Tampa Bay Rays reliever Grant Balfour is having a good year. You have perhaps never heard of the Australian righty, but rest assured Elias Sports Bureau has him on speed dial.
That's because 130 American League hitters have had the misfortune of facing Balfour since his recall from Triple-A this season, and 26 of them have reached base safely. That, my friends, is a .200 on-base percentage, which looks mighty next to the .166 slugging average against him.
In 34 frames with the big club, Balfour has surrendered four doubles and a home run, while sending 49 gentlemen back to the bench on strikes. A dinger and four doubles is one bad inning for most pitchers.
The seamhead community would tell you that Balfour's .366 OPS-against means that opposing batters have performed at four percent of average against him. In other words, when average hitter Kevin Millar steps in against Grant Balfour, he suddenly becomes, well, me. And I'm the type of "hitter" whom Jamie Moyer could blow a change-up past.
Balfour's .109 batting average against is the lowest since they began keeping track, in 1956, by 24 points (Eric Gagne, 2003). Of course, Gagne pitched more than twice as many innings as Balfour has this year.
Fine, so let's examine the 24 innings of Triple-A employment Balfour completed in Durham to earn the call-up. (That would be the 24 innings in which he struck out 39 batters and posted an 0.38 ERA.) A grand total of five International Leaguers poked hits against Balfour, for an .069 batting average. So in 57 innings this season, Grant Balfour has been lit up for 17 hits and a .091 BA.
Balfour's got a nasty slider, some nice heat and a good defense behind him, but I can't explain his dominance and I haven't found anyone who can. So it's possible that the next 130 batters will act more like Albert Pujols than Jerry Kenney against him. But if he keeps up at anywhere near this pace, he'll be the answer to a great trivia question for an accomplishment that's not nearly trivial.
No comments:
Post a Comment