Originally posted by AZZenny
When I heard the news at 1 PM today, that's a cleaned-up version of what I was saying. We have to have one of the slowest GMs in baseball. Does the guy know how to drive a deal?? Does he have even a rudimentary concept of modern stats??
Apparently not.
What I found very disturbing was hearing the comment "Shea Hillenbrand is a 'run producer'."
That's a simple-minded understanding of how runs are scored & games are won & lost. The D'backs problem
is scoring runs. (so Joe gets partial credit). The run scoring problem is getting men on base. You've heard the mantra, but I repeat it since it's my stathead religion (I actually find it hard to believe myself) In 2002 the D'backs led the NL in walks, OBP & runs scored--those are all way down.
Shea Hillenbrand won't help. He gets RBI's because he gets a ton of RBI opportunities hitting behind Trot Nixon, Bill Mueller & Manny Ramirez. He's not a special clutch hitter. He makes a bunch of outs. Chad Tracy would have been much better.
ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" captioned Bobby Valentine's praise of BK as "inning eater" both as a reliever & as a starter. It's actually true. He's lasted 5+ innings in every start (even when hit by bat fragments). His mere presence helped stabilize the cascade of moving up pitchers before their time.
Hitters are different. Chad Tracy really deserves a shot the way he's tearing up the PCL. Womack and/or McCracken can have bluffs called by designating them for assignment. Other teams make some bizzare talent decisions--they might get claimed--that would be great (for example the Cardinals bounce So Taguchi & Kerry Robinson up & down; the Cubs have a trio of cronies even worse than ours {{shudders}} Troy O'Leary, Lenny Harris & Tom Goodwin) Otherwise they could work out their issues at Tucson.
