The past few posts have looked at a couple of areas where John Mayberry has been outstanding over the past two seasons — since he’s joined the Phils, Mayberry has hit home runs at a very high rate and also seen a large percentage of his hits go for extra-bases given his batting average.

On area where he’s a little off early in his career is the number of walks he’s drawing for a guy who has hit homers at such a high rate. For his career, Mayberry now has 369 plate appearances in which he has hit 21 home runs, which is 5.69% of his plate appearances. He has walked in just 29 of his 369 plate appearances, though, which is just 7.86%. And that percentage is low for a guy hitting home runs at that rate.

Here are the walks and home run rates of the ten players in either league from 2011 who got 200 plate appearances and homered in at least 5.69% of them (sorted by the number of plate appearances):

PA BB HR
Curtis Granderson
Mark Teixeira
Jose Bautista
Albert Pujols
Mark Reynolds
Adrian Beltre
Mike Napoli
Chris Heisey
Andruw Jones
Brent Lillibridge
Group Total		 691
684
655
651
620
525
432
308
222
216
5004		 12.30%
11.11%
20.15%
9.37%
12.10%
4.76%
13.43%
6.17%
13.06%
7.87%
11.53%		 5.93%
5.70%
6.56%
5.68%
5.97%
6.10%
6.94%
5.84%
5.86%
6.02%
6.06%

Ten players hit home runs in at least 5.69% of their plate appearances in 2011. That group combined to get 5,004 plate appearances in which they walked 577 times, which is 11.53%. Of the ten, Mayberry’s career walk rate of 7.86% is better than just two of the members of the group, Beltre and Heisey, and about the same as Lillibridge’s.

In 2010 there was nobody who got 200 plate appearances, homered in at least 5.69% of them and walked in less than Mayberry’s career rate of 7.86% of plate appearances.

PA BB HR
Jose Bautista
Jim Thome
Paul Konerko
Albert Pujols
Miguel Cabrera
Adam Dunn
Russell Branyan
Andruw Jones
Edwin Encarnacion
Joey Votto
Group Total		 683
340
631
700
648
648
428
328
367
648
5421		 14.64%
17.65%
11.41%
14.71%
13.73%
11.88%
10.75%
13.72%
7.90%
14.04%
13.13%		 7.91%
7.35%
6.18%
6.00%
5.86%
5.86%
5.84%
5.79%
5.72%
5.71%
6.24%

Encarnacion was close, but still managed to top the Mayberry’s walk rate by a small margin.

It’s important to remember that Mayberry’s walk rate was terrible in 2009, when he walked twice in 60 plate appearances in his first action in the majors. Since 2009 it has been a lot better. In 2010 and 2011 combined, Mayberry walked in 27 of his 309 plate appearances, which is about 8.74%.

Over the last two year’s, Mayberry’s walk rate is already above his walk rate while in the minor leagues, so I’m not sure how much we should expect it to rise. It’s still just a tiny number of chances for Mayberry at the major league level, but in the chances he’s had he has hit the ball out of the yard with alarming frequency — both compared to the rest of baseball and compared to his own numbers in the minors.

This article from the Phillies web site says that Roy Oswalt is very interested in returning to the Phils. Sounds good to me.

This article suggests that Oswalt may be looking to skip the early part of the year and join a team around midseason.

Kevin Frandsen, who ruptured his Achillies in March, 2008, suggests it might take a year to a year and a half to fully recover from that injury in this article.

The same article linked above seems to suggest that Rich Dubee thinks that Jake Diekman has a better fastball than his fellow lefty Antonio Bastardo.

It also says that Justin De Fratus remains sidelined with a sore right elbow.

There’s not much about Utley’s ongoing issues with his right knee that sound very good.