April's Statistical Oddities, Presented Without Comment

Interpret these as you would like.

Pitchers

• The Oakland starting pitcher with the most Fangraphs WAR, as of today, is none other than fifth starter Brandon McCarthy, at 1.3.
• McCarthy also has the seventh highest fWAR in the majors, and the third lowest walk rate among all qualified starters.
• Brett Anderson has the highest groundball rate in the league.
  
• As a group, Oakland's pitchers make opposing batters swing the bat the second lowest amount in the  majors. At the same time, they're above average at placing pitches inside the strike zone.
  
• Brett Anderson has thrown more sliders than anyone else in the majors.
• Gio Gonzalez is the worst in the league at starting off plate appearances with a first pitch strike.

Batters

• Kevin Kouzmanoff has four walks on the season. Coco Crisp has one.
• The position player with the highest UZR on the team is Conor Jackson, who has already accrued 3.6 runs above average in only 94 innings.
• Josh Willingham has struck out in 36.6% of his plate appearances (fourth worst in the majors), and 16.7% of his batted balls in the air have been popups (worst on the team). In spite of this, he's been Oakland's most productive full-time batter, by far.
  
• Kevin Kouzmanoff swings at four out of every ten pitches that are outside of the strike zone (easily the worst on the team). And he doesn't even make contact on six of every ten of those swings.
• On the flip side, Daric Barton has taken his rightful place at the top of the leaderboard at laying off pitches outside of the zone, only swinging at 14.2% of them.

The A's continue their homestand against the surprising first place Cleveland Indians at 7:05 PM.