We had a little discussion on a previous post about Derek Jeter reaching base in 87% of his games in 2010.

I went ahead and calculated this same percentage for every single player, excluding pitchers.

Here are the leaders in highest percentage of games reaching base in 2010, minimum 50 games played:

Logan Morrison	0.919   21
Prince Fielder	0.894   11
Evan Longoria	0.894   47
Miguel Cabrera	0.893    3
Robinson Cano	0.881   32
Joey Votto	0.880    2
Justin Morneau	0.877    1
Shin-Soo Choo	0.875   12
Ian Kinsler	0.874   31
Nick Markakis	0.869   49
Billy Butler	0.867   25
Derek Jeter	0.866  143
Josh Hamilton	0.865    7
Joe Mauer	0.861   10
Chase Utley	0.861   27
Matt Holliday	0.861   22
A McCutchen	0.857   60
Bobby Abreu	0.857   94
Albert Pujols	0.855    4
Mark Teixeira	0.854   58

Logan Morrison's agent should be reading this for when he becomes arbitration eligible.

The 3rd column is the rank in OBP for the season for each guy (again among players appearing in a minimum of 50 games as non-pitchers.)

Amazing that Derek Jeter is so low!

Now here are the 20 worst players in terms of fraction of games reaching base, minimum 50 games played:

Delwyn Young	0.409  187
N Schierholtz	0.409  108
Nick Stavinoha	0.405   52
Joaquin Arias	0.403   30
Brooks Conrad	0.398  198
Matt Stairs	0.397  110
Jason Bourgeois	0.391   70
Ramiro Pena	0.388   11
Greg Dobbs	0.386   14
Dewayne Wise	0.385   46
Augie Ojeda	0.373   17
Brandon Wood	0.370    1
Jesus Feliciano	0.370   35
Garret Anderson	0.363    2
Ross Gload	0.362  218
Travis Ishikawa	0.353  175
Alb Gonzalez	0.342   37
B Lillibridge	0.328   13
Cory Sullivan	0.246   16
Chris Carter	0.200  161

The third column here is the ranking among the worst OBP values for 2010, again for the same criteria.

These two tables show that there's quite a bit of variation in terms of how guys spread out their times on base. It's also true some of the guys on the second list are hurt by being pinch-hitters. Ross Gload, for example, had 79 games with just one appearance, and even though he had a .328 OBP, that means he had a ton of games with no times on base despite not being an awful hitter. That's how he gets on this "worst" list despite having only the 218th worst OBP.

Before you take in the Opening Day action, here are some last-minute sabermetric predictions to chew on:

• Baseball Prospectus is still probably the industry standard, and here's what they see happening in 2011.
• The Replacement Level Yankees Weblog does these great Diamond Mind sims every year; here are the AL and NL editions for 2011.
• Finally, check out Patriot's less-mathematical (but still saber-tinged) picks at Walk Like A Sabermetrician.

I hope you're as excited about this season as I am!

It's been a long cold winter here in Philadelphia. In honor of Thursday and Friday, the greatest days of the year, here are some Opening Day features we have here at B-R:

• Franchise Opening-Day Starters (1919-2010)
• Batting and pitching game finders can be set to search "In team's first x games":
  • Example 1: Most HR in team's 1st game of the season (1919-2010)
  • Example 2: Highest Game Score in team's 1st game of the season (1919-2010)
• Use streak finders to look for the longest streaks to open the season:
  • Example 1: Most consecutive games with a hit to start the season (2000-09)
  • Example 2: Most consecutive wins by a pitcher to start the season (1980-89)
• Game Previews
• Our Mobile Site is perfect for looking up stats at the game, in a restaurant, or on your couch. We even have every box score since 1919 available in an easy to use mobile format.

Give them a try, and enjoy baseball's return.

Since 1919, how many batters have reached base 4+ times in his team's first game of the season, three times or more in his career?

What follows are two pieces of sample fantasy advice from Baseball HQ, just like readers would receive during the course of their BHQ subscription. Get a competitive advantage in your league by subscribing today!

Nick Richards: Esmil Rogers was named the Rockies' 5th starter, and you might think 'who cares?' given that he had a 6.13 ERA and 1.667 WHIP last year.  But look deeper and you see part of the cause of those terrible numbers was a batting average on balls in play (BAbip) of .390 (!).  That's such an outlier of a number, you can expect it to return to normal levels.  Given that Rogers had a SO/9 of 8.3 (excellent) and a BB/9 of 3.3 (fine), Rogers has skill.  Take away some of that bad luck from last year where hits that should have been outs became part of his damaging WHIP instead, and you might have a halfway serviceable 5th starter in 2011.  It helps to look deeper than the surface stats to see where those surface stats came from.

Just in time for Opening Day, here's my head-to-head review of the two major baseball games on the console market this year, MLB 11: The Show and Major League Baseball 2k11.

Graphics: Ballpark-wise, I think 2K11 stands up very well to The Show, but overall I have to give the visual nod to MLB 11. Its player faces and body types are much more accurate-looking, the animations are smoother, and The Show has none of the occasional framerate hiccups you'll find in 2K11. I like how both games offer progressive lighting effects -- i.e., the shadows in the park change as the game goes on -- though I think MLB 11 pulls this off a bit better than 2K11. One positive about 2K11 is that its in-game colors are much more vibrant, while The Show generally features more muted visuals, but that doesn't make up for MLB 11's overall advantages. The Show wins the graphical category.

