Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 26, 2006
Does it Really Matter?

Cristian Guzman starts the season on the disabled list for the Washington Nationals. Normally, I'd say this was addition by subtraction, but they're replacing him with the just as poor Royce Clayton.

Meanwhile, Bowden believes the offense will be better this year, based mostly on the hope that the team is healthy. They're likely to be a little better. Left field will be up, but at the cost of less offense in center. Third base will be better with Zimmerman, but overall it's not a huge boost.

Baseball Musings is conducting a pledge drive in March. Click here for details.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:29 AM | Injuries | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Not at all clear to me that Soriano represents an upgrade in LF.

The LF starts last year were spread over many people. Half of them fell to Wilkerson, Church and Wilson, all of whom were much better hitters than Soriano away from Texas. Another quarter went to Byrd, who had slightly better numbers than Soriano.

If Soriano lives down to his road numbers over the last several years and has a "typical" RFK drop-off, he will be the Cristian Guzman of LF. At $10M, or whatever he got in arb.

That trade so completely demonstrates Bowden's utter lack of understanding of baseball that he should be fired immediately and never work for professional baseball again.

Posted by: Craig A. Damon at March 26, 2006 03:37 PM

Normally, I'd agree that Soriano will fail miserably in left based on his career road numbers and RFK's pitcher friendly environment.

But Soriano has one year to remake his image or he'll see his income drop like Preston Wilson did this year ($12.5 million in '05 to $4.4 million in '06). If he hits near .300, with 30 homers and 100 RBI's, he will prove to his new team in '07 that if he can succeed at RFK, he can play anywhere.

Will his problems in left affect his offense? I don't think so. I remember Ryan Klesko falling all over himself the first year he played the outfield for the Braves, yet he hit very, very well. Soriano is a much better hitter than Klesko, and will probably do better under the same strain.

Don't think for a second, though, that I am a fan of Mr. Soriano; I hope and pray that he's traded for prospects before the trading deadline.

Posted by: Farid at March 26, 2006 08:19 PM

Soriano is a " much better hitter than Klesko"? Proof? Normalizing their stats to account for park effects, and there's no way you can make that assertion with a straight face. Come on. Here's the career numbers:

Klesko 280 BA/371 OBP/507 Slugging
Soriano 280 BA/320 OBP/500 Slugging

Klesko, I will add, has had a longer career, played in the postseason more often, and had many more years in pitcher's parks (all of them, in fact.) Soriano's edge in Stolen bases hardly overcomes all those things, as well as 51 points of OBP, the most important offensive statistic.

Posted by: david at March 27, 2006 12:17 AM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?