The Significance of Yunel Escobar

The Boston Red Sox traded ex-Blue Jay Marco Scutaro to the Colorado Rockies the other day. You may be asking yourself, “Why? Who’s gonna play shortstop for them in 2012?” and you wouldn’t be alone. Unless you believe that the team is making a won’t-take-no-for-an-answer push to re-acquire Hanley Ramirez, the move doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense for the Sox for 2012.

The players equipped to defensively handle the shortstop position are quite often poorly equipped to hit at the major-league level. Those whose bats stand out at the position often get moved elsewhere on the diamond (see Rodriguez, Alex and Cabrera, Miguel). Scutaro adequately did the job in the field and at the plate – and even though he’s clearly on the back end of his career and coming off some injuries, he’s still better than most. It’s a tough position to fill, so trading a capable shortstop and not getting one in return has the potential to be a blow to a major league roster.

Mike Aviles and Nick Punto are useful-enough big leaguers, but there’s a reason Boston is looking ahead to a platoon arrangement for the two of them: because neither of them are good enough to do the job for 140+ games on their own. Frankly, it’s a situation Jays fans know pretty well.

There was a bona fide decade of darkness in Toronto at the shortstop position until Alex Anthopoulos swung the deal sending Tim Collins, Tyler Pastornicky and, most significantly, Alex Gonzalez to the Braves for Yunel Escobar (oh, and Jo Jo Reyes too, but never mind that).

Gonzalez was really just the latest in a revolving door of marginal big league talent that had cycled through the position since the turn of the century. Setting aside our beloved John McDonald (and forgetting, as so many do, about how dismal with the bat he really is, as his career .275 OBP illustrates), the rogues’ gallery included:

Scrappygritty David Eckstein;
Prospect bust Russ Adams;
Chris “Hey, Remember Chris Gomez?” Gomez;
Chris Woodward;
A 37-year-old Mike Bordick; and
A couple partial seasons from Felipe Lopez before he was shipped out of town.

(Funny thing: Felipe Lopez was traded in part because there was a perception of middle infield depth in the system at the time. Worked out real nice in the subsequent years, dontcha think?)

Before all that, we were treated to the Other, More Handsome Alex Gonzalez, and a season of really fun craziness from Tony Batista.

In 2009 and 2010, the team basically fell ass-backwards into some above-average contributions from Scutaro and Gonzalez, but neither was a long-term fix at the position.

That never came until Gonzalez was flipped for Yunel Escobar. And since there’s Sweet Fuck All else going on in the baseball world in the depths of January, I’m going to sing his praises a little bit.

I think we take for granted just how important an addition to this team Escobar has been. In the mighty American League East, you can make a compelling case that he’s the best every-day shortstop in the division (matched up against weaker platoons in Boston and Tampa, a declining Derek Jeter, and a more one-dimensional J.J. Hardy, on whom Escobar has 40 points of career OBP at the same age).

Escobar can be penciled in at the top of the lineup card for the foreseeable future, getting on base at a respectable clip, and playing solid defensive at a premium defensive position. That, as a lot of other teams know and the Jays experienced for far too long, is worth a whole lot in the major leagues.

When the Jays do take that next step into the post-season and greater glories (as I think they will), I’m convinced we’ll look back at the Escobar acquisition as a turning point. For those of us who believe that the team is making clear, significant strides to building an organization that can reach the Holy Grail of “sustained success”, Yunel Escobar is Exhibit A.

New Toys!!!

Okay: So we had to give up Alex Gonzalez, who we've grown to love, and Tiny Tim Collins, who was a mountain of a main in a little tiny package. (And Tyler Pastoral Hickeys or something or other.)

But, dudes: Yunel Escobar? For reals? Is it Christmas already?

Okay, this isn't like getting the Six Million Dollar Man action figure, like we did when we were a wee lad. Because the only equivalent to that would be getting Hanley and Josh Johnson, or something equally awesome.

(Three words: Bionic motherfucking grip. Awesome.)

No, this is more along the lines of the Jan and Dean record that you got, which you kinda thought was cool in the moment ("Hey, look! I gots a record!") and which would give you hours of enjoyment through the next few years as your nascent love of surf music would begin to emerge.


Okay. Maybe it's nothing like either of those things. But it is kinda exciting to tear off the wrapping paper and see something new and shiny to play with and write about over the next few seasons.

There's probably not a ton of analysis that we can add to the mix at this point, given that pretty much everyone in our hemisphere has already tossed the "Sold high on Gonzalez / Bought low on Yunel" meme out there. We do have some concern that Escobar is really just this year's edition of Wilson Betemit, a super-hyped Braves prospect who quickly will fades into obscurity as a bench player somewhere else in the next few years.

Nevertheless. As the host of MLB.com's Fantasy 411 Cory Schwartz is fond of saying: Don't confuse the outcome with the decision. This is a smart move for the Jays to attempt to get a younger, more controllable player in exchange for a player who may well have already maxed out his value to the team (plus a couple of players who profile as marginal major leaguers at this point). Before the season, we would have gladly taken a 17 homer season and plus-defense from Alex Gonzalez. We've already received that. Now, let's see if Yunel's offensive mojo can somehow be brought back to life by the healing hands of Dwayne Murphy and The Manager.

Counting stats can be fun...until they're not

Maybe it's too much to say that counting stats don't matter. But increasingly, we hear them described as too random, too dependant on team dynamics or situations, or too damn flukey.

