Year  avg./obp./slg.  gms  rc  fld/rf
1997  .220/.253/.309  103  27  +/+

Year  avg./obp./slg.  gms  rc  fld/rf
1997  .266/.352/.413   98  53  +/+

Year  ip    w  l  sv  era
1997  50.3  2  4   1  3.58
1998  50    4  3   4  3.78
1999  22.7  0  3   0  8.34

Year  ip     w  l  sv  era
1997   36.3  2  1   0  5.94
1998  100.3  6  7   0  4.40
1999   97.3  2  8   4  5.73
2000  136   11  9   0  5.56
2001   32    3  3   0  6.75

Year  avg./obp./slg.  gms  rc  fld/rf
1997  .225/.289/.375   19   4  +/-
1998  .192/.344/.288   24   5  -/+
1999  .220/.299/.251   90  19  -/+
2000  .220/.283/.264   40   6  +/+
2001  .262/.326/.336  115  32  +/+
2002  .233/.311/.320  112  24  +/+
2003  .248/.310/.357  118  33  -/+

Year  avg./obp./slg.  gms  rc  fld/rf
2001  .310/.390/.589   88  34  +/+
2002  .264/.355/.443  131  52  -/-
2003  .262/.360/.511  116  53  +/+

I do agree that far too much is being made of Craig Wilson, but I would never factor in Littlefield's assessment of anything when drawing my own conclusions.

It's hard to imagine that Wilson, a catcher who became a first baseman who became a right fielder, is an even average defender. As such, the lion's share of his value has to come from his bat. He's 29, two and three years removed from his 870 and 850 OPS seasons, and the owner of a dramatic platoon split. While I'd certainly expect him to be more valuable than Rios, my preference would be to wait and see how Rios looks mid-season, and then, if necessary (which I imagine it will be) pursue a more "complete" outfielder, i.e., one who was better defensively and who hits RHP better.

He hit all his hits in unimportant situations, and he is NOT clutch, he strikes out at IMPORTANT at bats (something that stats never say).

Welcome eeleye99. If you've been around this site for any length of time, you'll find that comments like these will often go challenged. If an observation is based simply on a perception, than it's incumbent upon you to frame it as such. If an observation is framed as a strong assertion, as is yours, then you had better provide some evidence to support your opinion.

Under the heading of what's next?, I think that in the asbence of the team acquiring another outfielder, Hinske's foray into the wilds of left field should go ahead as planned, but not necessarily to ultimately yield a Hinske-Wells-Catalanotto OF troika (at least not without upping Wells' Blue Cross coverage). Rather, given Catalanotto's propensity for injury, Hinske should be prepared to assume the LHB role in the LF platoon. Reed Johnson, while a fine platoon OF and defensive replacement has proven categorically that he is not up to the task of playing fulltime vs RHP. Hinske may very well not be either, but I'd like to find that out for sure first.

Finally, I'd be very surprised to see any more moves before spring training at this point. Signing Molina to a one-year deal to split the catching duties 50/50 wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, I just don't see it as a huge priority at the moment. I think keeping the cash on hand for mid-season moves might prove more valuable.

In Wells' case, you take what you get. He doesn't appear likely to replicate 2003 and he'll never excel at OBP, but if he slugs enough and continues to play gold glove defense, I'm sure these abilities in a non-corner outfielder will not elude Mr. Ricciardi.

BTW, only 4 Jays last season posted better than a 10:1 AB-to-BB ratio. Two of those, Koskie and Menechino, are gone (Zaun and Adams were the others). Two arrivals, Glaus and Overbay, will take their place on this list. While I'm sure Ricciardi values OBP, the days of it being an undervalued "Moneyball" trait are gone. OBP does not come cheaply any more and as much as Ricciardi might like it (and justifiably so), he can't push it as a moral imperative, at least not on the Jays' budget.

I believe Walker was signed to a major league contract.

I disagree somewhat, yes its expensive to obtain OBP, but I think it's a driving philosophy behind many of the team's off-season moves.

I just finished reading " The Numbers Game ", by Alan Schwarz, ( strongly recommend), we have to remember that Ricciardi/Beane are disciples of Sandy Alderson who's a strong advocate of the theories of Eric Walker, who is the ultimate believer in OBP ( I feel like I'm making Biblical references.) Walker also minimized the role of defence as being strongly overvalued, something that most of the Jays moves this off season reflect( I'll expand on this later).

You're aware that a strikeout just counts as one out, right?

I worry though if Wilson can't hit the off-speed stuff. He'd be coming to an off-speed league.

Last week someone refererred to the AL as a power pitchers' league. Those of you behind those gross generalizations had better get your stories straight (unless you have some numbers to defend your position).

If Wilson has trouble with off-speed pitches, I'd expect OPS's lower than 800. Would that all the Jays' hitters be so burdened.

Biblical references! There are probably father-son dynamics in here sufficient to justify years of therapy!

Beane, as we all know, is a piece of work. I think one of the things that interests him is finding better ways to evaluate baseball talent than the traditional tools used by scouts. Beane was a prospect that scouts just went abolutely ga-ga over. They absolutely loved him. Beane knows that he played with any number of players who maybe didn't have his tools, who the scouts didn't like nearly as much, but were much better baseball players. The first major truth in Beane's understanding of the game is "scouts can be really, really wrong."

