In The Interest Of Fairness
Dave · April 20, 2008 at 7:58 pm · Filed Under Mariners
At the beginning of the year, we showed you some images from MLB.com’s gameday showing Richie Sexson having some truly horrible at-bats. Well, today, he did this:
There might not be 10 people on the planet who could have hit that pitch for a home run. Yes, it was an 89 MPH fastball on a 3-1 count, but the location was not exactly one where you expect a guy to be able to get his hands in and turn on it. Sexson’s had some good at bats lately, and this one was one of the best.
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.231 / .367 / .508 so far this season.
Hey, I’ll take it.
Vidro and Wilkerson, on the other hand, can bugger off.
Sexson finding his swing again? Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming. Actually, don’t pinch me.
He had a good weekend, but he’s still got the oldest player skills ever. I don’t anticipate him being particularly productive with this skillset.
Hey, you have to respect a player who didn’t quit when times got tough, and through hard work, may return to the slugger he once was.
It’s funny, I’ve got a huge post on old player skills and what that means in the queue for Monday morning.
I’ve been thinking of doing that same thing. I’m sure your post will rock.
I’ll be looking forward to it.
when Sexson hit that homerun, I realized that is why he’ll always have a job – he can do things with the bat the any amount of skill simply can’t replace. He’s like Tracy McGrady or Vince Carter – no pedigree of winning, but feats of such improbability, some GM, somewhere, will always be willing to pick up their contract.
I don’t expect it to last through the season, but thank God he’s come through when he has. I’ve been a pretty harsh and vocal critic, so let me say good job for his good games and I’ll be happy to periodically apologize if it continues.
If we can get .230/.330/.440 or so out of him it won’t be so terrible.
I wonder if it is going to be a thing he does all year or just against the angels?
PS. Yesterday and today was the first times in a long time I’ve been happy and exuberant when Sexy came up to bat.
Yeah, I noticed that on the replays. He was really tucked in on that swing. That he got so little extension and still sent it 370+ feet is truly impressive, and it’s true that not many guys could do that. Mind you, not many guys are that tall, either. Leverage is a wonderful thing. That’s one of those home runs where the pitcher just shakes his head — throw a pitch exactly where it should be, a pitch that shouldn’t result in anything, and it’s parked out in the seats.
So Sexson’s on pace for 40. No, I don’t believe he’ll manage it either (wasn’t ARod on pace for 120 at some point last year?) But let’s enjoy it as long as it lasts. I’m not going to complain about him for at least a week. Now Vidro, Wilkerson….
Good to see him get his swing back. On that note, how does Joh look? Is it just bad luck? Or has he just declined at an amazing rate?
.231 / .367 / .508 would be about a million times better than I expected out of Sexson. But I suspect it’s unsustainable.
Great to see Richie contribute, if he can have a big year it really helps the Ms chances
I am inclined to think we should give Sexson the benefit of doubt. He did only have one HORRIBLE year .. and I think it is very possible he’ll bounce back. He’s never going to hit .300. But if he manages to hit .240, I’ll be happy. Especially with the amount of walks he gets. And I truly think .240 is something he can reach! I’m excited for him this year. He’s still not worth $14 million, or whatever we are paying him .. but I’ll take what we can get!
I’ll take what we can get out of Richie. This weekend is not much different from Frank Thomas’s weekend two weeks ago, and he got benched yesterday and released today.
And Wilkerson hit two doubles today!
We should all be praying that the Ms are right about Sexson, Vidro, and Wilkerson. If they actually hit, and Bedard and Putz get healthy, we will contend.
Johjima:
2006 LD%: 19.0 BABIP: .292
2007 LD%: 20.1 BABIP: .291
2008 LD%: 20.4 BABIP: .224
Kenji’ll be fine, he’s having some bad luck so far.
This series did Richie have 4 hits with 3 of those HR’s? What do you make of that?
I have always heard its harder to snap out of a slump while hitting HR’s … at least its better than 0 hits 🙂
It’s Sexson’s contract year, and I think after the terrible season last year, he probably knows he has to hustle in order to get another fat paycheck in the future since its most likely Seattle won’t resign him unless he has a really good year. But I am sure if he has at least a mediocre year this season, some team will want to take a chance with him.
If by Kenji having bad luck you mean him pounding ball after ball into the ground bad luck, then yes, he’s had some bad luck.
Kenji has gotten hot so things are looking good for now. I wouldn’t say he had bad luck before though. Pulling the first pitch you see in every AB and pounding it into the ground isn’t really bad luck.
IN the interest of fairness, as I was as hard on Sexson as anyone else, I will have to say that he has picked it up some these past few games.
