Brandon Inge’s offensive contributions the last few years have supplied me a ton of material. Iin the early years he was very, very bad. But then after a demotion to Toledo in 2003 he came back as a different hitter. He sustained that for 2 years into mid 2005 and had me declaring that he had transformed into an offensive threat. But then he swooned late last year, and this season he is once again a different hitter, an all or nothing masher.
Let’s start by looking at the various stages of Inge’s career, picked somewhat arbitrarily and summarized using the Day by Day Database:
GS AB BA OBA Slug% OPS AB/HR ISO BB/K pre 7/1/2003 148 677 .183 .242 .292 .534 61.5 .109 .241 7/1/03-7/1/05 232 869 .284 .350 .446 .796 36.2 .162 .489 > 7/1/05 163 598 .227 .281 .420 .701 23.9 .193 .313
While there was a definite shift in Inge’s career with his 2003 demotion, another change seems to be in progress. From his peak, he seems to have given up 50 points of batting average, and some additional OBP in exchange for 30 additional points of ISO (isolated power: Slugging-Batting average). And while not a huge number of at-bats, the totals are probably indicative of more than just luck. Continue reading Inge’s Offense