both Astros! The team went 22-7 in the month, and those two players were a big reason.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2sqYwRV