Kevin Youkilis > Carlos Pena

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I predicted at the beginning of the baseball season that Kevin Youkilis would be better than Carlos Pena. I took a lot of shit for this. And now I am vindicated, because even though Pena ended up leading the AL in HRs, Youkilis has been better. Now I also thought Pena would be hurt most of this year thus making Youk better by default, but even still, Youk was better.

I would like to start by saying Youkilis had 588 PA and Pena 570. This is essentially the same amount so you can't really make an argument that so and so was injured for part of the year, because, statistically speaking, the difference in PA is so small, that it's practically negligent.

Our first comparison, and DME's favorite's category- fantasy baseball. This year, Youkilis rated 9th and Pena rated 19th among all first baseman in Yahoo!'s player rater.

But now onto what really matters- on the field performance and using fangraphs statistics. Pena had more homers, a better walk rate, SLG percentage, ISO, and was more clutch than Youk. However, Youk had a better:

-OBP
-BA
-K%
-WAR
-wOBA
-OPS
-LD%
-Spd
-K/BB
-UZR/ UZR/150

Youk was worth $24.9 and Pena was worth $12.3

Now granted, Pena's BABIP was extremely low causing is awful awful awful BA and lowering his OBP and OPS; but over the course of this year

KEVIN YOUKILIS WAS BETTER THAN CARLOS PENA