Interesting about Eric Walker. I certainly don't remember Alderson's memorable Oakland teams as being particularly good defensive squads. Carney Lansford? Dave Henderson? Beane, however, now seems to think that defense is being undervalued by the market and that there's an opportunity to improve his club on the cheap by improving the defense.

Ricciardi actually strikes me as being more like a modern version of Gillick than Beane. He's learned some lessons about looking for bargains from Beane. But, like Gillick, he comes from a scouting background, and is a much more traditional sort of baseball man than a lot of people seem to realize.

1) Agreed.

2) As for "likes his own guys," that's especially true if we extend the meaning. Shea Hillenbrand is one of "his guys."

3) I'm not so sure about a huge risk-taker... in a sense, it's another way of saying he has enormous faith in his own judgement. Which is more or less a job requirement, anyway. But I think nobody has more faith in his own judgement, and nobody will more readily disregard what everybody else in the world is saying, than John Schuerholz.

4) Agreed.

5) So far - it may have been a response to what he perceived as an organizational necessity at the time. We'll know more in two years.

6) Agreed, I suppose.

7) Agreed. Big-time.

I would add he seems very willing to cut bait and change course if something hasn't worked out as planned or hoped, Koskie being the latest example. He doesn't insist on keeping a guy around just because he's invested in him. (Hinske is still around because he can actually play, people!)

My wife would kill me!

Wildrose, I guess I'm saying that Ricciardi will push for OBP, given his druthers, but I guess we disagree about the degree to which this is so. You may well be right that OBP is much more of a job requirement than I've been observing, but the Hillenbrand acquisition last year disabused me of it being an all-consuming conviction. Recall that Hillenbrand's lifetime OBP was only around .320 coming into last season.

As for Zaun, clearly the bulk of his career offensive value has been his OBP (driven from his ability to draw walks), but he had come off seasons of .299 and .309 when he was picked up by Ricciardi. That he blossomed at age 33 is more good luck than a product of design. But maybe Ricciardi elected to rescue that particular catcher from the scrap heap for his OBP history rather than one, say, with a Molina-type hitting profile (lower OBP, higher SLG).

And Ricciardi's Tom Wilson acquisition was clearly OBP-driven.

I concede 100% that Overbay was brought in with OBP in mind. Ricciardi said as much in the Overbay/Glaus press conference. In fact, I think he was trying to push Gibbons a little, lineup-wise, when he commented on how nice it would be having Glaus' power following Overbay's on-base ability. I know that I've seen many speculated lineups at this site with Wells batting 3rd against RHP and Overbay down at 5th, but I'd like to see Overbay/Glaus 3/4, just as Ricciardi kinda, sorta suggested (but not really, the lineup is Gibbons' call, but if he's asking...)

Okay. I may have talked myself out of my original position! Hillenbrand may be the only anomaly and the Jays got lucky with him in 2005 (he says, ducking for cover).

The St. Louis Cardinals' stolen base leader? Albert Pujols. The guy with the foot problems.

It appears that Oakland is still interested.

This sounds like you definitively know that it was a bad signing. Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable making this sort of statement after seeing how the player performs?

Even if Hinske could play the OF (which I have serious reservations about) he'd provide below average production.

Any time Hinske sees in the outfield will be in conjunction with the platoon advantage at the plate. He’s very capable of providing above average production in those conditions.

This is an interesting move, and cartainly has a chance to pay off in the short term. Giving a three year deal to a 34 year old pitcher who is not a star could be rolling the dice a little. But Volemort's not really expensive, and he has a pretty good health record. And after his years in Texas and Toronto and Chicago, he ought to enjoy the Oakland ball park.

Littlefield added further that the Pirates had spent so much energy trying to derail Wilson's career, it hardly seemed fair to let him go before they finished the job.

As for this insane "debate" about strikeouts versus other kinds of outs, let me nip that in the bud right now by pointing out that the rap on Wilson *isn't* that he strikes out instead of making other kinds of outs, it's specifically that he kills rallies by striking out.

And it's true. It's absolutely 100% top-to-bottom true.

Look at Wilson's last three seasons... with men on base, he hits .240 with a .396 slugging percentage. That compares to .282 with a .560 slugging percentage with the bases empty. That is an absolutely MASSIVE difference. One of the reasons? His strikeouts climb with men on base. He strikes out in 32% of his at-bats with men on, versus 29% with the bases empty.

I mean, the strikeouts aren't the sole reason for not hitting in rally situations. But yes, Wilson struggles badly in rally-type situations, and he strikes out a heck of a lot while doing it. The "strikes out and kills rallies" complaint, I think, isn't a _qualitative_ complaint about Craig Wilson, rather it's a _quantitative_ complaint about Craig Wilson - he ain't hitting enough when the chips are down.

And all that being said, I think I have an explanation for all this.

Remember those awful numbers for Wilson with men on? Well, with runners on first only, he's even worse, hitting a relatively pathetic .236/.318/.377.

