The second half of the baseball season is now under way, and it’s fun to take a look at some of the numbers from the first half and see what might happen projected forward over an entire year. Here are some completely arbitrary and cherry-picked statistics.
On Pace For... What The Second-Half Might Bring
- Orioles Losses. If the rest of the year is as miserable in Baltimore as it has been so far, the team will go 49-113, the worst record since 2003. The Astros, Pirates and D-backs are also on pace to lose 100 - the last time there were more than two teams with 100+ losses was 2002.
- Joey Votto HRs. He is leading the league, despite being currently on pace for only 40.5 long-balls this season. That would be the lowest number by the NL leader over a full season, since Fred McGriff "dominated" the league with 35 in 1992. The steroid era is so over.
- Cliff Lee Complete Games. He has five in only 13 starts. If he maintains that pace and we assume 16 more appearancess, he'll have eleven. In the pitcher-friendly AL, that'd be the most since Chuck Finley had 13 in 1993. Heck, no American League team had eleven complete games last year.
- Albert Pujols OPS. There is probably just one man for whom being second in the league for OPS would be a disappointment, but his current .981 figure is his lowest number since 2002. Can Albert recover in the second half?
- Jeremy Guthrie losses. He's not the only pitcher to have lost ten games already. But he is the only such guy who lost 17 last year. If he repeats that in 2010 [and it seems plausible], he'll be the first man with back-to-back seventeen-loss seasons since Mike Morgan for Seattle in 1986-87
- Mark Reynolds K's. It's going to be close. He's on pace for 221, two below his all-time record set last season. However, colleague Justin Upton is #2; the last time clubmates went 1-2 in K's was 1965, when Dick Allen and Dick Stuart of the Phillies were the top two
- Tampa's Stolen Bases. The Rays are on pace to top the league once again in swiped bags, and the current pace of 196 would put them a couple ahead of last year's total. It would be the most by a team in the American League since the 1992 Brewers ran wild, stealing 256 bases.
- Astros Homers. They're on track to have only 94, a number not undercut since the 1992 Dodgers managed only 72. Between 1994 and 2007, no National League team had less than a hundred in a full season. Like I said: the steroid era is so over...
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