I just noticed this morning. Hunter Pence is now slightly above average (OPS+ 103). He's made the adjustments to the league's adjustments to him, I guess, and that's pretty encouraging. Especially since he was in OPS+ 80-90 range for much of the season.
Oh, and he hasn't committed any errors, either. Of course, errors are a stupid statistic, but that's good. Bill James had an article a couple of months ago where he wrote that Hunter's arm was one of the best in the league. And I'd agree. The guy has an ugly throw (and ugly swing, as we all know), but he has a pretty strong arm.
I think next year might be something of a "breakout" year for Hunter. It's tough to follow up on his excellent Rookie season, but he's showing a great deal of improvement at the plate. One more reason to have hope for the Astros' future.
Scouts tend to think that his swing is going to hurt him, preventing him from gaining true stardom in the majors. The odds are always against players attaining star numbers, anyways, but I think we've all seen guys with weird approaches make it big. I seem to recall some dude who played for the Astros a couple of years ago with a weird swing who a lot of scouts thought would never make it. What was his name again?
Oh yeah, he was never any good. Fuck him. Pence is going to suck forever and ever. 2007 was a fluke.
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