Why so bad? The main reason has to do with the type of hitter Wilson is... a crusher of cripple pitches. Wilson's splits between hitter's counts and pitcher's counts are among the very largest I have ever seen. I have talked in the past about how well hitters hit on and after 1-0, but to my recollection I've never seen anyone like Wilson, who when he hit the ball on 1-0 counts from 2003 to 2005 went 40-for-73 with 25 of those 40 hits for extra bases, including 11 homers. That's a .548 average and a 1.260 slugging percentage, which makes Barry Bonds look like Slammin' Sammy Khalifa.

Well, guess what? Pitchers aren't going to pitch lazily to Craig Wilson, or any hitter, with a man on first. They're not going to fall behind because a pitcher's sole aim with a man on first is to *force* the hitter to put the ball in play. They do it by throwing good strikes and bearing down, not willing at all to walk a man. Craig Wilson sees fewer "I have to throw a strike" pitches with runners on, because the pitchers are bearing down. I can't be 100% sure of this, but I'm of sure of that as I'm sure he's a quality hitter overall.

Craig, I’m reluctant to even post this, because I’ve never known you to be completely wrong and I’m expecting to be shown that I’m the one out to lunch… but as far as I can tell the stats you present here are 100% inconsequential to the question of whether or not he kills rallies by striking out… The relevant fact is that his OBP is the same in the two situations over the last three years (.361 with nobody on, .363 with men on). So he’s not driving in nearly as many runs as you’d expect from his overall rates, but he’s not snuffing rallies whatsoever based on what you’d expect from his overall rates.

The analysis of why he does badly with men on first does make sense to me.

Anyway, no doubt about it. Wilson is two completely different guys depending on whether there are runners on. Here are the actual numbers.

Overall 	AB    R   H 2B 3B HR RBI BB HBP  SO SB CS  AVG  OBP  SLG  OPS
None On	        600  39 169 34  8 39  39 44  31 177  0  0 .282 .361 .560 .921
Runners On	467 130 112 30  2 13 113 71  22 150  8  3 .240 .363 .396 .759

Well, that's true although OBPs are generally higher with men on base. But you make an excellent point.

One thing I would stress is that the Pirates and their fans are expecting Wilson to plate the runs... if he's not delivering, he doesn't have big bats behind him for them to count on. However, I would agree that my case isn't quite as strong as I portrayed it!

My somewhat shaky memory says this was because the fifth (and fourth) guy tends to lead off the second inning frequently...

This came from one his Abstracts in the early 80's. He was discussing optimal lineup construction.

His premise was that you can break the lineup into two separate groups, 1-4 and 5-8 or (5-9 for the AL). Each group would start with table setters (i.e., those whose skills were more predominantly OBP) and end with table clearers (i.e., those whose skills were more predominantly SLG).

Thus, the #3 hitter would be part of the table clearing crew and would look like a Vernon Wells (low OBP, high SLG). The #5 hitter, the hitter who most usually leads off the second inning, would be a Lyle Overbay type (high OBP).

This runs counter to the conventional thinking that suggests batting your best hitter 3rd, and often sees the low-OBP high-SLG types in the 5-hole (where they are miscast as 2nd inning leadoff hitters).

One more interesting that thing that I recall from that essay was where to bat the team's best base stealers. Because power hitters can score runners from first whereas singles hitters need the runners at second, James suggested placing the base stealers in the bottom half of the order, where their base stealing ability would be better leveraged.

I did not dig up my old Abstract so I may have somewhat mischaracterized James' arguments.

Whither Edwin Encarnacion?

Blue Jays playing in the tournament are Adrian Burnside (AUS), Frank Catalanotto (Italy), Chi-Hung Chen (Chinese Tai-Pai), Po-Hsuan Keng (Chinese Tai-Pai), Vernon Wells (US), and BJ Ryan (US).

Honourable Mention: Corey Koskie (CAN), and Frank "Little Italy" Menechino (Italy).

On a side note, I found a used book store here in St. Catharines that sells used baseball books for like 15$, not knowing their true value.

Not true. Rios hit 305/344/408 at Dunedin in 2002. Not super, but certainly decent for a good defensive outfielder in a pitcher's league.

Anyone know where I can get my hands on: "The Sinister First Baseman and Other Observations" by Eric Walker? It is out of print and any used book source on the net wants $500+ for the 180 pages worth of baseball essays (which only heightens my intrigue, although I'm not willing to part with 500 clams), and I scoured the Toronto Public Library database only to come up empty handed. :(

Rios's career splits:
vs LHP: .263/.322/.381
vs RHP: .278/.320/.394

I don't know what to make of this. He's struggling equally against everyone. It's not like he's hitting LHP and in need of a platoonmate against RHP (which would at least give him some current value). Perhaps the fact that he's flat suggests that if he ever makes a fundamental improvement in his game, it will be across the board, against both lefties and righties.

Something like Rios + Chulk for Wilson + Marte?

Scot Boras. Is that you?

I'm just wondering how you know this -- do you talk to these scouts regularly?

What the hey? What's this "Insider Edition" nonsense? Jeff Blair was the last "real" writer I had left...