June 24, 2006
Somebody's Fantasy
Vernon Wells hit two home runs today and drove in four runs to help the Blue Jays defeat the Mets 7-4. Wells is now batting .321 with a .384 OBA and a .625 slugging percentage, a great year. But Wells must drive fantasy players crazy. At age 24, he had a superb season, putting up high batting averages and power number, and a decent OBA. When a player performs like that as he enters his peak years, the skies the limit. I'm sure he was picked high in a few fantasy drafts going into the 2004 season. But he declined. At age 26, he declined again. So he's 27 in 2006 with his stats going the wrong way for his age and I bet a large number of fantasy owners passed him over. How many of you picked up Vernon in the late rounds? You must really be happy.
If Wells were foreign born I'd suspect he was older than the numbers stated, but it's pretty difficult to lie about that now, especially for American citizens.
I got him about 3 weeks ago in a trade:
damon/griffey/mench
for
crawford/v wells
I'm a very happy man.
While there have been studies that seem to demonstrate that the concept of "lineup protection" is generally an illusion, there might be something to Wells having Delgado hit behind him in 2003, and Glaus in 2006, whereas last year he was the focal point of the offense, and perhaps struggled by trying to do too much.