I hated Richie last week, but now I’m dumping Pujols from my fantasy team!!!!!!!! MVP!!!!!!
Economists have a term for this: irrational exuberance. Since we’re stuck with him for the rest of this year, though, it would be nice to see him show that he’s not totally worthless. If he beats his PECOTA projection (.245/.333/.433), I’ll be thrilled.
Yeah, the Baseball Tonight guys (especially Kruk) have been making fun of Sexson these past couple of days because of how strange he looks when he pulls his hands in and turns on those inside pitches. The thought seems to be that a guy that long should be taking advantage of the kind of extension he could get, not tying himself up so he can turn on inside pitches.
Watching Sexson it seems as though he really has regained some of the bat speed he was missing last year. Last year he supposedly had tendinitis in his hip, that is an injury that truly hinders your physical capabilities, so I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for know.
Seriously though, look up the injury online and read how it limits physical ability. Then, think of trying to properly shift your weight to generate power with your swing, not to mention the rotation of the hips on the follow through. If any believe that he really was hurt last year, than it must be accepted that Richie was very likely in a great deal of pain last year.
know should have been now, dohhh!
45.3% groundballs
35.8% flyballs
18.9% linedrives (after today’s game, updated)
He’s right in line with his career averages and has managed to improve his discipline to 3.2 pitches per plate appearance.
Even if he’s only gotten hot recently, for him to basically be in line with his normal hitting modes but to be down in the BABIP is a sign of bad luck. It means groundballs aren’t finding holes. It means flyballs aren’t dropping in. It means line drives aren’t turning into basehits either.
Basically he hasn’t had the good fortune that allows for more singles to appear in the stat lines, padding the numbers all around. He’ll be fine.
Extension is a word that sportscasters love to throw around that really, to my understanding, has nothing to do with a good swing. Scouts and coaches want players to have short, quick swings. If Richie can shorten up his swing and hit that pitch over the fence, what is the supposed benefit of getting more “extension”?
Also, let me get this straight, Kruk starts making fun of Richie’s swing on the weekend he hits three (nearly 4) homers? I don’t expect a lot of Kruk’s analysis, but that is pretty stupid.
Sexson hasn’t looked terrible (except in the field, but situation normal). Wilk has looked pretty bad, but as a left-handed hitter with some power (I hope, we haven’t seen jack from him yet though), he should be good in Safeco.
Vidro, on the other hand, is probably going to continue to suck.
Sexson hasn’t looked terrible? Honestly?
Let’s not get TOO excited by the last few days. Overall on the season, he’s still been a disaster.
As much as I’d love for this weekend to be a sign of a big turnaround, small sample size theater still applies.
Jeff Nye: On the season, Sexson has an OPS of around .875. Hardly a disaster if you ask me. If he keeps that up, we’ll be pleased and at the same time worrying that he gets a lucrative extension from the M’s.
Are you about to compare the way Vidro has looked to the way Sexson has looked? Seriously?
Because one of them has been terrible. And one of them has been about all we could have hoped for so far.
speaking of small sample sizes, I just had the midday show use numbers to illustrate that obviously being on the road makes all the difference in Sexson’s mindset, and so the fans should lay off him when he comes home.
oh, and Frank Thomas was off to a hot start when he got benched.
I’m pretty sure I hadn’t mentioned Vidro at all, actually, and I’m not convinced that there’s much value in determing who sucks more in the realm of suckdom.
If Sexson can show me more than a good weekend, we’ll talk again.
Kenji has gotten hot so things are looking good for now. I wouldn’t say he had bad luck before though. Pulling the first pitch you see in every AB and pounding it into the ground isn’t really bad luck.
That may be what you remember. TIF’s numbers show that’s not what actually happened. That’s why we try not to rely only on memory; it frequently misleads us. We tend to remember exceptions, or only the events that support a theory we’ve already developed.
ESPN shows Kenji is swinging earlier (lower #P/PA) — he’s seeing 3.21 pitches per plate appearance so far this year, vs 3.36 in 2006 and 3.39 in 2007. But that’s hardly “the first pitch he sees” in every AB. (Interestingly, it was 3.03 just a couple of days ago, so he definitely started regressing to his mean during the ANA series).
35.
Before the Anaheim series, Sexson was at around .218/.368/.362. That’s not very good, well below average for a first baseman, but hardly “a disaster”. Distaster is the word we use for the likes of Vidro, or Wilkerson, or Johjima until a couple of weeks ago (although I see he’s fallen below the Mendoza line again after yesterday’s game).
Yeah, for $14M and the standard for his position I’ll call it a disaster too.
