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.

whether it’s best to keep trotting him out there or look for a better option

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.

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?)

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.)

I’m pretty sure I hadn’t mentioned Vidro at all, actually

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.

“hey, at least he’s not Vidro”

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.

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.

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…

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.

Still though, the point I’m trying to get across is about sample size [...]
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.

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.)

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.

That’s not very good, well below average for a first baseman, but hardly “a disaster”.

Yeah, for $14M and the standard for his position I’ll call it a disaster too.

If Sexson can show me more than a good weekend, we’ll talk again.

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).

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).

If Sexson can show me more than a good weekend, we’ll talk again.