That's What Cheesehead: 38.29 - May Slightly Kinder

[7teen]

The month of May was slightly kinder to the Wolves than April was but still produced a losing record. The club went 13-15 for the month which was slightly better than the team's opening month. Nonetheless, it keeps the team under .500 and still looking up at a majority of the division. But like April, it saw the Wolves hold pretty steady in terms of RS and RA which has the team's pythag record showing the team should be doing a lot better than they currently are. Clearly the offense is doing most of the work as the pitching still struggles.

Pitcher of the Month

Axel DeGiusti
At one point we thought Axel was going to be a solid starter for the club but with the Wolves shifting back and forth between a traditional and hybrid rotation style Axel has seen his role change a lot. In the month of May, the Wolves decided to shift Axel's role again and sent him to be the closer of the team. And so far, DeGiusti has performed well. The Wolves are allowing Axel to close for multiple innings and actually logged 20.1 innings in May and performed well. He posted a 2.21 ERA and allowed 17 hits and walked 4 batters. He also trimmed down his HR allowed in May compared to April. In May he allowed just 1 HR while allowing 8 in April.

HItter of the Month

Jon Mick
It's hard to believe that Mick could have a hotter month than he did in April, but he did. Mick hit .268/.341/.688 with 14 homeruns and 33 RBI, this after hitting 12 bombs and driving in 27 in April. More will be made of Mick's accomplishments soon and we've already made mention of things with Mick already. He's still on pace to break the team's record for homeruns in a season and probably benefitted the most by the Wolves heavy road schedule through the opening months of the season. He has a 2.0 WAR already this year and though the first parts of the season is having one of his best, if not best, power performance of his career.

[RonCo]

31 homers. Sheesh.

[Ted]

Mick is going to be an interesting HOF case. Very old school versus new school. He'll likely have 500+ homers and a boatload of RBI. His wRC+ and WAR will be held back by his relatively low OBP (.340 really isn't that great for a 1B/DH, at least in terms of all time greats). He'll probably end up around 35 WAR or so, which isn't even close to a HOF number.

Detractors can say that Mick benefited from hitting in the middle of a tremendous lineup during a high offensive era, and that other good batters could have piled up just as many RBI, and that in fact, Mick was rarely the best hitter on his team.

Proponents could point out that all these newer metrics that attempt to capture offensive performance in a vacuum completely miss the point that Mick DID hit all those homers and drive in all those runs, so who cares about a stat that says he "should" have been less valuable.

People who have had other players who have been hurt by newer baseball thinking in their HOF cases may not want to vote for Mick. If he finishes with say 550 HR and a top 20 RBI total, I'll find it next to impossible not to.

[7teen]

Mick is going to be an interesting HOF case. Very old school versus new school. He'll likely have 500+ homers and a boatload of RBI. His wRC+ and WAR will be held back by his relatively low OBP (.340 really isn't that great for a 1B/DH, at least in terms of all time greats). He'll probably end up around 35 WAR or so, which isn't even close to a HOF number.

Detractors can say that Mick benefited from hitting in the middle of a tremendous lineup during a high offensive era, and that other good batters could have piled up just as many RBI, and that in fact, Mick was rarely the best hitter on his team.

Proponents could point out that all these newer metrics that attempt to capture offensive performance in a vacuum completely miss the point that Mick DID hit all those homers and drive in all those runs, so who cares about a stat that says he "should" have been less valuable.

People who have had other players who have been hurt by newer baseball thinking in their HOF cases may not want to vote for Mick. If he finishes with say 550 HR and a top 20 RBI total, I'll find it next to impossible not to.

I've been thinking about this some lately too and was looking more at guys like Steve Dempsey and Dusty Rhodes. Both are on pace for over 3,000 hits but their WAR and advanced stats indicate thy're not HOF caliber but how do you keep a guy with 3,000 hits out?