If you don’t call well below average offensive production (might even be below replacement level but I don’t have those numbers handy) and poor defense for $14M a year a disaster…
Still though, the point I’m trying to get across is about sample size, and it’s really a mistake to read too much into Sexson having a nice weekend. If he can sustain what he did this weekend for a long period of time, then my opinion of him will improve greatly; but as of right now, my opinion of him is no different than it was two weeks ago, and I’d argue yours shouldn’t be either.
39.
As others on this site like to say: sunk cost. The relevant question for this season is not how much Sexson costs, it’s how well is he doing on the field. The stats from a week ago of course are no longer up, but I think Sexson was around .270 in BP’s Equivalent Average, which would put him around the bottom 1/3 of fulltime firstbasemen.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/eqa2008.php
(As of today, Sexson’s 10th among firstbasemen in EQA.)
As I said, not good but not a disaster. A disaster would be, looking at BP’s list, Carlos Delgado or Paul Konerko, those two guys are both below replacement level.
Two weeks ago (April 7), Sexson was at .217/.379/.478 (according to BaseballReference.com), and my opinion of him then, and now, is this: hey he’s actually not sucking. If he can keep this up, the M’s will be okay at first base. Not good, but okay.
To call first base a disaster, when the M’s DH, RF, and for awhile C positions have been flirting with the Mendoza Line — those are/were the disaster areas, not first base. (And of course LF defense too.)
The fact that Sexson’s contract is a sunk cost shouldn’t change your evaluation of whether he’s a good use of that $14 million. What it SHOULD change is whether it’s best to keep trotting him out there or look for a better option, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s $14 million poorly spent.
In any case, it’s splitting hairs to continue to debate who sucks the least, and this is another example of why results-based analysis is a bad idea (up until this weekend, everything I’ve seen in his at-bats screams “hi I’ve lost all my bat speed”; I didn’t get a chance to watch any games this weekend but it seems like maybe that is turning around?), but if you’re coming at this of the angle of “hey, at least he’s not Vidro” you should’ve just said that to start with and I could have agreed with you.
When you imply Sexson has looked ‘terrible’, you are, in fact, inadvertantly bringing Vidro into the equation. Because he is the absolute definition of terrible, and frankly, Sexson has been much better than the defined version of terrible (Vidro) has.
My point totally. Focusing on a player being bad who is currently doing better than arguably two (and definitely one) of our regulars isn’t the way to go.
Precisely: improving the team is what matters now. The $14M a sunk cost and irrelevant to that. It IS relevant to decisions such as “is Bavasi a good GM?”, but as for improving the M’s this year, it doesn’t matter whether Sexsons’s making $14M or $14K.
To me everything about the M’s roster screams: “needs improvement at DH, LF defense, and RF”. Not “needs improvment at 1B” — where they certainly could use some improvement, getting even average play there would be nice, but it simply hasn’t been the “disaster” that those other three positions have been. Unless you define “disaster” to include 1/3 of fulltime firstbasemen, and/or the bottom 4 field positions on the Mariner roster. That’s a pretty wide definition of “disaster”.
Or, let’s move away from results-based analysis. What do we have to utilize? We have your account that Sexson’s lost his bat speed. If correct, that’s an important observation, because it means his early season performance (and again, it wasn’t just against the Angels, his season stats were even better two weeks ago) is not sustainable.
I’ve only seen the M’s play once so far this season, in Sunday’s game on TV. So I do not pretend to have had a good look at Sexson’s swing. He did have an amazing one on the homerun (and that’s not just my opinion, the Angels announcers commented on it too, and that same swing provoked Dave to start this very thread). To quote Dave: “Sexson’s had some good at bats lately, and this one was one of the best.”
But, that was against a pitcher having an abysmal early season. Can Sexson keep doing it against decent pitching? I have to confess that I do not know, and it is certainly possible that your non-results-based observations will prove to be correct. But I still cannot see calling his season so far “a disaster”: for that a player would have to be … what, at least in the bottom 10% or 15% of fulltime players, and not just in his swing but his results too. (Because a player with a bad swing but good results would be someone that I would call “lucky”, not a disaster.)
Honestly, guys, none of you should be thinking anything different about Sexson right now than you did at the start of the season. I believe something like that was said here last year about Ibanez. The season’s not even a month old. Your opinion of him shouldn’t have changed at all on the basis of such a small amount of playing time.
In other words, if you thought he sucked a month ago, then you should think he sucks now. If you thought he was going to do just fine, then you should still think just that.
Really, some of you guys are like young trees swaying in the wind. Stay the course, man.