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I found an interesting article on the Kansas City Royals and their lack of plate discipline.

The Royals offense sucks to put it mildly. The general manager of the team is one Dayton Moore. Mr. Moore’s philosophy is that plate discipline is not taught but acquired. Yeah right. Moore’s biography may be found by clicking here. Moore is a Fellowship of Christian Athletes guy. With Moore at the helm having total control of personnel decisions the Royals will not have a prayer. The dude just doesn’t get it.The team was next to last in walks and on-base-percentage. Moore’s big move was to add Jose Guillen into the middle of the lineup. Jay G has a lifetime three to one ratio of strikeouts to walks. This year the ratio is nine to one.

Bill Baer makes this modest proposal in an article on the baseball digest daily blog.

If you look at the formula for batting average and on-base percentage, you’ll find that BA (hits divided by at-bats) is in OBP ([hits plus walks plus hit-by-pitches] divided by [at-bats plus walks plus hit by pitches plus sacrifice flies])!

As a result of these facts, I am officially and formally requesting Major League Baseball to, at once, halt the use of batting average on their websites, on television and radio broadcasts, on the backs of baseball cards, in video games, in fantasy baseball leagues, among the numerous other venues in which batting average is used.
There is nothing to be gained from it; it is one of many vestigial statistics that haven’t yet been phased out by the evolution of statistics, much like your appendix. Let’s speed up that evolution by phasing out batting average from the baseball lexicon.

The entire article can be found here.

Last summer Nats’ GM Jim Bowden, the omnipresent egomaniac, decided to give Dmitri “Hot Plate” Young a $10 million contract. Young was in the middle of earning the NL’s Comeback Player Of the Year, that much is true, but why give a huge contract to someone who could have been signed for less at the end of the season. It is not like anyone would pay much for a player with limited skills who has had problems dealing with success in the past. The team if they really wanted him could have bid for his services as a free agent.

The Young contract I suspect was Bowden’s way of giving himself a slap on the back for giving Dmitri a chance when MLB was turning their back on the underachieving, overeating trouble maker.

D-Young pays them back by sitting on his fat ass all winter and not picking up a bat or doing a single sit up.

Now Nick Johnson is back and Young is testing the dughouse infrastructure in the Nats’ new house.

Just as no one could have predicted a year ago that Young would resurrect his career with the Nationals and become a valued clubhouse leader, it would have been hard to predict his status with the franchise right now: a highly paid backup to Nick Johnson who isn’t even available to play at the moment.
 

But maybe the Nationals should have.

Felipe Lopez (.308/.352/.660) the over-priced Bowden pick up from his beloved Reds is officially a Flop. That is flop with a capital “F”!He has probably lost his starting position and may be replaced by Ron Belliard at 2B.When told that he may have to sit the $4.9M a year weenie had this to say.

Good Ron. Ron who is the better hitter (.332/.427/.759) is toiling at the relatively meager price of $3.5M over two years, has been hot in Grapefruit League play hitting with power and a .400+ batting average. His defense has not been great but then neither has Flop’s.Yes I realize the Nats middle infield will be made up by often injured Cristian Guzman and a replacement level 2B in Ronny B.I hear food is gonna be good in the new Ballyard. It had better be… link

Lost fans finally know the identities of the Lost 6. In homage we will release the names of the six major leaguers who most improved there fortunes since 2007. The named players were those who most improved there chances for post-season glory, while at the same time will get more at bats and higher salaries. So without further ado let’s get to it.