After hiking out of the Yosemite wilderness two days ago, I noticed the following text message from my brother flashing on my cell phone: "Ramirez first homer for the Dodgers was crazy".
Having been out of coverage form all media for five days, I was a bit confused. The Cubs traded Aramis Ramirez? The Marlines moved Hanley Ramirez? I mean, there is no possible way that the Bo Sox let Manny go...right?
Err...wrong. Desperate for more information, I quickly flipped to the local California sports station hoping to hear who the Sox had acquired in exchange. Instead, I was subjected to forty five minutes of debate about which of the 49ers "quarterback triumvirate" of Alex Smith, Shaun Hill and JT O'Sullivan should rein supreme.
(Note to radio host guy: I think "triumvirate" is the wrong word to describe the niners QB options. Might I suggest the Defeaterite? The Committee D'Interception? The Knights of Teh Suck Table?)
In any event, now that I am back on the East Coast, the shock has worn off a bit. Manny is a Dodger, and the "Jay Bay" era has officially commenced. Let the unrealistic expectations and premature judgements begin!
I am not going to wade into the debate about whether Bay is an upgrade or downgrade form Manny. I will say, however, that the criticisms of the Bay deal have largely been misplaced. Take Charles Pierce writing in Slate:
"Bay, a talented, Canadian-born Pittsburgh Pirate who, I guarantee you, with his 153 strikeouts per season and his .216 average with men in scoring position this season, has no idea what he's walking into."
I'm not really sure where Pierce pulled his strikeout numbers from. Bay exceeded 150 strikeouts only once in his career in 2006 with 156, a year he also posted 35 HRs, 109 RBIs, had a .928 OPS and led the NL in all-star voting.
Leaving aside the aggregate totals, its not like Bay is particularly strikeout prone. His career AB/SO ratio is 3.8 and this season his AB/SO ratio is 4.5 To put that in context, active players who have a career AB/SO ratio around 4.5 include Andruw Jones, Alfonso Soriano, J.D. Drew, and some guy named Manny Ramirez.
Pierce also cites Bay's currently low AVG with RISP as a potential problem. But everyone knows that this is basically a useless stat. Bay's previous season numbers with RISP were all equivalent to his normal splits; this season is simply an aberration. Plus, if one looks at other clutch splits such as "Late & Close", Bay is doing just fine with a .322 AVG and a 1.091 OPS.
Basically, trying to compare the young, up and coming Bay with the perpetual all-star Ramirez is like comparing apples and a different type of fruit...like mangoes. It depends a lot on which metrics one uses and a lot on whether one is taking a short or long term view.
For my part, I will miss Manny's offense and his antics. He has made watching baseball a whole lot of fun over the past few years. But I think the Red Sox front office, which was by no means blameless for all of this drama, ended up making a pretty good move.
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