Jake Burger and a Very Strange Stat

The White Sox as presently constituted have a bit of a home run problem. That problem is basically deduced by the fact that they don’t hit enough of them. I wrote a blog yesterday detailing my thoughts on an alternative that could help them out. However, when it comes to home runs, just the raw mashing of baseballs over the fence, the White Sox biggest potential lift not currently being rostered by the big club is Jake Burger.

This conversation starts to become even more volatile when Yoan Moncada‘s August has started to the tune of .160 / .250 / .240 with a 43% K Rate. I took to Baseball Savant’s Home Run leader board for a little look see. The table below paints a beautiful story about the power potential in Jake’s thunderous wood.

This is for 2022 and for the White Sox only, as you can see, Jake Burger leads the team in both “No Doubters” which are measured as home runs that would be out of all 30 ballparks and “No Doubter %”. This is all in a half season. Pretty impressive, but when I look deeper I see something very strange.

That’s right, Jake Burger is the leader on the team in Average HR Trot, meaning, how fast he runs around the bases during a home run. You know, the time when running real fast is completely worthless. I have to admit, I like Jake, but this took me back a bit. Why the fuck you running so fast when it doesn’t matter?

I remembered getting into a disagreement with my good friend White Sox Dave from Barstool about Brandon Nimmo and how I didn’t like Nimmo, not because he wasn’t a good player (he is) and not because he’s injury prone (he is), but because of his stupid fucking sprint to first base on a walk. Eye wash, bullshit hustle don’t play well in the BeefLoaf house.

He’s not just leading the White Sox, his 20.8 seconds is ~9% faster than the next fastest home run trotter Gavin Sheets and Gavin is coming out of the left handed batters box, so this is even more damning. He’s a whopping 17% faster than the ultimate “act like you been there” professional on the roster Jose Abreu. FUCK!! I’m I going to have to go anti-Jake, due to this? I don’t want to, he seems like a decent fella, with a helluva redemption arc.

I had to check the league wide data and Jake is only 33rd out of 469 total “trotters”, so top 10 percent, but nothing too ridiculous. Still, I’d like to see him had a couple seconds to his home run trot. Smell the flowers Jake, and don’t have me sniffing around if you are a fake ass, bullshit, eye wash hustler. Okay?

-BeefLoaf