Some Numbers Of Varying Degrees Of Mild Interest

This is kind of like one of those Five Numbers posts I write, only shorter, and way less meaningful. Think of it like the side coleslaw you get with a big, juicy burger, right down to the possibility that you could be allergic and throw up at a moment's notice. Eww!

1. The Padres have a team .705 OPS - 14th in the NL - and have scored a mediocre 4.4 runs per game. The second-best offensive regular behind Adrian Gonzalez has been the .257/.335/.421 hitting Nick Hundley. Weak, right? Wrong. Inspired by a Sky Kalkman tweet this morning, I looked to StatCorner, and the Padres' park-adjusted wOBA puts their team offense as slightly above average. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to look at this before, but it didn't, and sure enough, the Padres' biggest weakness of all things right now looks to be their starting rotation. Park factors never cease to blow my mind.
   


2. Price Fielder has been drilled once per 115 pitches so far this season. His previous career high was once per 185, and last year he came in at once per 312. He has been hit with three times his career frequency in low-leverage situations. Pitchers don't seem to be big fans of Prince Fielder.


3. Jeff Mathis vs. Seattle, career: .245/.330/.415, 114 PAs
   Jeff Mathis vs. others, career: .200/.269/.312, 853 PAs


4. Adrian Beltre currently ranks 12th among position players in WAR, has been a slight positive on the bases, has been durable, and has hit better on the road than he has in a home ballpark that looks as if it were built for players with specifically his kind of skillset. That's the good news. The great news is that, according to my latest subjective research, he still hasn't caught on as a real fan favorite among the many citizens of Red Sox Nation. He may yet escape this experience untainted.


5. This is going way back, but for some reason it only stood out to me this morning:
   
   Bronson Arroyo
   
   2004: 18.7% strikeout rate
   2005: 11.4% strikeout rate
   2006: 18.7% strikeout rate
   
   From what I can tell, nothing about Arroyo really changed. His stuff stayed the same. His pitch mix stayed the same. His other peripherals stayed the same. He just went from being a starter who could strike out batters one year, to a starter who couldn't strike out batters the next year, to a starter who could strike out batters again the year after that.
   
   That's really weird. Arroyo's strikeout rate with Cincinnati is down again this year to its 2005 level, but while on the one hand that's kind of worrisome, on the other, who knows.