Bishop earned the nickname “Camera Eye” due to his propensity for drawing walks. Among players with fewer than 6000 career plate appearances, none has drawn more than Bishop and it’s not even close:

Baseball’s all-time walks leader, Barry Bonds, checks in at 121.8 BB per 600 PA in case you’re wondering. For some perspective, Dunn, owner of a career .383 OBP, would need to draw bases on balls in two-thirds of his next 359 trips to the plate to match Bishop’s walk rate. That’s kind of insane.

What’s also insane is Bishop’s career slash line: .271/.423/.366. The list of players with at least 3000 PA and a higher OBP is a very short one, indeed. Among those who trail Bishop in that category are Mickey Mantle, Frank Thomas, Edgar Martinez, Stan Musial, Wade Boggs, and… well, all but 16 players in big-league history.

Bishop’s best season came in 1928, with the A’s, when he hit .316/.435/.432. His OBP ran north of .400 every year from 1925 to 1934 except one: In 1929, Bishop just missed, with a .398 OBP; he led the AL with 128 walks that year but hit .232.

Bishop was part of two World Championship squads — the ‘29 and ‘30 A’s. He didn’t distinguish himself in those series (or in ‘31, when Philadelphia lost to the Cardinals), hitting .182/.316/.182 in 18 career post-season games. However, he did play a key role in the decisive sixth game of the 1930 World Series. As John Kieran of the New York Times described it then:

…he got two bases on balls, was hit by the pitcher and scored two runs. This chap doesn’t need a bat at all. He gets on in a variety of ways. The Cardinals think he does it by political influence.

Before joining the A’s in 1924, Bishop starred for the International League’s Baltimore Orioles for several years. Baltimore won four straight IL championships from 1919 to 1922 (these were dominant teams with records of 100-49, 110-43, 119-47, and 115-52 in those years). According to an item in the February 13, 1923, New York Times, owner/manager Jack Dunn had made a “promise to sell at least three of his star Orioles before the beginning of the [1923] season.” Although Bishop was reportedly close to being sold to the Boston Red Sox in 1923, he remained in Baltimore, for whom he hit .333 with 22 home runs as the Orioles “slipped” to 111-53 (they won at least 100 games every year from 1919 to 1926).

After the 1933 season, “financial pressure [from] Philadelphia bankers” forced Connie Mack to sell off his best players (he sold Mickey Cochrane to Detroit and George Earnshaw to the White Sox). Bishop was traded with Lefty Grove and Rube Walberg to the Red Sox for Bob Kline, Rabbit Warstler, and $125,000. Bishop sputtered with his new club, which acquired him a decade too late, and he couldn’t displace light-hitting Ski Melillo at second base.

Bishop played two seasons with the Red Sox before returning to his hometown Orioles, where he served as player-manager before retiring. From there, Bishop went on to become head baseball coach for the U.S. Naval Academy; he remained there from 1938 until his death in 1962. (In a particularly cruel twist of fate, he died mere days before he was scheduled to retire, having returned to his place of birth to attend his mother’s funeral.)

The New Bill James Historical Abstract ranks Bishop as the #43 second baseman in history, nestled between Robby Thompson and Steve Sax. And now you know.

In 433 at-bats last year, McCutchen hit 12 homers with 22 steals while batting .286. Below those numbers, we see a guy who consistently hits the ball on the ground more than in the air in 2009 and 2008 (in Triple-A, his GB vs. FB percentages were 49.4 vs. 32.2). This is good for a guy who relies on his speed to get on base. The power he showed last year may be slightly fluky. After all, he did hit 8 homers in August, which seems extreme for him. I.e., I wouldn’t expect a huge gain in homers in 2010. Maybe 15 homers max. His walk rate was a bit high last year, but he did show a good eye for when he should/should not swing. With his speed and 15 homer power, he’s definitely a 2010 fantasy baseball keeper. Think 80/14/65/.275/35. For redraft leagues, The Dread Pirate can be someone who can provide more value than his draft spot, potentially taking a jump into the top 20 outfielders for 2010… Top 20 outfielders for 2010. Aye, me parrot concurs.

As many of you know we recently experienced some server trouble and have been in the process of rebuilding the statistics reports that were lost in the process. Unfortunately, the situation resulted in the CID numbers that enable users to bookmark their custom reports being lost. We have been working diligently to get everything back in order and are very close to having all of the reports previously available back online. Additionally, we have added some new, interesting and useful reports under the headings of Manager and Splits. I’ll go over a bit of what each offers below but I also wanted to say that this is just the beginning of the improvements in our statistical content and presentation, with many other revisions and installations on the horizon.Upon venturing to the statistics page you will be greeted with the following image:

For Managers we have pre-populated reports focusing specifically on either hitting or pitching as well as an overall report encompassing both. Under Splits, we have currently built two types of split data for both hitters and pitchers: platoon splits and home/road splits, each of which is available for every season dating back to 1957. For an example of the report in action, once clicking on Batter Season vs. LHP the following data surfaces:

The data above consists of every major league hitter’s production against southpaw pitchers this past season, sorted by OPS. As per usual with our reports, the plate appearance minimum can be adjusted and you have the ability to filter by both team and league. An additional filter is for the handedness of the opposing pitcher. For those unfamiliar with how that works, the picture below illustrates how one of these reports can be altered to show both opposing hands on the mound instead of just one, with the same being true for the home/road splits:

Once the (All) is selected–and in the forthcoming example I set the Min. PA to 200–all data for hitters vs each type of pitcher will emerge. The case below is still sorted by OPS, but you have the ability to sort by Name, Hand, whatever tickles the statistical funnybone. In fact, sorting by Name and then Hand affords the opportunity to view the data for an individual against southpaws right on top of his numbers against righties.

