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Thursday, August 20, 2009
The Real McCoy: Taveras a waste of money
Hard Core Poetry from McCoy…
As he has done so often this year, center fielder Willy Taveras broke poorly on the ball, running laterally to his left before realizing the ball was over his head. It fell for a double.
Taveras doesn’t get on base. When he does he doesn’t steal when it is needed. He was brought in to be a leadoff hitter and couldn’t do it and is now batting second. And he is below average in the field. What can Taveras do? He has a nice stereo set in the clubhouse that plays loud, headache-inducing salsa music.
And holy cahooties. Taveras just hit a ground ball to the mound and trotted toward first base. Didn’t run. Jogged. Stopped before he got to the bag. Manager Dusty Baker immediately yanked him from the lineup, replacing him with Laynce Nix.
The Reds later announced that Taveras has a strained right quadriceps muscle. I don’t question the injury, but it was awfully convenient.
As far as I’m concerned, and many other fans are concerned, Taveras can rot on the bench the rest of the season. I’ve seen nothing to merit the millions the Reds have flushed down the toilet when they brought this guy in.
Thanks to Matador Cosloy.
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I wouldn't question it too loudly. A while ago, Richard Griffin made himself look like an even bigger ass than usual when he ripped Delgado for not running out a ground ball, only to have Delgado go on the DL with a knee injury a couple hours after the column was published (and to have it come out that the organization was trying to see if he could play through the injury, and had encouraged him not to run full-out to 1B if he could avoid it).
Given the much publicized problems that Taveras has had with his legs, the club's statement about an injury seems completely reasonable.
Yeah, I don't feel any pity. The Cincy writers spent years ripping Edwin Encarnacion and Dunn, they finally get a "gamer" who's fast and doesn't clog the bases and now they are angry? Hey, this is what you get when you hire Dusty.
they want a gamer who is fast and doesn't clog the bases and looks and plays like The Sainted Pete Rose. if i remember rightly, pete rose would NEVAH walk if he could swing at some crappy pitch and groundout instead which is The Right Way To Play The Game
i coulda told all yall that willy taveras can run very fast but he's NOT a good fielder. he's just not. he is terrible at judging where the balls is going to go, he breaks wrong a LOT and he can NOT get balls hit in front of him. he hasn't changed since he was with the stros in 05
his game always was getting bunt and IF hits - and the minute the legs aren't working right, it is goodbye
That, and the fact that it'd be pretty un-Dustylike to actually pull a player for lack of effort, when it'd be just as easy to be an apologist for it. Before I got to the point in the article about Taveras's leg, I was thinking, "damn--Dusty's going all Bobby Cox with the player discipline. Miraculous." Guess not.
And the timing of that run matches almost exactly with when he started having leg trouble. If his legs are healthy, then he's a useful (but not good) player. As BBC notes, however, if he can't run at full speed, then he's an absolute disaster.
What prompted that BLB?
If only there was some sort of overseer or supervisor of the field club to prevent things like having an absolute disaster(be due it to leg injuries or being Neifi Perez) get a lot of at bats.)
The Reds should really look into hiring some sort of person to manage these issues.
I know you are being snarky, but Petey drew 1566 walks, including 106 one season.
2008-09 500+ PAs:
Cnt Player OPS+ PA From To+----+-----------------+----+-----+----+----+
1 Willy Taveras 51 966 2008 2009
2 Jeff Mathis 58 531 2008 2009
3 Ronny Cedeno 62 512 2008 2009
4 Emilio Bonifacio 66 664 2008 2009
5 Khalil Greene 66 592 2008 2009
6 Cesar Izturis 67 720 2008 2009
7 Austin Kearns 67 568 2008 2009
8 Kenji Johjima 68 583 2008 2009
9 Jason Kendall 68 983 2008 2009
10 Augie Ojeda 69 513 2008 2009
Guys who hit like Taveras did in 2008 (like the man he replaced, Corey Patterson), generally are not allowed to stage a FT repeat performance the next year...
Then why keep putting him in the lineup?
actually, pete rose didn't REALLY "walk" 106 times - he ran to first so therefore it wasn't REALLY a walk. walk is what no goods like adam dunn do and it is different than what petey did.
which is why pete is good and adam is bad
also because i am sure that pete wouldn't NEVAH take a pitch in the strike zone on a hitters count because he know that Real Ballplayers would rather groundout, popup or GIDP than take a pitch
KJOK,
you keep putting him in the lineup because you always have your fastest runner lead off (see corey patterson) until he fails so bad he is OOB
But...but... an important part of the Pete Rose shtick was running to first on a walk, and how are you going to do that if you don't draw walks?
In fact, Rose drew plenty of walks and was a superb leadoff hitter. I say that as someone who was a fan when Rose was at his peak, and who even then hated all the crap that a generation of fawning sportswriters said that Rose stood for.
Ah ... posted too late. Got there before me.
Ask Dusty. If I were in that position (and had a backup capable of handling CF in a non-embarassing fashion), I'd have him on the bench. At worst, if I didn't have a good enough backup, I'd at least drop him to the bottom of the order to try to minimize the amount of damage he could cause.
But that's me, and I obviously have a different way of looking at things than Dusty does.
He's already there. Ordonez never had an OPS+ as low as Taveras's 45 in any season where he had as many PAs as Taveras has this year. In his 5 seasons with enough PAs to qualify for the batting title, he had a 53 and 4 other years in the 60s. Willy's charting his own territory here.
EDIT: Don't get me wrong--as long as he's with a division rival, I too hope he sticks around.
Though - and this just goes to show how rotisserie is so different from real baseball - I calculated what a replacement-level player instead of Willy would have meant on my team, and I actually WOULD be 2 pts lower in the standings, mainly because Willy is the difference between 2nd and 7th in SBs for me, he costs me 2 spots in BA, 1 in RBI - but I'm leading in runs (it would be a bigger lead with someone else, though).
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