I recently picked up the Bill James Gold Mine 2008. There’s tons of great stuff in here, as you’d expect, but two items in particular have captured my imagination (so far): the “record of opposing batters” James presents for certain pitchers, and the “comps” he offers of team batting records to individual career batting records (e.g., the Padres hit like Bobby Bonilla in wins last season and like Norm Sherry in losses).

Hey, why not mash ‘em up and see what happens? Well, that’s just what I’ve done. I examined Jake Peavy‘s year-by-year “record of opposing batters” along with the names of some hitters who had similar career lines. In each case, I searched for hitters who:

• were active between 1961 and 2007;
• had at least 3000 plate appearances (2000 for the ’05 season, because otherwise we’d have no comps);
• had both OBP and SLG within .010 of Peavy’s.

I then ordered each resulting set a) by batting average and b) by OPS+. The goal was to come up with a similar looking traditional line that also translated reasonably well when adjusted for era, parks, etc. Sometimes I had to make concessions (i.e., choose greater accuracy in terms of BA/OBP/SLG or in terms of OPS+). In those cases, I went with my gut because an exercise like this doesn’t demand precision.

What we’re really going for is, “In 2002, Peavy made opponents look kind of like Steve Finley, while in 2007 he made them look kind of like Matt Walbeck.” We’re trying to get a general feel for the type of hitter Peavy turned guys into for each season.

Jake Peavy, Record of Opposing Batters

Year	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS+	Batting Comps
Statistics are courtesy of Baseball-Reference.
2002	430	.274	.334	.432	104	Rich Aurilia, Bret Boone, Steve Finley
2003	827	.238	.318	.422	96	Scott Brosius, Mike Macfarlane
2004	694	.236	.305	.359	75	Joe Girardi, Tom Pagnozzi
2005	812	.217	.271	.363	69	Ken Reitz, John Shelby
2006	846	.242	.303	.412	85	Corey Patterson, Gerald Williams
2007	898	.208	.272	.312	55	Dave McKay, Matt Walbeck
Career	4507	.232	.297	.379	n/a	Kevin Elster, Ron Karkovice

Karkovice falls just short of our 3000 PA threshold, but whatever. The point, again, is to get a general sense of things. Oh yeah, and to have fun.

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My Padres season preview is up at Hardball Times. No surprises if you’ve been following along here for any amount of time.
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Padres and Royals tonight on Channel 4SD. First pitch at 7:05 p.m. PT; we’ll have the IGD running about an hour before then.

Tagged as: baseball reference, batting average, bret boone, corey patterson, jake peavy, joe girardi, john shelby, ken reitz, matt walbeck, mike macfarlane, obp, rich aurilia, scott brosius, steve finley