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August 6, 2008

Prospectus Today

Leadoff Follies in LA

by Joe Sheehan

Sometimes, you just really feel good about a read.

As it is, I'm not convinced that they won't shoot themselves in the foot. Joe Torre loves him some Juan Pierre, and Pierre has enough superficially impressive statistics that Torre may have a hard time letting go. Throw in that Pierre has led off 55 of the 56 Dodger games for which he's been active since Rafael Furcal was injured, and I am in no way convinced that Ramirez's playing time will come at the expense of Slappy. I'm not sure Torre can conceive of a lineup with the eight guys he'll have if he doesn't play Pierre, because there's not a leadoff hitter in the bunch.

For each game Andre Ethier or Matt Kemp sits in favor of Pierre, the Dodgers give back a little bit of the value of what they traded for. It wouldn't take much of that to make even a great putt lip out at the end, leaving the Dodgers sitting seven—or perhaps seven games back—and wondering what happened.

Joe Torre got the yips almost immediately, saying in the wake of the trade that Juan Pierre was his guy:

To me, Juan certainly deserves the right to play. At this point in time, his experience, his consistency, the way he goes about his business. ... He brings another dimension, his basestealing ability. He gives a professional at-bat on a regular basis. He’s done it [leading off] longer than Matt. He’s willing to take pitches.

Dodger outfielder starts, 8/1–8/5
Manny Ramirez 4
Matt Kemp 4
Juan Pierre 2
Andre Ethier 1
Andruw Jones 1

Now, the Dodgers are 2-2 since trading big pieces of their future for Ramirez, and careful observers will note that the two games they won were the two Juan Pierre starts, games in which he played center field and batted leadoff. In fact, the Dodgers scored 13 runs in Pierre’s two starts, and just five in the other two. So why am I dedicating a column to the idea that this is about as stupid an alignment of talent as you can imagine?

Let’s start with something simple and easy: Andre Ethier is a much better baseball player than Juan Pierre is:

Hitter    AVG   OBP   SLG   SB  CS   EqA   FRAR
Ethier   .275  .340  .441    3   2  .273      3
Pierre   .279  .323  .315   37   7  .247      6