I was listening to a fantasy baseball podcast the other day and the topic of Billy Hamilton came up. An analyst on the program was talking about how in the second half of this season Hamilton has actually began to hit enough to be a useful option in all leagues. They went on to discuss how he was stealing a lot of bases and having more attempts because he was on base more often. To me it sounded like a great narrative. I thought they were on to something because of course they are experts and he was getting a lot more steals. Then I did my own research.
What I found actually surprised me, not a little, but a lot. Let me start by saying I came in to the research with the assumption that Billy Hamilton hadnât been hitting at all to start the season and that his batting average had gone way up since the first half. I was very wrong.
I started by looking at the season as a whole and trying to find a good, arbitrary, date to use to divide his stats in to two periods. While looking I came to the conclusion that I would use his disabled list stint in mid-July as the cut line. With that I looked at stats from opening day through June 8th and from June 17th to yesterday (August 24th). There is an obvious gap between June 8th and the 17th, but again that was his DL stint for a concussion.
Without telling you stolen base number I want you to look at two slash lines and see if you can guess which is the first half segment and which is the second. Slash line one is .255/.328/.319, the other is .269/.308/.394. Which one is segment one of the season and which is segment two?
Ok, time is up pencils down.
The answer is the first slash line is segment two. Surprised? I was. I never would have thought that Hamilton's batting average has been lower in the second half of the games played this year than in the first. But why are people saying he is hitting so much better in the second half, he is only getting on-base at .020 points over the first half. Yet his dramatic turnaround is what a lot of analyst are using to justify the fact that in that second half segment he has stolen 37 bases as compared to 16 in the first half. That is more than double and only a difference of eight games played. I had to dig deeper to see what was going on and because of that I found what I was looking for.
â@BBBaseball_Talk Aug 23 WOW, Now that is fast - BB Baseball Talk http://bbbaseballtalk.weebly.com/1/post/2016/08/wow-now-that-is-fast.html ⦠@Reds #Reds @BillyHamilton #MLB #Statcast
In the month of August Cincinnati has had 21 games and Hamilton has started 19 of them. He has a triple slash line of .297/.395/.365 with 18 stolen bases. Now that is a different player and one that needs to be owned in every fantasy league. If you extrapolate that over a 162 game season he would be on pace for 139 stolen bases. Wow! Question is can he keep this up? Over his four years in the majors Hamilton has a career batting average of .247 and an on-base percentage of .296, a full .099 points lower than his on-base for August.
We know that he is a speedster, just look at the recent statcast video of him getting up to 22 mph running down a fly ball. Can he, however, get on base enough to utilize his speed? If he can keep his number near what they are in August moving forward he will be a premier fantasy option similar to Dee Gordon.
Year | G | PA | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2013 | 13 | 22 | 9 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 13 | 1 | 2 | 4 | .368 | .429 | .474 |
2014 | 152 | 611 | 72 | 141 | 25 | 8 | 6 | 48 | 56 | 23 | 34 | 117 | .250 | .292 | .355 |
2015 | 114 | 454 | 56 | 93 | 8 | 3 | 4 | 28 | 57 | 8 | 28 | 75 | .226 | .274 | .289 |
2016 | 110 | 420 | 64 | 98 | 19 | 3 | 3 | 16 | 53 | 7 | 32 | 84 | .261 | .320 | .351 |
4 Yrs | 389 | 1507 | 201 | 339 | 54 | 14 | 13 | 93 | 179 | 39 | 96 | 280 | .247 | .296 | .336 |