by MARCPELLETIER » Tue Feb 14, 2006 12:46 am
Both mesquiton and spicki make valid points---many of which I would agree if we were to play face to face---but this is a league with a salarial CAP. In leagues with cap, the art of managing is to increase the value of your players---make your 5M hitter a 6M, perhaps even a 7M hitter. And it is simply impossible to increase the value of a player that has many homeruns when this player is leading off.
Now, Abreu is a totally different case; he's a class of his own. While he has some hrs, he doesn't have a ton, and most of his on-base come from walks and singles, which is what you want from your lead-off. Even if you take away Abreu's homeruns, he's still in the top 10 for on-base in the league. So in his case, homeruns are not detriemental to his value. But once you take away Chavez's hr vs rhp, the on-base is scarce.
To take spicki point by point:
1. True, we can be sure of only 1 inning that a lead-off leads off. Like spicki says, the rest of the homers count just as well. Still, Chavez will be hitting in front of Edmonds at-bat after at-bat. As I say in the paragraph on Abreu above; the biggest problem of Chavez (vs rhp) is not his homeruns, but his lack of walks/single/doubles that will set the table for Edmonds and Ramirez. While there will be times where Chavez will finish the inning, and a new start will await Edmonds; most of the time Edmonds will hit in the same inning than Chavez, and will hit with nobody on base too many times.
2. True.
3. I agreed back that Chavez has some good potential vs lhp. My main criticism was vs rhp.
4. .360 includes vs rhp and vs lhp....probably more like .340 vs rhp. Plus, this on-base comes with no stealing star---the three players following Chavez have lower on-base percentages because of his lack of speed. When this is consider, and when you take away homeruns from the "on-base" percentage as I believe it should be, then Chavez is probably around .300 vs rhp.
Last edited by
MARCPELLETIER on Tue Feb 14, 2006 12:50 am, edited 1 time in total.