Quote:
Originally Posted by redsfandan
there's three reasons why i can understand why they wouldn't want dunn back:
1) mark reynolds was 1st, chris young 6th and adam dunn 7th in k's in all of mlb and as a team the only offense that had more k's was floridas which also didn't make the playoffs.
2)arizona also tied for the 5th most errors in all of mlb. the teams with more errors didn't make the playoffs either.
dunn was only there 2 months so if they had him back for a full season it definitely wouldn't help those team rankings. ya can't say that stuff doesn't matter when it adds up THAT much. tracy hasn't played the outfield in a few years but...
3) "a team with very little outfield depth and most of the guys they do have are offensively challenged"?? i beg to differ. they don't need dunn. connor jackson played half of '08 in the outfield and they'll have byrnes, cy, and super stud justin upton back. i like jay bruce but he's only one player. maybe someday our outfield can rival theirs but at this moment i'd take that outfield (and their ss too). collectively you have a decent ba, power, speed, not too many k's, and better than average defense. also jackson and cy can still improve and upton could rival bruce as the best NL outfielders over the next 5 years.
in left jackson had only 3 errors in 77 games and he has k'd only 12.8% of the time in 1525 mlb abs). byrnes is also better (only 20 errors in 820 mlb games, 17% k's in 2931 mlb abs). dunn has 75 errors in 1099 games and has k'd 32.4% of his 3871 career mlb abs. so they'll have less power in '09 but less k's and better defense too.
there are alot of stats (like obp and ops) that are valuable but imo it's also kinda important for a player to have skills that complement the rest of the team and for there to be a need for the player. neither is the case with dunn and arizona.
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1. According to Baseball Between the Numbers, there is no significant evidence that suggests a player who strikes out a lot more than another who has the exact same stats, minus Ks, creates less runs by not making contact. If a hitter strikes out, he cannot hit into a double play and over the course of a season, those double plays wil even out the effects of "productive" outs.
2. Errors are not a good way to evaluate the defensive skill level of a team. Granted, the 7 teams that made the most errors did not make the playoffs, but neither did the 6 teams who made the least errors. Minnesota was no. 7 and they missed the playoffs because they lost a one game playoff to Chicago (who had the 8th most errors). The six teams in front of minnesota all had other issues more salient then errors. No. 1 Texas had the worst ERA in the majors. No. 2 Washington was just a bad team all around, 24th in ERA and 29th in OPS. No. 3 Florida was 13th in the MLB in OPS and 19th in ERA, which would imply that they are a middle of the road team, which is exactly what they were. Had Florida played in the NL West, they actually would have tied with LAD for the best record in the west, actually, Florida had one game left to play and if they won that game, their record would have been better. No. 4 was Cincinnati who was 23rd in both ERA and OPS, which is certainly not going to get you in the playoffs. 6th was Detroit who was 27th in ERA which was their biggest issue. AZ was 5th, but they had the 19th best OPS in the majors, and they only scored 720 which is a low total. They were 7th in ERA, but they just didn't score enough runs and that is why they missed the playoffs, not because of how many errors they made. And anyways, back to my original point errors don't accurately measure defensive skill. Rafael Furcal is around the top of the list in errors every year, but he is still one of the best SS in the Major Leagues. Conor Jackson had an RZR of .929 in LF this year while Adam Dunn overall around .903 or so. The difference in those two is much less than the difference in runs created by each's offense.
3. Eric Byrnes has a career .325 and an OPS+ of 97. Chris Young has a career OPS+ of 89. Jackson has a career OPS+ of 105. Upton had a 107 this past season and there is certainly room to grow for him. Dunn's career OPS+ is 130, much better than everyone above. Dunn's offense is more valuable than Young's defense and Jackson's defense, and probably Byrnes's defense as long as he doesn't have one of those years where he randomly plays really good defense ('07 and '04). Upton is too young to get a good enough picture of. So while Dunn's skills don't complement AZ, he is still more beneficial to winning than all of these players, except potentially Upton, but he still needs to prove that.
Stats Courtesy of MLB.com, baseball-reference.com, thehardballtimes.com and baseballprospectus.com