Yadi's hitting streak

by john vb on May 22, 2007 2:26 PM EDT

I got to thinking about Yadi's improbable performance at the plate lately, and considering the lack of offense we've had at catcher of late, I thought it might be interesting to see how his streak compares to other Cardinal catchers.

Turns out, pretty good. Baseball-Reference's game logs only go back to '57, but since then, there have only been 5 hitting streaks by a Cardinal catcher that were longer than Yadi's 13 games. And 4 of them belong to Ted Simmons.

For whatever it's worth, Molina has hit .356 in those 13 games, raising his average from .250 to .294, but his OBP has only gained 13 points, because he's drawn just one walk in the 46 plate appearances that span the streak. His slugging however, has gone up nearly 50 points in the last 4 games alone, thanks to the fact that he's hit a double in each of those games.

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Nice to see

If he can continue to hit at higher levels this year it gives him a shot at the All-Star game as well as his first gold glove. At least one of our regular starters is hitting above his career norms.....

I think we all thought Yadi would hit better at some point - glad to see it happening.

by wildman on May 22, 2007 2:29 PM EDT reply actions

I thought last year

was going to be the breakout offensive season for Yadi. In '05 we saw he could really hit the ball hard and saw glimpses of what I thought would lead to significant improvement. obviously last year he was dreadful at the plate during the season - it seemed like he'd hit a lot of fly balls that would die at the warning track instead of just trying to make contact and see what came of it.

maybe this is the year. I certainly feel a lot more confident when he comes to the plate that something good is going to happen.

Acquire some runs!

by madding on May 22, 2007 5:10 PM EDT reply actions

I can't find it now

But there was an article published a few months ago that had a list of "true .300 hitters", based off of Ron Shandler's criteria (high contact and walk rates). Yadier wasn't on there because his walk rate wasn't high enough, but his contact rate was high enough that he made the "honorable mention" list.

This year he's upped his walk rate significantly to ~10%- not quite high enough to make the "true 300" list, but almost. Interestingly, his strikeout rate is up considerably also, which may mean he's swinging harder or taking fewer bad swings.

His LD% is up over 3% as well, so far, and he's had a couple of lucky infield hits which has to have been good for his confidence; last year he had some really bad luck that drove his batting average down- lots of line drives to infielders- and of course he also lost a few points because he's the slowest man in the NL.

Good stuff so far. Hopefully he can keep it up!

Don't Panic!!!

by SleepyCA on May 22, 2007 6:16 PM EDT up reply actions

I predicted a big year from Yadi

Took him as my last pick in my fantasy draft.

by stltrav09 on May 22, 2007 6:28 PM EDT reply actions

I took him as my catcher too

I thought he would have this sort of year, after his postseason performance and getting more reps down in the Carribean Series.

I have to admit, I thought he'd have a little more power right now than he actually does...but if we'd get some people on for him, he'd be a shoe-in right now for NL All-Star team.

We aren't very good.

by Hardcore Legend on May 22, 2007 6:36 PM EDT up reply actions