Amongst hitters with at least 200 plate appearances against a specific handed pitcher, Joe Mauer posted the highest OPS with the mark accrued against righties. I know, a real shocker that Mauer led. Garrett Jones proved pretty darn potent vs northpaws as well. Now, I know there is a glaring omission here in that the actual handedness of the batter is missing. Believe me, this is merely temporary and we are well aware. Additionally, the ideal splits report would incorporate EqA instead of OPS, but in the meantime the triple slash rates and the raw tallies should be really fun to investigate, and by exporting to CSV you can create your own handy-dandy spreadsheet of platoon or home/road splits. Alas, that will also be corrected moving forward to include PA instead and the BA/OBP/SLG and perhaps EqA to boot. So these are not perfect yet but they will be improving moving forward and remain very useful in the time being.

Another sortables splits report that we will work to implement involves numbers with runners on base or the bases empty. The managerial data works a little differently than the individual splits in the sense that the reports are comprised of numbers commonly associated with tendencies and strategy, but numbers that do not fall solely on the shoulders of the skipper. For the report focusing on the hitting aspect of managerial data, you can find records on stolen base attempts for each specific base, the successful rate of sacrifice bunts, double steal attempts and successes, how often batters swung on a steal attempt, how often the ball was put in play on steal attempts as well as pinch-hitter data. For the pitching side, reports look like this:

The underlining of Cincinnati was unintentional, but looking at Dusty Baker we can see that the average pitch count for his starters was 98.8, second highest amongst this group to Terry Francona. On 89 different occasions Baker’s hurlers surpassed the 100 pitch threshold, two of which included starts in excess of 120 pitches. Charlie Manuel let his starters toe the rubber for greater than 120 pitches. The report also includes quality and blown quality starts, with the latter referring to how often a pitcher left the game with a QS recorded only to have the bullpen allow bequeathed runners to score. The IBB column should be self-explanatory and the column directly to its left counts the number of relief outings with nary a run being scored. Like I mentioned, not everything in the managerial reports is solely the responsibility or the result of contributions from the skipper but the stats should work in conjunction to one another to identify tendencies.

So, again, you can now find sortable Splits and Manager reports on our Statistics page, as well as just about all of the reports added over the summer–the batter standard and team/year reports are yet to be added back. The bottom line, however, is that we are working on new and cool features to enhance our statistical presentation and content and this serves merely as a starting point. Thank you all for your patience on this front, but changes for the better are certainly in the works.

Rankings are the height of subjectivity, of course. Drafts are the expression of the subjective opinions of the different draftees, though, so lets see what we can learn by putting these players in their (subjective, fantasy-oriented) place. Oh, another note: these rankings are for 5×5 rotisserie fantasy baseball. Eligibility was determined by where the player had the most at-bats last year.

It’s probable that Albert Pujols is a tier of his own. He is a true stud in every category when compared to his peers. But without the 15 or so steals, he might belong right along side the other two metronomes in Mark Teixeira and Miguel Cabrera, two young studs at the position who are virtual locks for a plus batting average 35+ home runs, and gobs of runs and RBI. There’s not much to say here other than, since this is a deep position, it’s worth considering comparable middle infielders over these guys – just look how long and balanced this list is.

The third tier has three players that could, in the right year, outperform guys in the second tier. Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard, and Adrian Gonzalez have all had years with power production that has eclipsed that of the two players above them. But they also have their issues. Fielder alternates medium-power years with high-power years, Howard won’t ever put in a plus batting average with his high strikeout rates, and Gonzalez would be more exciting if only he could get his batting average out of the ‘neutral’ territory and into ‘plus’ like the guys in tier two. Maybe, when he walks fewer times with his next team as Dave Cameron seems to have predicted, his BABIP will also regress to his career levels and his batting average will rise, though it’s hard to predict anything more than a .280 number there.

The middle tier provides some real opportunity for value. Each and every member of this tier could easily hit .300 with 30 home runs and good run production next year. Justin Morneau, Lance Berkman and Kendry Morales have all done it before, and Kevin Youkilis has gotten about as close as you can get. Joey Votto seems poised to join their ranks with a full year of strong play. It’s also a well balanced tier – the aging sluggers on their way down sit in front of Youkilis, who seems to have found his niche with a good batting average and modest power for a first baseman. Votto and Morales sit behind him until they prove they can consistently provide more power.

The next tier is called the ‘Dan Uggla‘ tier. These guys will give you power, but in rotisserie baseball you’ll also need to work hard to over come Adam Dunn and Carlos Pena’s poor batting averages. In head-to-head competition, their value increases because of the option of punting batting average, but in rotisserie you really need to try and compete in every category and their big minus signs are a dark cloud over the rest of their positive contributions.

The last tier could produce some tier-jumpers if the stars align. Should Derrek Lee continue to hit 45% of his balls in the air, he may jut hit another 30 home runs, which would put him in tier four. Billy Butler is still hitting too many worm-burners (47.7% groundballs career), but if can get a little lift into those balls, he’s shown that he’s a strong producer in batting average. At 30 years old, it seems that Adam LaRoche is a strong bet to continue producing at the same mediocre level going forward. He’ll probably drop off the list when a young guy steps forward next year and joins the crowd, but with the strikeout rates that Chris Davis (34.7% career) and Russell Branyan (38.9% career) sport, it’s hard to rely on them to even keep their jobs all year in 2010.