All those B’s in the title got me bobbing my head to this. Man, I can listen to that song all day. Anyways, back to the order at hand. In preseason NFBC drafts, Jackie Bradley Jr. is being selected, on average, with the 146th overall pick. Byron Buxton is going at pick 147. I thought this would be an easy and straightforward piece to research and write. If you read last week’s Bear or Bull, you know that I eschew the hackers for the more disciplined batters. Choosing between the two proved to be a far more difficult endeavor, though.
In 331 plate appearances last year, Buxton struck out 35.6% of the time and had a 15% swinging strike rate. He managed to hit .225 WITH a .329 BABIP. Bradley Jr., on the other hand, clubbed 26 home runs, scored 94 runs, drove in 87, stole nine bases, and hit .267 while striking out 22% and walking 10% of the time. The 26 home runs really stood out to me, as he had never eclipsed 10 in any professional season. While ESPN Home Run Tracker labeled 10 of Bradley’s homers as “just enough,” his average true distance (399.1 feet) was close to the MLB average of 400 feet. The more I kept looking at the advanced stats, the more comfortable I was getting with my initial assessment of Bradley over Buxton. He was hitting more line drives, hard contact % went up, GB%, FB%, and HR/FB were all in-line, and his plate discipline numbers actually got better. Yet, like any good grasshopper, I kept searching. Why you ask? Maybe it was because I didn’t want to get type-cast into being the GET OFF MY LAWN-boring-old guy. Whatever the reason may be, I found what I was looking for. Or maybe it found me. Or maybe…
Please, blog, may I have some more?
