I’m Dunn With Adam. Please Walk Over, Albie.

I was having a discussion with a pal yesterday; the subject was Adam Dunn’s fantasy value. I offered my standard stathead Dunn rhetoric which says “I’ll accept the K’s as a byproduct of superior plate discipline which we all know leads to walks & power”. It’s a well known theory that may as well be called the Adam Dunn Corollary. Baseball Prospectus has covered it in depth, so I won’t bother here. This is also not an Adam Dunn column. It’s an Albert Pujols one.

Halfway through my “and it leads to higher pitch counts!” rant, my pal stopped me. He knew about plate discipline’s benefits and its associated costs. He also knew that there was an easier way to get to 100 walks and 30 homers. His name was Albert Pujols.

Saying Pujols is a great hitter is yawn-inspiring. My basil plant knows that. But what fascinated me was this acute representation of his skill; the ability to amass a freakish amount of walks without the accompanying strikeouts. And although ‘an out is an out’ in the real world, a strikeout costs ya half a point in CubicleGM’s fantasy league, so it’s something to consider. And consider it I did.I scampered over to my PECOTA projection spreadsheet for an illustration. I wanted to see, in its simplest form, who left their bat on their shoulder for 4 balls and not 3 strikes most frequently. I thought a quick ratio of walks minus K’s would do the trick. I’m normally adverse to counting stats (efficiency is proficiency! or something), but in this case, I thought the notional amount would be the most interesting. And holy shit was it ever.

Albert Pujols is projected to walk 44 times more than he’ll strikeout in 2009. Let me put this into a bit of comparison. Of the 934 players PECOTA has projected 2009 stats for, 14 are expected to walk more than they strikeout. 14. FOURTEEN!!! That’s 1.5% of projected players. Check the table:

Simply being 1 of 14 is not enough to make my jaw drop past “did you hear Adrianna Lima is doing Playboy?” level, but the disparity to which Pujols dominates the above table does (well, maybe just the SI Swimsuit Issue level). But look at it; his gap of walks over K’s is TWICE as many as the #2. C’mon…don’t act like you’re not impressed.

As for my boy Dunn (and we’ll toss in Stathead Hall of Famer Jack Cust [who finished 2^nd in the majors in BB’s last year]), peep this:

Guh.

For more color, those BB ’09 projections are #1 and #2 in PECOTA’s eyes. Again, in the real world, this doesn’t mean anything. But in fantasy, those K’s are quite a cost to pay for OBP. (No such thing as a “free” pass. Eh, eh?)

Here are some other fantasy studs:

The differential between these guys and Pujols makes me pee. Pujols will walk 15 times more than Howard while whiffing 104 times less. Do I even need these?: !!!!!!!!!!!!

And finally, if this guy is your fantasy sleeper, you need a new mattress:

By no means do I think this is some holy grail of a stat. and I assume it’s the 43^rd most indicative reflection of baseball success. But it’s new to me.

And there should no discouragement of finding ways to laud Albert’s Pujols’ greatness.

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