Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 01, 2008
I Hate When that Happens

Don't you hate it when you write a long, well researched blog post on why Melky Cabrera isn't very good, and then he hits a homer and makes two great catches?


Posted by David Pinto at 11:58 PM | Players | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Nah. Melky's not that good. Probably hit the homer just to spite them damn bloggers.

Now, Melky isn't the worst player in the world, and he's not the Yankees' most pressing problem. He'll do. But .273/327/391 is just not very good offensive production. That's almost dead even with that lousy bum Coco Crisp, who's a much better defender. Melky's still young and has some upside, but most likely he'll turn out to be a fourth outfielder.

Posted by: jvwalt at April 2, 2008 06:23 AM

SON OF A....

Posted by: Travis M. Nelson at April 2, 2008 07:06 AM

Bernie Williams wasn't all that hot on defense either. All the Yankees need from Melky is decent defense and competent offense.

Posted by: rbj at April 2, 2008 08:24 AM

Rotisserie members refer to this as the Householder Effect, after the last good piece of writing Dan (then still Daniel) Okrent ever did.

Posted by: Ken Houghton at April 2, 2008 09:47 AM

Melky's not Willie Mays but he doesn't have to be - he gets Damon out of CF which is all they need. His HR is an out pretty much throughout the majors and minors but not in Yankee Stadium.

Posted by: Bandit at April 2, 2008 10:56 AM

You know, he isn't very good but...

For this team, at this time, he is a very important player. Here's why:

He's a better defensive player than Damon which pushes Damon to LF. Damon's better defensively than Matsui which pushes Matsui to DH. Now, we're left with a far better OF defensive alignment.

Matsui as DH force Giambi to play 1B more often. If Giambi can stay healthy, a big IF, I know, then the resulting lineup is their best. It keeps Duncan, Ensberg and Betemit on the bench where they belong.

The resulting bench is the Yankees best in years.

So...

Melky is not necessarily a very good player in the general sense, but for this team he most certainly is.

Posted by: mike at April 2, 2008 02:45 PM
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