If you'd told me that the Dodgers would score 9 with Derek Lowe on the mound, I'd have been very happy.
But the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley, as Adam West once said.
1. Singled to center. Would score.
2. Grounded to first. #315.
3. Doubled to right. One of the Juan's best-placed hits I've seen.
4. Grounded to second. #316.
5. Flied to center. #317.
Three total bases makes this a good game. Three outs too, of course.
* * *
Loyal OutWatcher 71and91 has been asking some very astute questions this week. After I've been noting that Pierre has made more outs than anyone else in the majors, he wondered who the worst players in outs-per-plate-appearance.
JimBilly4 was kind enough to list the top ten. In case you didn't tune in yesterday to the lively comments, here's what he compiled:
0.778 Miguel Olivo
0.748 Omar Vizquel
0.743 Khalil Greene
0.741 Bengie Molina
0.743 Pedro Feliz
0.741 Felipe Lopez
0.735 Chris Young
0.735 Alex Gonzalez
0.734 Ryan Zimmerman
0.730 Juan Pierre
By this standard, Juan isn't the worst outmaker in baseball -- he's tenth-worst.
Two of these ten players, Chris Young and Ryan Zimmerman, are extraordinarily young (22 and 23) to be playing in the majors. They have had terrible seasons to be sure, but one can make the case that their teams need to give them major league at bats to figure out what kind of players they will be. I give those two guys a pass.
Felipe Lopez was good as recently as two years ago, but declined seriously last year and has continued that decline this year. I suppose he could bounce back, I guess, but two straight years of declines make me wonder.
Everyone else on the list -- from Olivo to Vizquel to Molina to Gonzalez to Pierre -- has been terrible. Most of the rest of these guys play SS or C, which means that replacements are very hard to come by. Most of them, too, are not on the list of most plate appearances, meaning that their managers at least have the good sense to drop them in the batting order and possibly not even play them every day.
These are the players that Juan Pierre compares to this year. He's not the worst player in the major leagues -- he is merely among the worst. That's the starting fielder for the Dodgers, one of the favorites to make the postseason. A large-market, storied team. A team that laughs at the likes of the Kansas City Royals. That team starts a player in center field every day who is among the worst players in baseball.
I'll also note that Pierre makes more money than anybody on the list above, but that's neither here nor there.
Pierre's only chance is to maintain his current hot streak. I certainly hope he can do it. Even if he can, he has a lot to make up for.
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3 comments:
Kinda quiet around here today.....too quiet.
Do you shitfucks know what a sacrifice is? Apparently not. It's when you intentionally get out to advance a baserunner.
And you fartturds count this is your little gay outmaking game. Lick gnads.
Like I said. Juan Pierre's WS ring says you can bite it.
How embarrasing. You couldn't have fixed my mis-ordering before you posted it? Pedro Feliz should be above Bengie Molina.
Without a doubt a sacrifice is much more worthwhile than a straight out. There is a great deal of argument about whether managers and players should sacrifice as much as they do, but leaving that aside for the moment there are two things I would add in regards to counting outs:
1) The typical player doesn't sacrifice that much so they have only a small effect on total outs. Even Pierre is only averaging 13 (out of 500+) outs a year from sacrificing
2) The better the hitter, the less likely they are to be called on to sacrifice bunt. Albert Pujols does not get asked to sacrifice bunt. Neither does Jeff Kent or Luis Gonzalez or Nomar Garciaparra. So it is only weak hitters that are asked to do it, so in that sense it does tell you something about a hitter that he has a lot of sacrifices.
Sacrifice flys are a different animal and actually indicate a positive quantity (power), but Juan gets very few of those.
Also, the presence of Juan's WS ring is meaningless. There is an entire army of terrible players that happened to be on teams that won World Series rings. Let me pick
some starters (not bench guys)from the last 5 winners:
So Taguchi, Cardinals '06
Scott Posednik, White Sox '05
Pokey Reese, Red Sox '04
Todd Holandsworth, Marlins '03
(I was sorely tempted to put Pierre)
Scott Spezio, Angels '02
I challenge you to tell me these guys are any good.
That all being said, I think Juan is playing very well right now. He seems to have a history of bad first halfs and good second halfs. Since we put in our crappy first half dues, it may only make sense to reap out reward for this year.
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