If one accepts Baseball Prospectus’ VORP reports as a valid indicator for what players have been best this season, there are some eye opening items included.

For instance, did you know that Mark Kotsay, largely due to Eric Chavez’s injury, has been the best Oakland position player?  This is even more remarkable considering how Kotsay started out the 2004 campaign.  Here are his month by month OPS splits:

April: .606
May: .725
June: .935
July: 1.072

Kotsay has the American League’s 8th best total in July.

Another guy flying well below the radar is Cleveland Indian Travis Hafner.  Hafner is helping the Tribe faithful forget about potential future hall-of-famer Jim Thome by posting a better season thus far than the Phillies phenom.  Hafner has the Majors’ second best OPS thus far in July.

Although he is fastly becoming more and more recognized, Detroit Tigers’ shortstop Carlos Guillen still does not have the reputation befitting the American League’s best player.  That’s right, the AL’s best player.  Better than Vlad, better than Manny.  Unbelievably, Seattle Mariners General Manager Bill Bavasi was so eager to unload Guillen to make room for Rich Aurilia, that even after a trade for Omar Vizquel fell through, Bavasi settled for the brutal Ramon Santiago.  VORP totals for the principals…

Guillen: 56.5
Aurilia: 3.6
Santiago: -1.8
Vizquel: 25.7

These are just some interesting examples.  Check out the reports for yourself and I think you will find it as informative and enjoyable as I do.  I will do a similar piece on the pitchers soon.

Enjoy Schill tonight!