Kouzmanoff has more hits than Gonzalez?

July 15, 2009

I just lost a bar bet. Cost me an Arrogant Bastard and a shot of Makers Mark.

I was arguing that there was no way that Kevin Kouzmanoff has more hits than Adrian Gonzalez.

After all Gonzalez is an All Star. The best Padres player by far.

And Kouzmanoff? Well, he has been so bad that the Padres can't even trade him.

Guess what? Kouzmanoff has 80 hits and Gonzalez has 77.

Yes, I know that Adrian has 24 home runs and Kouzmanoff only has 12. But with 12 more home runs, Adrian only has 5 more RBI and he has had 16 more people on base in front of him than Kouzmanoff.

In other words, Kouzmanoff has done a better job of driving in runs. Kouzmanoff is hitting 40 points better with runners in scoring position.

Now the rest of the story.

• Kouzmanoff has hit behind Gonzalez (4-6) in all but 10 of his 328 at bats.
• While Adrian is hitting .209 with runners in scoring position, his obp is .480.
• The sad fact is that other teams are just walking Gonzalez to get to Kouzmanoff (or whomever the Padres bat directly behind him) who is still hitting under .250 with RISP.

Kouzmanoff is going to get plenty of chances to hit with men on base because other teams are going to continue to walk Adrian Gonzalez at a team record pace until some one steps up and gives them a reason to actually pitch to Adrian.

Lets hope the rest of the season for Kouzmanoff is more like the past 10 games where he has hit .310 with 2 home runs, 7 rbi and 8 runs scored than the first 78 games when he hit .232.

If he can do that we can pretty much be assured that Adrian Gonzalez is going to have a better 2nd half than his All Star 1st half