Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 28, 2002
After I read Rob Neyer's

After I read Rob Neyer's column today, I felt bad for criticizing the Yankees over Soriano leading off. At least the Yankees have a number of excellent on-base average players that it really doesn't matter where Soriano bats. The Dodgers, on the other hand, have nothing but Shawn Green. From Rob's column:


But then I clicked on that link, and as I read the headline -– "Izturis wins shortstop job, could bat leadoff" –- and then got into the story, my eyebrows kept arching higher and higher until they ran into my hairline, where a truce was declared. Because in that story we learned that the Dodgers plan to employ the following combination of players, in some fashion or another, in the top two spots in their batting order:

Career OBP
Cesar Izturis .279
M. Grudzielanek .328
Marquis Grissom .318
Dave Roberts .292


Granted, Izturis is only 22 and that .279 career on-base percentage was compiled in only 46 games. But the fact is that Izturis has done nothing in his minor-league career to make us think that he's capable of doing much better than .279, at least not now. When Izturis was 20 years old, he posted a .253 OBP in Triple-A. When Izturis was 21 years old, he posted a .310 OBP in Triple-A (and that .279 OBP in the majors, with Toronto).

There's little reason to think that Izturis is ready to play in the majors, and there's absolutely no reason at all to think he's ready to be remotely productive with the bat in the majors ... and yet Dodgers manager Jim Tracy is actually thinking about putting Izturis at the top of the batting order.

Failing that, Izturis is slated to bat second, leaving the leadoff slot for ... Marquis Grissom and Dave Roberts, both of whom are horrible miscast as leadoff men because both of them are unlikely to reach base even 30 percent of the time. Well, OK, if strictly platooned they'll do better than that. But not better enough to justify their jobs.

Oh, and it's said that if Izturis doesn't win the leadoff job he'll slide all the way down to the No. 2 slot, where of course he'll do almost exactly as much damage to the Dodgers as if he were batting leadoff.

I've written more than a few times that batting order doesn't matter, and I'm not changing my tune today. Still, all this does say a couple of things about the Dodgers, and neither of them are positive.


It looks like the Dodgers went to the KC Royals baseball academy (for GM's). Dan Evans already made one bad move getting Jordan for Sheffield. I wonder if Evans will take a page out of Billy Bean's book, and start developing OBA in the minors, or if he'll continue to pay a lot of money to poor offensive players.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:06 PM | Baseball