Yep, I have no confidence in him. But much-more importantly, no pitcher fears him and knows he will chase bad balls out of the zone. He's great defensively, extremely overrated offensively.
Yep, I have no confidence in him. But much-more importantly, no pitcher fears him and knows he will chase bad balls out of the zone. He's great defensively, extremely overrated offensively.
Which combined is 6.0 WAR on the open market. Now, I am not the one who lumped then all together, but I will play along.
You hope to do a bit better than that when extending your own, but 6 is market value. I can forsee those 3 adding up to 6 WAR in 2014. Even if they add up to 3, it would be disappointing, but not crippling.
They certainly are not efficient deals, as things stand, but when you go around the league looking at teams with payrolls in the 100 MM range, there are gonna be contracts like these on the team.
Of the 3, the Broxton deal is the one that stands to be a real stinker. JMHO.
I'm equally worried about both aspects of his game. The defense is still good, but not what it was, and the offense depends on where he's hitting.
4th doesn't seem to work, Outs kill production. Any decent professional hitter could drive in 100 with the likes of Choo and Votto in front of him.
If Phillips is going to continue to try and hit for power and not steal bases when he gets on, he needs to be batting 6th in the lineup. The Reds problem is they have too many lefties that are key contributors and poor at hitting lefties. Liriano proved that in the Wild Card game.
A true lineup if Choo, Votto, and Bruce could hit lefties consistently would be:
1. Hamilton
2. Choo
3. Votto
4. Bruce
5. Frazier
6. Phillips
7. Mesoraco
8. Cozart
Frazier and Phillips could be flopped but I would prefer if the Reds brought in a catcher with a better bat like someone suggested McCann and put him in the 5th spot and move Frazier to 7th.
The issue isn't that the lefties can struggle vs lefties, its that the righties struggle vs everybody. Only 3 players on the team had an OPS over .800 vs left handers and they were Votto, Mesoraco, and Heisey. The latter 2 each had under 100 ab's vs lefties.
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