The reeling Stros (11-16) get a nice boost today as the club’s best hitter — Lance Berkman — is expected to play tonight in the Stros’ game against the Braves (17-11) in Atlanta. Berkman has been rehabilitating his right ACL over the past six months after surgery on his knee that he injured while playing flag football last November. Here is the Stros’ press release on the activation of Berkman.
Although the Stros have not yet announced the player who will be dropped from the 25 player roster to accomodate Berkman, my sense is that it will be either Brandon “Home Run” Duckworth or Chad Harville, who had a rough outing in last night’s game in Atlanta.
Update: Just to show what I know, the Stros announced this evening that they sent rookie Chris Burke (-4 RCAA/.222 Ave/.265 OBP/.244 SLG) to AAA Round Rock to make room on the roster for Berkman. Inasmuch as Burke is blocked by Bidg at his natural position of second base and has not hit well enough so far this season to merit a reserve role in the outfield, he is probably better off at Round Rock where he can play every day. However, the Stros probably will not carry 12 pitchers on the 25 player roster for long, so another roster move is likely in the near future.
The already weak-hitting Stros have been struggling at the plate this season without Berkman, who is legitimately one of the best hitters in Major League Baseball right now. To appreciate just how good a hitter Berkman is, consider his runs scored against average (“RCAA”), which is a statistic that Lee Sinins developed to measure how many more runs a hitter generates compared to the number of runs an average hitter creates.
As noted several times on this blog, RCAA is particularly valuable to evaluate hitting because it focuses on the two most important things in winning baseball games — that is, creating runs and avoiding making outs. RCAA basically computes the number of outs that a particular player uses in creating runs for his team and then compares that number to the amount of runs that an average player in the league would create while using an equivalent number of outs. Inasmuch as the hypothetical average player’s RCAA is always zero, a player can have either an RCAA that is a positive number — which indicates he is an above average hitter (i.e., Barry Bonds) — or an RCAA that is a negative number, which means he is performing below average (i.e., Brad Ausmus).
Moreover, RCAA is a valuable tool to evaluate hitting ability because it provides a good measure for comparing hitters who played during different eras. Inasmuch as RCAA measures a player’s hitting ability against that of an average player in the player’s league for each particular season, a player’s lifetime RCAA is an accurate measure to compare players from different eras — it essentially measures how each player performed against an average player in his era. On the other hand, comparing other hitting statistics — such as on-base average, slugging percentage, and batting average — is often skewed between players of hitter-friendly eras versus players of pitcher-friendly eras.
Berkman is well on his way to being the best hitter in Stros history. After a 55 RCAA/.982 OPS 2002 season and a 40 RCAA/.927 OPS 2003 season, Berkman had an incredible .566 SLG, .450 OBA, 1.016 OPS, 69 RCAA in 160 games during the 2004 season. He has a .980 career OPS (i.e. on-base average + slugging percentage), compared to the league average of .777 during his career, and 254 RCAA in 775 games.
Berkman’s 236 RCAA over the past 4 years ranks 8th in the past half century for players of the age 25-28:
1 Mickey Mantle 322
2 Frank Thomas 320
3 Barry Bonds 319
4 Hank Aaron 256
5 Manny Ramirez 250
6 Willie Mays 246
7 Jeff Bagwell 239
8 Lance Berkman 236
T9 Todd Helton 228
T9 Frank Robinson 228
Not bad company.