Today, amidst the boredom that rears its ugly head every Thursday morning, I created a new baseball statistic, the Suck Ass, or SA. In creating the SA, I am attempting to quantify the number of times over the course of a season that a given player Sucks Ass. I have identified three offensive outcomes that Suck Ass, and are readily available on your favorite baseball statistics website: strikeouts, times grounded into double plays, and times caught stealing. A player's Suck Ass total is defined as follows:

SA = K + CS + 2*GIDP

(The GIDP term is doubled because a GIDP creates two outs)

In creating the Suck Ass, I had in mind a particular type of player that I figured would dominate the all-time highest Suck Ass seasons. He'd be really slow and strike out a lot (specifically, I was thinking of Pete Incaviglia). Here's the 10 seasons that Sucked the most Ass:

1. Jose Hernandez, 2002 Brewers: 231 SA
2. Preston Wilson, 2000 Marlins: 223 SA
3. Richie Sexson, 2001 Brewers: 222 SA
4. Jay Buhner, 1997 Mariners: 221 SA
5. Sammy Sosa, 1998 Cubs: 220 SA
6. Sammy Sosa, 1997 Cubs: 218 SA
7. Sammy Sosa, 1999 Cubs: 213 SA
7. Cecil Fielder, 1990 Tigers: 213 SA
9. Jim Presley, 1986 Mariners: 212 SA
10. Bobby Bonds, 1970 Giants: 211 SA

As you can see, while there are a couple of slow sluggers on the list (Buhner, Fielder), there are a lot of pretty fast players also (Bonds, Wilson, Sosa), a testament to the relative importance of being caught stealing to Sucking Ass.

As the season progresses, check for SA league leaders, and for Mariner team SA leaders.

Note: Incaviglia's 1986 season with the Rangers was good enough for 16th place, with 205 SA