Ludwick

[muetze]

Is this guy for real? Or will he come down to Earth and platoon with Schumaker?

[freeling_prideful]

He will obviously cool down. Here's some of his numbers and the approximate MLB average:

LD% - Ludwick 39%, MLB 18%
BABIP - Ludwick 44%, MLB 30%
HR/FB - Ludwick 29%, MLB 12% (this one varies the most, since hitters w/ more power like Howard can routinely get it up to 18-20%...but NOT 30%)

It's actually absurd what Ludwick has managed to do thus far. He's hitting only 20% of balls on the ground, compared to most guys who are like 35-45%, and almost all those balls that he's getting into the air he is actually hitting right on the button (hence 40% line drives) and sending them out of the park. The ones that don't are falling in the gaps about 1.5X as often as the average hitter, as his 44% BABIP shows (of course, BABIP is correlated to line drives, so the reason it's so high is that every ball he hits, he's scorching).

Be skeptical- he hit .267 but he's still striking out 25% of the time and has a bad K:BB ratio of roughly 3:1. He's the same hitter as last year, he's just on a really really hot streak.

[Relentless]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember on that Sunday night game on ESPN versus the Cubs. They were mentioning that he had spend a lot of time working on his batting stroke with Mark McGwire, or was it another St Louis outfielder? I can't really remember because it just caught my ear, but it's not bad thing being trained by a 500hr slugger. Even though he might have cheated, hitting 70+ homers in a season, steroids or not, is still very hard to accomplish.

[jfg]

That doesn't mean he's going to be Mark McGwire (I would bet it's somebody else though seeing how reclusive Big Mac is these days) or a .320 hitter. I don't think that's exactly what you were saying but teams have legends work with players all the time in the offseason. For example, Tony Oliva and Rod Carew have helped out a lot in the spring training with the Twins and that's not doing much for them.

Ludwick is going to fall hard sooner or later.

[The_Natural]

Haters!!!!

I'm riding the lightning.

[beadkong]

Ludwick, Schumaker, and Duncan all stayed with McGuire over the course of a week this summer.

[bAsKeTcAsE86]

He's not a BAD player, but he is playing out of his mind right now...

I see his season numbers topping out at around 20 HRs and a .270 BA.