Puttin' your weight into it

So, the other day whilst pondering the meaning of James Joyce's use of an amalgamation of several different languages and dialects in Finnegans Wake, I thought of a brand new baseball statistic (I also realized that Joyce's meaning was basically that the Broncos are totally awesome (his words)). The aforementioned stat that I thought of related to the ratio of slugging percentage to weight. In other words, do fat guys hit more home runs than skinny guys? Logic says they do, but I want to see if the stats back it up. So my statistic shall hereby be known as Prince Fielding percentage. The formula for it is simply: (slugging percentage/listed weight) x 100. It basically figures out who gets the most out of their weight, which should allude to whether or not the lardos hit more dingers. Without further ado...

The Top 5 (Qualified) Sluggers in Baseball:

1. Lance Berkman
Slugging Percentage: .690
Listed Weight: 220 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .314

2. Albert Pujols
Slugging Percentage: .640
Listed Weight: 230 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .278

3. Chipper Jones
Slugging Percentage: .630
Listed Weight: 210 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .300

4. Dan Uggla
Slugging Percentage: .620
Listed Weight: 200 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .310

5. Milton Bradley
Slugging Percentage: .615
Listed Weight: 225 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .273

The Bottom 5 (Qualified) Sluggers in Baseball:

1. Jason Bartlett
Slugging Percentage: .282
Listed Weight: 185 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .152

2. Willy Taveras
Slugging Percentage: .305
Listed Weight: 160 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .191

3. Michael Bourn
Slugging Percentage: .311
Listed Weight: 180 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .173

4. Marco Scutaro
Slugging Percentage: .316
Listed Weight: 185 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .171

5. Juan Pierre
Slugging Percentage: .318
Listed Weight: 180 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .177

For the Heck of It:

Frank Thomas' Career
Slugging Percentage: .558
Listed Weight: 275 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .203

Ryan Howard's Career
Slugging Percentage: .584
Listed Weight: 255 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .229

Prince Fielder's Career
Slugging Percentage: .535
Listed Weight: 270 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .198

Alfonso Soriano's Career
Slugging Percentage: .518
Listed Weight: 180 lbs
Prince Fielding Percentage: .288

So... conclusions? Well, as you can see, all of the top five sluggers are 200+ pounds, while all the bottom five sluggers are 185- pounds. There appears to be a correlation there. Some players get more extra base hits per pound--Berkman and Uggla. Yes, it's small sample size being only half of a season. The career numbers I added at the end show the monsters 250+ don't seem to hit in a more amplified manner than a 220-pounder. Soriano is also an anomaly in that he weighs very little and hits the ball very hard--his career Prince Fielding Percentage is a very good .288. Prince Fielder himself doesn't seem to get as much as he could out of that gargantuan 270 pound frame--a mere .198 PFP.

Yeah, kind of a stupid statistic to study, but I thought it yielded some interesting results. Most fat guys get a lot out of their poundage, but it is usually smaller guys like Soriano, Uggla and Manny Ramirez (career PFP .295) that get the most out of each and every pound.

For the Rockies Fans:

Matt Holliday's career PFP: .236
Todd Helton's career PFP: .273

P.S.
Joe Morgan said on Sunday Night Baseball that Kenny Williams made the Scott Podesednik, shitty Vizcaino and retired career minor leaguer for Carlos Lee trade in order to get the White Sox more offense. Kind of off topic, but seriously, how in the name of John Elway does Podsednik increase your offense over Carlos Lee. Podsednik would have to get on base more often and steal 200 bases without ever getting caught (including stealing home many, many times) for that to make sense at all. Thanks, Joe Morgan.