Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Nothing wrong with Jack Wilson

Jack Wilson is fine. You start the year hitting .150, it's going to take several months, even if you hit .300, to get your batting average up to a good place.

On May 16 I analyzed the hitting performance of the second three-week period of the season. Looking at Jack I wrote, "all he needs now is a little luck. I expect he'll hit .275 the rest of the way."

In the last two weeks, Jack has hit .283 / .309 / .434. He's only had a few strikeouts in that period (3 in 53 at-bats). He's not going to hit for a lot of power or be an on-base machine (since there's little reason to pitch around him; he has little home-run power and his stature is not, shall we say, as intimidating as Adam Dunn). And he's probably not going to hit .400 for a month and raise the batting average dramatically. The odds are against that. So get over the low batting numbers, I say, and focus on the recent performance. He looks OK to me. I would keep running him out there with a day off here and there against the kinds of pitchers that really give him trouble.

If he keeps that strikeout rate at 5% or so, he's a fine contact hitter. He's qualified to hit near the top of the lineup if one believes, as some do, that a #2 hitter should be able to make contact on demand (for hit-and-runs, for example). He's not the perfect #2 hitter, but he remains a good contact guy with some power (actually, bravery hustle baserunning bravado foot speed: he legs out a good share of doubles and triples). With his defensive ability, he's an asset. Not a superstar, but not an inferior player, either. Bat him seventh or eighth if you can, but I don't think he's so inept with the bat that he needs to be benched or targeted for verbal abuse.

Unless a somewhat-muscular 740 OPS with excellent defense is not good enough, there's no good reason to call him out as part of the problem.

No comments:

Post a Comment