February 13, 2007

Stop Hating Shawn Green

At Mets Today they write about the Mets Fans and puts up a good argument as to why we should stop downing Shawn Green:


I could maybe understand it if the price for Green was a top prospect, such as Lastings Milledge or Mike Pelfrey, or if he came in with a bad attitude or a Dave Kingman-like demeanor. Or if he jogged around like a prima donna. But instead, the Mets gave up a mediocre minor league prospect, he came in happy to be a Met, hustled all the time, and fit right in with his new teammates.

Lets see ... he batted .257 with 4 HRs, 9 2Bs, 15 RBI, and 14 runs in those 34 games as a Met. Not outstanding, but not terrible, either. Then he batted .304 with a .407 OBP and 4 RBI in the postseason, including some big hits in key situations. As a Met, he had good at-bats, often getting into deep counts. He ran the bases well. His defense was somewhere between adequate and ordinary; his most embarrassing occurrence in the field was his too-big hat flying off his head on nearly every fly ball — something he joked about.

Oh, wait, no, actually his defense was awful, right? Dreadful. Horrendous. Disgusting. Or at least, that's what the media and most rabid, perfection-seeking fans will tell you. They even have the "stats" to prove it.

Let me tell ya something about stats ... as the great longtime minor league official Bobby Bragan once said, "Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage, you should be perfectly comfortable."
I think the hate goes deeper than this. It's not that Shawn Green is an inadiquite right fielder. It's because he took the place of Xavier Nady. Nady quickly grew to be an underdog favorite of fans. That's my two cents on this.

2 comments:

Tent Time said...

2 things: First, Green was horrible with the Mets last year to the tune of a .767 OPS, which for a corner outfielder is just awful. Secondly, there are a lot of good defensive stats out there and Green's Range Factor of .191 last year was not good. Though it was slightly better than Burnitz...
Was that article written by Marty Noble, who so brilliantly asserted in response to NYMets.com mailbag that Trachsel must have had a good year in 2006 because he "won" 15 games?

John Young said...

I totally agree with you. I can't wait for Green to pack his bags and leave Flushing. I would much rather see any one of our other outfielders next to Beltranthan Green, with the excluding Newhan and Sierra.

The post wasn't written by Noble. In fact I don't know the person's name. Just that it was written on Mets Today.

Use the link in the header if you want to see the whole post.