Royce Clayton ...
A former All-Star at short. Rock on! | 8 (3.38%) |
At least we did something. Not bad. | 26 (10.97%) |
Stopgap measure. Meh. | 136 (57.38%) |
Bad move, don't understand it. | 53 (22.36%) |
Ahhh! It's the apocalypse! | 14 (5.91%) |
From Lee Sinins ...
The Blue Jays signed free agent SS Royce Clayton to a 1 year, $1.5 million contract.
YEAR AGE RCAA OBA SLG OPS OWP RC/G AVG HR RBI SB G TEAM
2004 34 -31 .338 .397 .735 .348 4.48 .279 8 54 10 146 Rockies
2005 35 -25 .320 .351 .670 .336 3.64 .270 2 44 13 143 Diamondbacks
2006 36 -26 .307 .341 .648 .309 3.46 .258 2 40 14 137 Nationals/Reds
CAREER -314 .313 .368 .680 .349 3.74 .258 109 711 229 2031
LG AVG 0 .340 .427 .767 .500 5.11 .270 230 994 150
POS AVG -158 .326 .387 .713 .426 4.40 .266 137 777 178
Clayton could one day be a threat to the modern day record for worst career RCAA, which is about to belong to Neifi Perez.
1 Ski Melillo -355
2 Neifi Perez -354
3 Tommy Thevenow -351
4 Royce Clayton -314
5 Bill Bergen -312
6 Tim Foli -309
7 Larry Bowa -307
8 Alfredo Griffin -306
T9 Ozzie Guillen -305
T9 Don Kessinger -305
With 13 seasons with a double digit negative RCAA in his 15 year career, Clayton is an excellent bet to tie the record for most career double digit negative seasons in 2007--
T1 Roy McMillan 14
T1 Rabbit Maranville 14
T1 Ed Brinkman 14
T1 Larry Bowa 14
T5 Don Kessinger 13
T5 Tim Foli 13
T5 Royce Clayton 13
T5 Luke Sewell 13
T5 Alfredo Griffin 13
T5 Ozzie Guillen 13
Actually, Melillo was a 2B (I'd never heard of him and had to look that up.) But it is true that traditionally middle infield has been the offensive sinkhole -- before the era of Ripke/Trammell and Sandberg/Whitaker (before that, a little, Morgan) the very best HOF-type middle infielders were glove guys who maybe hit for average, but with rare exceptions, not for power.
So no, not a "coincidence," I wouldn't say.