Presentation: In-game, 2K11 offers a slightly superior presentation with bells & whistles like the integration of Inside Edge scouting reports and a neat win probability graph in the pause menu. The Show is more traditional, trying to mimic an actual TV broadcast, so its presentation is solid but largely unspectacular, aside from a decent array of situational player cutscenes. On the front end, 2K Sports games typically have a counterintuitive menu system and MLB 2K11 is no different, using the same setup we've seen from the company's sports games for the past few years. MLB 11's frontend is much better, with simpler navigation and a cool dynamic ballpark feature that displays your favorite team's park in the background (or shuffles through all parks if you don't pick a favorite). So who wins on balance depends on whether you enjoy a flashy in-game presentation or not, and for the record I like 2K11 here.

Sound: I have to give 2K11 a big edge here. The in-game commentary by Gary Thorne, Steve Phillips, and John Kruk is impressive as always, replicating the chatter of a real baseball broadcast as well as any game I've ever played. All sports games will have some repetition in their commentary from time to time, but 2K11 mostly does a great job of having the 3 guys in the booth sound like they're having a real conversation about the game. The Show's crew of Matt Vasgersian, Dave Campbell, & Eric Karros, on the other hand, lacks any such enthusiasm or chemistry: sure, they get the job done, but you would never confuse their commentary with that of an actual game. Crowd-wise, The Show is a little better -- the fans have more awareness about the on-field action -- and in the menus, the music is typical sports game fare (though credit goes to both games for including older artists like the Edgar Winter group and Joan Jett). All in all, MLB 2K11 has a leg up in the sound department.

Jon Heyman has tweeted that Bud Selig is non-committal as far as stepping down as commissioner when his current contract expires at the end of 2012.

I have very mixed feelings on Selig. I think he's done a lot of good things for the game but is also certainly complicit in the non-action surrounding steroids and other substances.

My big question is--assuming I wanted him to go at the end of 2012, who would I want to replace him? The only people that come to mind would be even worse.

Who would you like to see as commissioner in 2013--Selig, or someone else?

The 2011 season opens tomorrow, so now is a great time to tell you about Baseball-Reference's Play Index . In case you don't already know about the PI, it's a set of research tools that allow you to create customizable queries on our database, save the results, and share them with others. Using the PI, you can:

• Search full-season or multi-year totals to find your own custom leaderboards - Look at the entire history of baseball from 1871-2011 with every year, team, and position available, or filter the results in a vast number of ways: by specific years, by age, by first six seasons or last ten seasons, by American League only, by Cubs only, by switch-hitters, by catchers, by outfielder or infielder, by year of debut, but active or retired, by Hall of Famer, by height and weight, by living or deceased, or by a range of common statistical categories. Then sort the results by any common statistic, by the teams with the most players matching that category, by players with the most seasons matching that category, or by most recent, youngest, oldest, final year, or year of debut, and others.
• Search player game totals - Filtering on any of a dozen or more choices, search for games on a single player level, or on any batter from 1919-2011, or on any pitcher. The same can be done for Team Batting or Team Pitching Totals.
• Search player games looking for the most consecutive games matching a particular set of criteria - This can be done either on a single player level or on any batter in the last 92 years or on any pitcher. The same can be done for Team Batting or Team Pitching Streaks.
• Search the records of a specific player - Output a detailed summary and play-by-play list of all events of a specific type from a single year or an entire career. For example, you can see all of Harmon Killebrew's triples or even his outs to the second baseman.
• Search Batter vs. Pitcher Matchups - This tool presents a complete sortable list of batter or pitcher with totals for every opponent they faced by career or by year. Clicking on the player's name will lead you to a detailed output of their head-to-head plate appearances.
• ...And more!

Personal Subscriptions to the Play Index cost $36 for a year, $6 for a month, or $2 for 24 hours. Subscriptions may only be used by a single user, and there are discounts for users sponsoring at least $35 in pages.

Organizational Subscriptions can be set up for either an unlimited number of users ($600/year, this includes three hours of custom programming and reporting to be used at your discretion), or for up to five users ($125/year, this includes one hour of custom programming and reporting to be used at your discretion).

There are Two Steps to Subscribe to the Play Index:

1. Login to or create a Sports-Reference.com account (the same account used to sponsor pages).
2. Already logged in (or just created an account)? Go to our subscription page to sign up.

Our Always-Available Free Trial: Non-subscribers can use the PI's features as much as you like. However, your outputs will be restricted to a limited number of results.

The Play Index comes with a money back guarantee. We will gladly return the unused portion of any Play Index Subscription should you be dissatisfied with the Play Index.

So go ahead, give the Play Index a try -- we're confident that once you start using it, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.

Here is the full list (1901-present, Gerry) of players with a career ERA+ of 120 or better (minimum 1000 IP):

Among the teams with nobody:

• The Padres got screwed by my arbitrary criteria, as Trevor Hoffman finished with 952.1 IP and Jake Peavy finished his Padres career with a 119 ERA+. They have nobody else close to qualifying (and active).
• The Rockies seem fairly likely to add Ubaldo Jimenez to this list in 2012, as he's currently at 133 ERA+ over 728 IP.
• For the Marlins, Josh Johnson is well on his way. He's currently at 138 ERA+ and 665 IP. Two more solid, healthy seasons would do it.
• Dan Plesac is the only Brewer with at least 500 IP and an ERA+ of 120, and he only had 524.1 IP with the team. Teddy Higuera was a near miss at 117 ERA+. Nobody else is active and close.
• The Rays have nobody close at all.  In fact there are only two pitchers (James Shields and Andy Sonnanstine) with at least 500 IP and still with the team.
• The Rangers don't have a single pitcher with at least 500 IP and an ERA+ of 120.  They don't even have any active pitchers with 500 IP and an ERA+ of 100.

How many players since 1901 have had two or more seasons with 180+ hits while fashioning an OPS+ under 100?