The Red Sox, coming into their series with the Hated Yankees this weekend, ran into a buzzsaw in the person of Frank Catalanotto. And there’s nearly nobody in baseball who gets hotter – at least relative to how good he is otherwise – than Frank Catalanotto.
Over the past 9 games, Catalanotto is batting .417/.722/.464. That may sound like quite a hot stretch for a career .296/.454/.359 hitter, but it’s really pretty common for Catalanotto:
| Start | End | G | PA | AVG | SLG | OBP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8/12/98 | 9/2/98 | 20 | 71 | .397 | .667 | .437 |
| 4/21/99 | 5/21/99 | 20 | 74 | .348 | .609 | .392 |
| 7/4/99 | 7/24/99 | 12 | 37 | .424 | .636 | .443 |
| 4/4/00 | 5/18/00 | 12 | 41 | .588 | .794 | .634 |
| 7/28/01 | 8/24/01 | 23 | 100 | .500 | .659 | .560 |
| 4/18/03 | 5/1/03 | 12 | 51 | .429 | .592 | .451 |
| 5/19/03 | 6/6/03 | 18 | 76 | .358 | .657 | .421 |
| 8/24/03 | 9/7/03 | 10 | 39 | .484 | 1.000 | .590 |
| 4/24/04 | 5/13/04 | 19 | 69 | .450 | .617 | .493 |
| 6/11/04 | 7/21/04 | 7 | 26 | .435 | .609 | .500 |
| 5/20/05 | 6/3/05 | 6 | 22 | .611 | .778 | .682 |
| 7/7/05 | 7/24/05 | 12 | 53 | .449 | .755 | .491 |
| 9/22/05 | 9/30/05 | 9 | 39 | .417 | .722 | .464 |
And the total line from these thirteen red-hot streaks, amounting to about a full season’s worth of at bats:
| AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | R | RBI | BB | HBP | AVG | SLG | OBP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 620 | 272 | 62 | 8 | 24 | 125 | 117 | 55 | 15 | .439 | .681 | .490 |
Wow. Those are Rogers Hornsby numbers. Unsurprisingly, Catalanotto’s career line drops off sharply if you take these streaks out; the rest of the time, he’s a .252/.385/.318 hitter. Now, it’s true enough that you can cherry-pick hot streaks from any hitter’s career. But I have to think that few guys I can remember have been as consistently streaky as Catalanotto.
It seems like this is probably more common especially when you get lower quality regular hitters where it’s easier to stand out