perfidy

If you've read Michael Lewis' modern baseball classic, "Moneyball," you will remember a kid named Kevin Youkilis, a beefy, slowfooted John Kruk-type "ballplayer not athelete" third baseman with an unnatural ability to draw walks. If you haven't read Michael Lewis' modern baseball classic, "Moneyball," well, you should, and do please reread the previous sentence because it contains information you need to know.

Youkilis appears in Lewis' book because he doesn't fit the mold of the sterotypical great ballplayer, the Alex Rodriguez five-tool wonder. Instead, he is a slow, slap-hitting tub of lard. The clincher is that despite his average abilities and physique, he's a preternaturally patient hitter, a Sabremetrician's dream. His on-base percentage in the minor leagues has been astronomical, mainly due to his ability to work pitchers deep in the count to draw walks-- indeed, in "Moneyball" he is dubbed "Euclis, the Greek God of Walks." In the newfangled thinkery of the Boston Red Sox' management, the tubby God of Walks is more valuable than a hacker who swings for power and strikes out frequently. After all, a player on base can score a run, and a player who strikes out has wasted one of only twenty-seven chances per game the team has to score that same run.

With Boston Red Sox third baseman Bill Mueller injured, Youkilis has finally made his major league debut. In twelve games with the Sox, he has posted an OBP of .442 and walked 9 times. Although he has also struck out twelve times in that same span, a period of adjustment to major league pitching is to be expected. Even given Youk's need to adjust to the majors, his .442 OBP compares favorably to such marquee on-base generators as Todd Helton (career .427, first year .337), Barry Bonds (career .436, first year .330), and model leadoff man Rickey Henderson (career .401, first year .338). Put another way, Kevin Youkilis in his first year is getting on base more often than Barry Bonds, one of the all-time elite offensive players, has done in 11 out of his 17 seasons. Not bad.

Can we expect Bonds-like numbers all around from the God of Walks? No. Like I said, he's a beefy, slowfooted heir to John Kruk's mantle. But the God of Walks is an eternal journeyman of a type I always have a lot of fun watching. Now that Krukker's out of the game, Rickey Henderson is playing minor-league ball in Newark, and Joe Randa is in exile in Kansas City, we need Youk. Welcome to the show, kid.

Glossary for non-baseball types:

Walk: A hitter earns a free walk to first base if a pitcher throws four "balls," or pitches outside the strike zone (defined by the left and right edges of home plate, the player's knees, and the midpoint between the belt and the top of the shoulders) that the hitter does not swing at.
Batting Average: Actually a ratio, of the number of successful at-bats producing a hit to the total number of at-bats the player sees. A BA of .300 is considered good, meaning that a good baseball player will fail more than two-thirds of the time. Baseball is a hard game.
At-bat: From Wikipedia: An at-bat (AB) is used to calculate other data such as batting average. A player has an at bat every time he comes to bat except under the following circumstances: