Miguel Cabrera was Too Much with Two-Out

There were many categories in which Triple Crown leader Miguel Cabrera topped the batting world in 2012, but you may not realize that one of those lists was two-outs hits.

Miggy had 79 two-outs in 2012. That is more than Adrian Beltre's 73 two-out hits, David Wright's 72, Ryan Braun's 68, and Torii Hunter's 67. They were the five best in baseball last year.

Before you ask, Mike Trout had 50 two-out hits, the same as Edwin Encarnacion and Paul Goldschmidt.

Check out Cabrera in 2012 with two-out

That's a lot of red when pitchers want to get out of an inning don't you think?

With two-out in 2012, Cabrera hit .346 with 17 homers and 47 RBI. He had a .411 OBP and he slugged .618 giving him an OPS of 1.029.

Overall, Miguel Cabrera had a brilliant 2012 season, it was even great with two-outs. 

Bill Chuck’s Friday Nine to Know

1. From the day of Andy Pettitte’s first start May 13^th (a loss) through his last game (a win) on June 27, the Yanks went 27-14 (.659) tied with the Angels for the best record in baseball. Since that date, the Yanks have played .515 (35-33) ball.
2. The last time the Red Sox did not have a 15-game winner was 2001, the streak will end this season.
3. The last time the Red Sox did not have a hundred RBI batter was 1997, the streak will end this season.
4. Mike Leake leads all pitchers this season with two homers, but Yovani Gallardo has one this season, giving him 10 in his career tying him with Livan Hernandez among active pitchers and trailing only Carlos Zambrano who has 24.
5. While Albert Pujols is ending up with a strong season, he is not stopping an alarming trend: Pujols hit .357 in 2008, .327 in 2009, .312 in 2010, .299 last season, and .286 this season.
6. Aroldis Chapman leads all full-time relievers with 119 strikeouts in just 67.2 innings. Dick Radatz who had 181 whiffs in 157 relief innings for the Red Sox in 1964 holds the record.
7. So far Mike Trout, Alex Rios, B.J. Upton, and Ryan Braun are the only members of the 20 homer/20 steal club this season, the most in any season were the 19 in 1999. There were 12 last season.
8. Max Scherzer is the first starter (with a least 162 IP) to average over 11 strikeouts per nine innings pitched since Kerry Wood in 2003 when he averaged 11.35. Scherzer is at 11.21.
9. Dickie Dietz is the only Giants catcher since the team moved to SF to have over 100 RBI (he had 107 in 1970); Buster Posey had 89.

Ryan Braun Taking Advantage

Ryan Braun leads all 2011 Postseason participants with 13 hits. His .624 weighted on base average also leads the postseason along with his 25 total bases.  Braun has gone deep twice, one behind six players tied for first, and his two doubles put him in a tie for first with Albert Pujols.

Taking a look at how he's been pitched to so far, it's no surprise he's doing so well at the plate.

Click image to enlarge.

In the regular season, Braun did a lot of damage on balls over the middle of the plate, not surprisingly. But he also killed pitches down in the strike zone, as well as down and in at the knees.  So far in this postseason, pitchers have basically thrown to those locations.

The areas Braun had any difficulty with were pitches up and away and pitches inside.  However, as the heat map indicates, pitchers haven't thrown to those areas much.  In fact, they really haven't thrown Braun much of anything up in the zone at all.

If opposing pitchers continue to throw to Braun's strengths, don't expect his offensive output to slow any time soon.