How did Drew ever become big enough to even matter much to the fans?

That gets back to what I was trying to say in #6. I don't think he ever mattered that much to fans. As was pointed out in this thread Drew was perfectly poised to be a whipping boy in 2011 but his absence was greeted with indifference. The big contract (and $14 mil was sizable at the time in reality and of course in theory compared to what fans make) certainly put a bit of a bulls-eye on him but I don't remember him being a real target.

To give it some context, I think Lugo was much more of a target in 2007 and 2008 than Drew was. People didn't hate Drew, they just didn't particularly like him.

I'd gladly take Drew on my Strat-a-matic team because his 2/3 of a season is projected out to 162 games. In the real world? There's a ton of better ways to spend $14 million of a organizational budget.

Not really. And especially these days.

We sure enjoyed his time in Atlanta

That year came at pretty steep price.

Yaz was cool with JD Drew.

I never cared for JD in Boston all that much because of all the time he missed for one reason or another. His rest days, of which there were many, usually came against the opponents tough LHP'ers so he had a bit of a platoon split. He was a decent RF'er defensively but I never saw much of an arm, especially in his last few years.

The argument that he did not produce well in RBI situations is a well known fact. Forget about RBI totals, look at percentage of runners on base driven in. He was consistently below average there over his 5 years with the Red Sox. Some of that, not all, was his love affair with walking. I have nothing against walks, but when your team is down 2 runs in the late inning and you are batting 7th with a weak hitter behind you and runners on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs, you should try and drive the runners in if you are a "HOF'er". I actually say him argue a 3-1 call with an ump who called strike 2 in this situation with Varitek in his declining years on deck.

So JD produced a buch of theoretical runs with offensive and defensive run estimators, but when it came to changing the scoreboard directly, he was lacking.


Thats said, my main problem was not with JD, he was who he was and the team needed a RF'er after the debacle of 2006. My problem was with his zealots who called anyone who dared criticize him an idiot and insisted right up until year 5 that his contract was a steal for the Red Sox. JD produced more or less what he was paid and did not generate much of a surplus, which is how I define a good/great contract for a team.

And if I hear one more time about his clutch 1st inning grandslam in a 12-1 or whatever it was blowout against the Indians in the playoffs I will scream bad things in my mind. Bucky Dent hit a clutch HR once and he was not much of a hitter. JD wasn't either, at least not with the Red Sox aside from a few good short stretches between injuries and longer bad stretches.

Drew frustrated fans in St. Louis because his talent made him look like he was playing at half-speed, and his problems staying healthy seemed more appropriate for a bang-into-the-walls guy—you could forgive Jim Edmonds for getting hurt, but not Drew. I remember seeing him hit a 500-foot home run at Busch II on what looked almost like a warm-up swing, and it got the appropriate awed silence in the stands for a while. But by then he was already on the wrong foot with fans, so the final response wasn't "God, that's impressive" so much as "God, why can't he harness that more often?"

Before he got hurt in 2001 I was more excited about him finally putting everything together than Pujols showing up out of nowhere. When he broke his hand he was hitting .330/.426/.688 with 21 home runs in 64 games. (Of course, Pujols was hitting .352/.413/.656 with 20 home runs in 68 games.)

Negative dWAR (BBRef) in Boston, including each of his first two years there. Positive earlier in his career.

JD Drew was a good fielder in his career, and in Boston he did a lot of things right. But injuries (and age?) affected his range with the Red Sox.

I guess I will just keep repeating this until people catch on: dWAR now contains positional adjustments.

dWAR has him at 0.8 wins over his Boston years, relative to position. 1.6 if you throw out the crappy last year. UZR has him +22 runs in Boston. Drew was still a good fielder in Boston, and anybody who tells you otherwise doesn't know baseball.

Also, dWAR now contains positional adjustments.

Ray, I don't see durability as a skill. (This has probably been discussed here.) You can't learn it. You either are able to play hurt, or you aren't.

Ray, I don't see durability as a skill. (This has probably been discussed here.) You can't learn it. You either are able to play hurt, or you aren't.

Is a strong throwing arm learned? How about freakish bat speed? In my view, durability is as much of a skill as many other aspects of the game.

#55 pretty much encapsulates the "hate" of Drew that I remember, as far as it went.

As for scoring runners, per BR, Drew plated 13, 15, 14, 15, and 11 percent of baserunners. Major League average over his career is 15%, so he plated about 16 fewer runners than expected over the course of his 5 years (7 of those in his lost 2011). How much of that comes from hitting behind Ortiz and Manny most of the time? Whatever the case, even adding those runs back in, I'm doubting that would change the perception of him.

59...no and no, IMO. You can improve each with practice, but you can't get from average to great. I don't see how you can avoid injury by practicing not getting hurt.

lol, 3rd edit...Maybe it is a skill, if you define it broadly. MLB skills are mostly a player's natural ability, honed to an elite level.

Some guys are more brittle than others. Repeating what I said above, I don't see how you can change that.

How much of that comes from hitting behind Ortiz and Manny most of the time?

Not only with the pair ahead of him cleaning the bases but also with them clinging to the bases.

free-agent fan here

fans best i can tell don't like ballplayers who have the personality of quiet and emotionless PLUS lack any ability whatsoever to tolerate so much as a hangnail/get "hurt" yawning/ so miss a lot of games (think of your average guy crying because he has to get a tetanus shot cuz he afraid of needles even though he got tats all over his *()%@! body and piercings youknowwhere) AND are not leadoff guys and appear to prefer taking a walk to hitting the ball with men on base (with a bad hitter batting behind him).

fans think of players like that as puss um, PANsies and unmanly

he's the kind of guy you look at and wonder why on earth he was a number one pick. then you look at his stats and think - well, small sample size. even when they weren't. i would never have thought to put him on my personal list of 10 best outfielders in any year - he did have an accurate arm) and was surprised any time i read he was a really good fielder.

i would bet nobody would have even noticed him if he was a 10th round pick and earned 3 mill a year

Ray, I don't see durability as a skill. (This has probably been discussed here.) You can't learn it. You either are able to play hurt, or you aren't.

Well, from an abstract level, home run hitting isn't a skill either, then, because you can't teach Manny Alexander how to hit home runs. No matter how many steroids he takes.

But I do think that durability is a skill. Knowing how/when to run/dive/sprint so you don't get hurt is a big aspect of it. Even sliding into bases or learning how to avoid getting HBP are skills.