I Did Not See That Coming

A little while ago, I looked at the PrOPS stats for the O's offense. I happened across the league totals today, and was surprised by what I saw. First, despite his recent struggles, Nick Markakis is actually 9th in the AL in PrOPS at .874,with a predicted line of .279/.385/.489. Also, 17th in the AL is much-maligned jokester Kevin Millar. His predicted line of .281/.365/.473 (for a .838 PrOPS) has him ahead of Paul Konerko, Hideki Matsui, and Manny Ramirez, to name a few. Melvin Mora (.291/.341/.466, .806) is ahead of Carlos Pena, Miguel Cabrera, and Vlad Guerrero. Aubrey Huff, Luke Scott, and Brian Roberts are all in the .778-.788 range. In fact, 6 of the 7 qualifying O's have an actual OPS below what their OPS is predicted to be, with Adam Jones as the only exception. The offense is scoring just 4.07 runs per game so far, but I think it'll pick up. I thought that this was about an average offense, and that's still where I expect them to end up. Seriously, Millar ahead of Manny? Baseball is a crazy game sometimes.

[Also, #1 in the majors is Albert Pujols at 1.098 and #2 is Ryan Ludwick at 1.091. No wonder they have such a good record.]