Within this community, my last posting here (other than my daily nonsense/grammar-correcting comments) dealt with one Mike Napoli. My plea was "Napoli should be the Angels' 2011 Designated Hitter."
Looking back at the events that have transpired between August 30, 2010 and today, we are left scratching our heads.
While the antics of this front office may never be explained (like "who is really running the show?" and "how can Arte just throw away $80+ millions of dollars on the 'unmovable contract?'"), let's just focus on the first few weeks of the 2011 season.
Below is a table (that took a long darn time to construct by the way!) showing the basic offensive metrics for Mike Napoli, Vernon Wells, and Juan RIvera. They were the three players transacted in the off-season trade (salary dump for TOR)...
Player |
G |
PA |
AB |
R |
H |
2B |
3B |
HR |
RBI |
SB |
CS |
BB |
SO |
BA |
OBP |
SLG |
OPS |
OPS+ |
TB |
GIDP |
HBP |
Napoli |
13 |
44 |
34 |
10 |
10 |
2 |
0 |
5 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
10 |
5 |
.294 |
.455 |
.794 |
1.249 |
238 |
27 |
2 |
0 |
Rivera |
17 |
68 |
58 |
6 |
10 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
4 |
0 |
1 |
10 |
9 |
.172 |
.294 |
.224 |
0.518 |
50 |
13 |
2 |
0 |
Wells |
23 |
103 |
97 |
10 |
17 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
5 |
0 |
1 |
5 |
19 |
.175 |
.223 |
.258 |
0.481 |
37 |
25 |
0 |
1 |
Napoli is, obviously, UNCONSCIOUS at this point in time, taking advantage of the little playing time he is given (1 HR per 9 PA's? Wow!). As long as "regression abounds," we can bank on him coming back to Earth sometime soon. But, you have to wonder how the heck he'd be doing in a Halo uniform this year in place of (as of today) dead weight Vernon Wells.
I threw Rivera's statistics up there as another frame of reference. Wells is only better at GIDPs which may be more of an indicator that he is not driving the ball (pop-ups anyone?). We have not seen a pop-up master of this magnitude since the great Shea Hillenbloop a few years back.
Wells is at a 20% K-rate, while Napoli is striking out at a 15% clip. I'd take Napoli at 20% K-rate with the kind of HR-rate he is producing.
At any rate, the point of this was just a quick update into where the trade stands as of today. I believe that Wells will progress and Napoli will regress, but not enough to warrant the cash our team is shelling out for Vernon's mediocrity.
We Angel fans certainly are "too blessed to be stressed," but we should be concerned that our front office has turned into a circus that will handcuff the franchise in the immediate and long-term future.
Source:
Mike Napoli's Baseball-reference.com Page