Pat The Bat?

Yeah, I know, football blog and all, but I couldn't let this Rich Hofmann story go unremarked upon.  Let's cut right to the chase:

Since 2000, when Burrell broke in with the Phillies, there are only 23 players who have hit at least 200 homers and driven in at least 750 runs. He is one of them. Alex Rodriguez, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Albert Pujols, Pat Burrell - all on the same chart.

And then at the bottom of the story he then helpfully goes on to provide that chart.

Now I'm not what you'd call a real baseball stat head, but doesn't focusing entirely on home runs and RBIs seem like it's putting a bit too much weight on just two, not particularly comprehensive stats?  If you look at the list, you see that Todd Helton is "ranked" one spot above Burrell.  So they're pretty much the same player, right?

Uh, no.  Burrell's career OPS is .859 (which isn't bad).  Helton's is 1.005.  And yes, ballparks effects, but there's a 22-point gap in the their OPS+ as well.

Hofmann is also just using cumulative numbers from a very specific date range, which makes the comparison even more meaningless.  You won't find either Chase Utley or Ryan Howard on that list (yet), but you're not going to get many people arguing that those guys haven't been better than Burrell the last few years.

Besides, the problem with Burrell has never been that he isn't a pretty good hitter.  It's that being a pretty good hitter and being an underachiever are not mutually exclusive labels.

Take it away, Tom.