I was reading this article about Miguel Cabrera avoiding arbitration and signing a one year $11.3 million dollar contract, when this excerpt caught my eye.
Cabrera, one of the game's top sluggers, joins an imposing lineup that includes Magglio Ordonez, Gary Sheffield, Carlos Guillen, Ivan Rodriguez, Curtis Granderson and Placido Polanco. The Tigers also acquired shortstop Edgar Renteria, a five-time All-Star, in a trade with Atlanta this offseason.
Do you notice something WRONG about this statement, cause I sure do. The Tigers do have an impressive line up, no doubt. But when compiling the list of such hitters that do make the Tigers have such an impressive line up you just wouldn't mention a hitter who was one of the worst hitters in the league last year. He was the kind of bad where if you were to just pretend his OBP was his batting average, that batting average, would only be the 27th best in the league. That's pretty bad. Of course I hope you all know I am talking about Ivan Rodriguez. His inclusion in this list of impressive hitters is head scratching at best.
It is this kind of laziness by the AP and other professional writers that irks me. I mean, yes Pudge used to be a pretty darn good hitter, especially considering his position. But he hasn't even been above OPS+ 100 since 2004. It's not like his decline as a hitter happened over night. It's like the AP just said to themselves, "hey the guy is popular, a fan favorite, cool nick name, I even seem to remember him winning a MVP some time ago; he must be good !" It 's this kind of shoddiness that I simply think there is no excuse for. I know its easy to nit pick, but to any one who's been paying attention the last three years, that's a pretty big blunder.
2 comments:
Sorry Don, but I think you are wrong here and being way too nitpicky for them including Ivan Rodriguez. First of all, why does it matter if they included him or not? Secondly, I know his OBP was pretty bad, but his batting average was an excellent .281, especially good for a catcher, and hit 11 homers with 63 rbi's. he I sno longer counted on as the man there, so being a complementary player in that lineup, his stats were good, again, especially for a catcher. he is not the player he once was but a lot of teams would take that production form their catcher, especially when they get what they do from him defensively. He will probably bat 7 or 8 next year, or maybe even 9. I did agree with you on the White Sox though.
scars- you are right, it was a very minor thing to complain about.I even admitted as much in my post. I just thought it was lazy to include Pudge in a list of good hitters. He was only mentioned cause he is famous. I think calling him a complementary bat is being pretty generous. The guy is a black hole in the line up at this point. It was definately very nit picky of me to mention it, but it still caught my eye for how silly it was .... (and I couldn't think of anything else to write about that day_
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