Pirates will lead NL in OBP

OK, that’s not going to happen, they’ll never catch Colorado, Philadelphia, or St. Louis, but a repeat of fourth place is possible. In one of his diary entries Jack Wilson describes his arbitration experience. He asked for $1.85M and the Bucs offered $1.4M.

We basically proved that average shortstops were being paid well above $2 million. By any means, we didn't go in saying that I'm a superstar. I'm not. Far from it. But I did play in a lot of games the past three years and that was a big key in the process, games and starts. We showed that there were only 13 other shortstops in the big leagues that played in as many games as I had with the Pirates. There also was a lot of statistical mumbo jumbo.

Does Wilson understand the mumbo jumbo, does he sense that the public will think less of him if they learn that he understands this mumbo jumbo, or does he guess that the public doesn’t give a damn about statistical mumbo jumbo? Either way, what mumbo jumbo did they talk about?

I really got involved in the process. I took a lot of notes when the Pirates were talking. I'm a positive person. Everything they said about me that was bad, I'll turn it around and make it into a positive. Those are the things I'll work on this spring. The Pirates kept emphasizing things like on-base percentage, walks, that type of stuff. It was stuff I knew I already had to work on, but I'll put more of an emphasis on it now. If I'm going to hit second in the lineup, which I would like to do, I've got to get on base more often.

Is the value of OBP sinking into Jack Wilson? For years, the good folks at Baseball Prospectus harshed on the Pirates, again and again, for not teaching plate discipline. Hitting prospect after hitting prospect flopped in the majors. It was a team of hacks. But hacker is as hacker does. So we are pleased to report that the Pirates appear to have embraced OBP. In 2001, the Pirates had a league-worst .313 OBP. In 2002, the Pirates had a league-worst .319 team OBP. In 2003, the Pirates posted a team OBP of .338. In the NL, only St. Louis, Colorado, and Philadelphia did better. And Jack Wilson contributed 558 at-bats of .303 OBP. Even Randall Simon was discovered working the count and praising the walk. This is the same guy who said you don’t walk across the water to get a job in the United States. And the current crop of young hitters have more respectable on-base skills: Redman (.374 OBP for the Pirates last year), Bay (.421), and Craig Wilson (.360) are a real change in that department. Bobby Hill posted a .365 OBP last year at AAA, J.J. Davis put up a .342 OBP at Nashville, Freddy Sanchez had a .430 OBP at Pawtucket, and Jose Castillo had a .339 OBP at Altoona after doing better (.370) at Lynchburg the year before. If these guys continue to work the count, that will translate into more runs scored. And if Jack Wilson wants to win his next arbitration case, or get a nice job on the next free-agent market, he’ll want to add 30 or 40 points to his OBP.