Crappy Aprils By Splashy Newcomers

ROFL laughing at the Judge Wapner comment, though I don’t know what you got against him.

I hope the ghost of Lyman Bostock pays advice to VW when we’re not looking. According to Wikipedia Lyman attempted to return his April salary to the team, but when the team refused to accept it, he donated to charity. That good karma had to have helped him alleviate his batting probs.

is that they knew how to take a walk. Vernon has never been confused with Eddie Yost. And that lack of plate discipline is what’s hurting Wells.

That being said, I think Vernon will turn things around eventually. But if he keeps frustrating us at 200 AB’s, Sosh may have to rethink Wells’ position in the lineup. Right now, it’s ugly.

as Wells has been, he’s actually been slightly better (on offense, anyway) than Carl Crawford, whose .155/.204/.227 line (OPS+ 19) compares unfavorably to Wells’ .174/.216/.248 (OPS+ 32).

You Sir, are no Reginald Martinez Jackson!

if Vernon decided to take a few more pitches. Out of 189 players who qualify for the batting title Vernon is second to last in regards to pitches per PA (3.11). He trails only the great Orlando Cabrera.

…they’re more historical curiosities than anything else. Vernon can’t really be compared to any of these players — the sampling is neither random or uniform. A fun parkour through Halo history, no question, but not something that should really give us false hope that Wells is going to rebound dramatically.

Jackson and Bostock obviously bear little in common to Wells as a player. Bostock is such an incomparable, and we’d be witnessing something truly phenomenal if Wells suddenly averaged 75 BBs a year and nearly 4 WAR a season, as Jackson did. Adcock is half a century ago, but I’m sure we’d be pleased enough if Wells put together a Rivera-esque .268/.352/.475 line like he did in ‘64. Of course that reasonably good season was sandwiched between two sub-.750 OPS seasons, so it wasn’t really an augur of future tendencies, unfortunately.

I do think we’re in uncharted territory here — Vernon has never had a start this poor. Perhaps we can learn more from the seasons where he started relatively poorly out of the gate. In 2005, he had a .191/.248/.372 (.620 OPS) exiting April, and rebounded with a .269/.320/.463/.783 line by the end of the season.

Alternatively, there’s only one other season in Wells’ career where he had an OPS under .500 over a month+ stretch. That was in Sept/Oct of 2007, and that was the season he delivered a .245/.304/.402 line, and that doesn’t seem improbable for his first season in Anaheim at this point. Especially given the fact that Wells delivered a .260/.311/.400 line just a year ago in 2009.

There’s a lot more proximate evidence that Wells will continue to be mediocre –– if not as poor as he has been thusfar –– through the rest of the season. I could easily see him repeating 2007 this year. There’s not a lot to contradict it.

…he will turn it around?

In 2005, Steve Finley’s annual salary was $6 million. In 2011, Wells is being paid over $26 million. Even adjusting for the inflationary salaries being paid to today’s top baseball talent, it’s disgusting how much of the money being paid to Wells is money NOT “Well”-spent.

as much if not more than we are on Wells?
(Considering how poorly they are doing overall)

He’s a .277 / .327 / .470 career hitter, although that’s weighted toward the early part of his career and also inflated by his home ballpark. Just for the sake of argument, if he hits exactly that well for the rest of the season he’ll end up around .260 / .310 / .430 line, which wouldn’t be out of character with what he did in 2007 and 2009.

That seems really optimistic though. His strikeout and walk rates have deviated significantly from their career levels, and in the wrong direction. If you go back and look at the other tough months in his career you’ll see that he’s never had the same issues before. He’s swinging more often, missing more often, and grounding out or popping up more often. He’s not just having rotten luck; there is something different either in his approach at the plate or in his swing.

Jeff Sullivan’s web gaffe awhile back only diverted attention from the fact that his observation was fundamentally sound. Vernon Wells is not Vernon Wells right now, and so we’re left to wonder whether the problem is something fixable in his head or unavoidable in his body.

Maybe things will get better, but even I’m surprised that it only took one month of play to expose how inexcusably poor the Wells gambit was for Reagins and friends. I didn’t think we’d be having this conversation until next summer at the earliest.

His response was: “truly don’t care”.

Hee-hee

He will eventually put up Juan Rivera numbers.

It won’t really impact us this year (in the future it could keep us from doing things…oh well). I am concerned that he may have physically fallen off a cliff. I was of the opinion that hitters slowly declined and you could see things like W/K and declining OPS that indicated. But there’s always the exception to the rule. There’s no way he plays like this through 200 ABs without riding pine. I know that Scioscia is loyal to vets and all, but they’ll find some sort of phantom (Finley) injury to shut him down and give him a restart.

Torii has yet to be the player he was even last year. In the absence of the veterans (in every sense of the word) stepping up, it is falling on the guys in the lineup that are still getting their legs under them, Bsaeball-wise at the top level of the sport. They are doing OK, but cannot do it all and thus are pressing to get something done leading them to have issues batting that would not exist potentially if they were asked to get singles only at each at bat.

In short, EVERYONE needs to step up so they all can do their part however large or small it may be .