How much can one player add to a team? I read the other day at the website of baseball stats legend Bill James that Albert Pujols‘s value to the Cardinals is that the…
“Cardinals start out six-eight games over .500 because of Pujols. Everybody else has to make it up somehow. “
James now works in the front office for the Boston Red Sox.
Sunday morning, Chad linked us to the Sports Illustrated article rating baseball’s general managers. The Reds’ Walt Jocketty ranked 14th of 30. As for on field management, ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer questions whether we have the right manager for our team. As a reminder, Chad Dotson had earlier referred Redleg Nation readers to this new book about evaluating managers. The excerpt made available was about none other than our own intrepid manager, Dusty Baker.
Earlier in the week, Neyer also discussed the options of what could Reds could do with our first basemen, Joey Votto and Yonder Alonso.
Neyer also linked to a site which most of us should take note. If you wonder what this whole “sabermetric†thing is when it comes to baseball, and what all these terms and wild acronyms mean, check out this free online “class†you can take. Chances are that you’ll be interested if you find statistical analysis fascinating, and you won’t find it interesting if you wish these eggheads with their calculators would go away and leave the scouting to the “real†baseball people. You know, the ones that actually played the game between the white lines.
In other words, if you thought that Alex Gonzalez played a good shortstop for the Reds’ last year or that Adam Dunn had little value as a hitter since he struck out so much, you probably won’t like the site. Those enlightened to this additional layer of scouting and analysis, probably can’t wait to take the course.