It's possible that there is some truth to that, although it depends on just how seriously someone is reading (or reading into) the counting stats. If someone is going to say a dude with 100 RsBI is clearly superior to the guy with 98, then yeah, that's probably putting a little too much into them. But if you're willing to use them as a rough guide, then you might be able to find a little something worth holding onto.

This is especially true of our new favorite old counting stat: Total bases.

Our admiration for total base tallies crept up on us, until we realized how often we were using it to get a gague of who was performing well for the Jays' minor league teams. After sorting on the old reliable stat columns, including OBP and SLG, we find ourselves scratching our head to figure out what, if anything, they meant, especially given the varying sample sizes.

But if we wanted to sort quickly to get a sense of who was most productive on a team, we'd look under the TB column, and whoomp, there it is. That's who's touching as many bags as they can as often as they can, and in baseball, that's really the name of the game, isn't it. That's what we thought that we really liked about total bases: that it captures the totality of a player's offensive output all in one number.

Sadly, we've only now come to realize a few flaws in total bases. Our notion was that the number included walks (it doesn't), hit-by-pitch (nope) and stolen bases (nuh-uh) as well as hits and possibly bases taken on hits and on sacrifices (pshaw!), to capture the entirety of, or the whole of, or, what's the word we're looking for here? Oh yeah: we thought that TOTAL bases would account for the TOTAL number of bases that a player touched throughout the year.

But sadly, no. And as a result, we'll spare you our whole defense of Alex Gonzalez, which was predicated on using his 82 total bases thus far (fourth best in MLB so far, just behind Vernon's 84).

But you'd have to admit that our make believe version of total bases would be a pretty great number to have, wouldn't it? And if you were to divide it by the number of plate appearances, you could get a pretty holistic sense of what a player is accomplishing on the field.

The is what we get for trying to find profound answers through simplicity. It's a fool's heartbreak for us once again.

Engaged elsewhere
We're about to head away to spend some time elsewhere the next week, so we'll be out of the loop for a while. (And the last time we did that, the Jays announced that they were going to trade Halladay, so expect big things while I'm gone.)

In the interim, we leave you in the very capable hands of The Ack: A man who, we came to understand last week, can grill a steak with the best of 'em, and never lets a man's glass go dry. Truly, a prince amongst men.

Have fun, stay positive, and be good to one another. We'll see you soon.

Springtime Revelations: Alex Gonzalez is more than just a defender

It's still really early out there, but from the first week's worth of games, we've been pleasantly surprised with the play of Alex Gonzalez.

He's certainly come as advertised in the field, looking sharp at short and making all of the plays that you'd expect and then some. He might not have the solidly spectacular skills of John McDonald in the field, but he's certainly at least 95% there. But beyond that, what has been a pleasant revelation is the way Gonzalez handles the bat.

When he came to Toronto, some figured him to be at best a modest upgrade over Johnny Mac at the plate, and further evidence that the franchise was merely treading water. But watching Gonzalez's at bats, you really get the impression that he knows what he's doing with the lumber in his hands. He looks comfortable, and we feel comfortable knowing that the best possible outcome is something more than an excuse me single or a squibber down the line that might net you an extra base if you have enough heart and grit to get it.

We're probably overestimating Gonzalez's worth based on the four early season homers, but even just to look at him, and to see the fact that he's no shrinking violet in the batters box makes us envision a season which is just that much less miserable.

Huzzah!

Hope Opener Sadness
We hope all you kids withing easy driving/commuting distance enjoy yourselves at tonight's home opener. As for us, we'll be at home, blowing bubbles out of our nose like a sad monkey. But wave and think of us when the camera's on you.

Chill, baby. Chill.

It was something else to see the diversity of reactions to yesterday's signing of Alex (Not Alex) Gonzalez. (Wait a second. Didn't I do this bit yesterday? Nevermind.)

We don't mind the Gonzo signing because we actually think that he can provide plus defense and near league average offense. It might be a step down from what we got from Marco Scutaro last year, but then again, who the hell knows what Scoots would do next year in Toronto?

Sure, it would be nice to have someone who promises huge numbers at short, and third, and catcher, and first, and off the bench. But these days, we're thinking that some fans have to just calm the fuck down over the perceived weaknesses in the lineup. Every lineup if going to end up having its holes, and if Alex Gonzalez ends up as a .700 OPS, plus defender hitting 8th or 9th, it doesn't immediately make this team a 100 loss nightmare.

Cripes, the vaunted '92 Jays had four regulars (Borders, Gruber, Manny Lee and Devo) who posted an OPS under .700, and the offensively monstrous '93 Jays had two regulars (Borders and Sprague) and two players with 200 ABs (Henderson and Darnell Coles) who OPSed under .700. So a few weak spots in the lineup doesn't necessarily mean that the team is headed directly in the crapper.

(Although we still would have rather taken our chances with J.J. Hardy. But that's neither here nor there.)

Okay, fine. We're calling it here: The Jays, as they stand today, are an 83-win team. So stop putting on the poor mouth.

Travis Snider - No free rides, and no second helpings at the buffet
The first thing we thought when we heard Alex Anthopoulos say that Sniderman had to earn his way onto the roster was: "How much weight has he put on this off season?"

The Doctor is in
Big ups to my good friend and fellow blogger Devin on his Ph.D. defense yesterday. (Schelling? Who the hell writes on Schelling?) He's a cool cat and the epitome of a San Francisco Bay Area Liberal, and we love the guy for it. Also, he's an A's fan, which we totally respect. If you're so inclined, his smartypants scribblings can be found over here.

Friday Rock Out - Grandaddy, "Elevate Myself"
And in the new doctor's honour, who else could rock us into the weekend but the pride of Modesto?