20/20 2B

[satyr9]

So I was looking at stats to end the year and I saw something kind of funny. I'm hoping people with better memories than I can remember the names we bandied about for 2B last offseason. Anyway, of the options I remember, I know I had a fondness for a short-term deal for M.Ellis. There were many who felt that we should've bought S.Drew for 2B when he fell through the market. And while there wasn't a lot of call, there were some who felt we could just take Uggla from ATL for nothing but cash. I mention these guys 'cause as it turns out, along with R.Goins they were all bottom 10 offensive players (I limit to 130 PA 'cause that gives about 13-14 positional per team).

R.Goins 188/209/271 212woba 26wrc+
D.Uggla 149/229/213 209 woba 28wrc+
M.Ellis 180/253/213 212 woba 31wrc+
S.Drew 162/237/299 238woba 44wrc+

Obviously, there were other options (I liked Baker for the bench and he did okay. Others liked Hill who wasn't terrible, and I remember R.Weeks was discussed and had a good year part-time), but when I saw the bottom of the list, it reminded me of some earlier discussions we had around here and goes to show that in this case AA was a little damned either way.

[Graham's Cracker]

Good review. Another guy that has been oft-discussed is Gordon Beckham and he was no great shakes either.
.226/.271/.348 .273 70 wrc+

[satyr9]

Yeah, completely forgot Beckham. And honestly, that line looks so reasonable now. To me that's the biggest thing for the Jays, avoiding the utterly disastrous slashlines.

If you look at us and the O's, we've got about the same amout of PA's from sub .300 wOBA guys, premium defensive spots and injury replacements, but they keep it in the .265-.300 range, so 60-80% of an average offensive player, while we had about a third of that section of our offense actually sub .250 or 50% of a guy. Basically, all those numbers look terrible, but our worst guys (Goins, Diaz, Sierra, Kratz) are actually substantially lower than their low end guys (Schoop, Joseph, Lombardozzi). I think there's a real price to pay when something approaching 10% of your PA go to guys who cannot accomplish anything with the bat at all. I think you can live just fine with 1-2 Gose type bats when they bring you something else, like speed and defense, but somewhere under .600 OPS you reach pylon stage and there's a premium cost giving pitchers the free shot.

That and our bullpen.

[JN]

How did Dan Uggla have a 33 game hit streak?