its a lot more than Pedro, though of course if he only gets 18 starts again we have no chance at all.
people don't appreciate the difference Johnny Damon is going to make in CF. he's 28, and his last 5 seasons in KC his OBPs were .313; .338; .339; .379; .382. i don't know what the hell happened last year in Oakland when he fell to .324 (at least he recovered to .351 after the All-Star break) but its LIKELY it was an aberration as guys who are only 27 and on the kind of flight path Damon was on don't just suddenly turn into bad players. maybe its really wishful thinking on my part, but if you look at Damon's early career it looks a lot like Craig Biggio's, who studious baseball fans know is one of the top middle infielders in baseball history. or look at Jim Edmonds, who was on a star path in Anaheim and then got hurt and only played 55 games in 1999 (the year he turned 29) and had a just aweful year, and has since come back with two MVP-caliber seasons in St. Louis. i would further note that Ichiro won an MVP last year with a .381 OBP and .838 OPS; Damon in 1999 & 2000 had just as good OBPs and better OPS (.856 and .877).
plus, Tony Clark at 1B is pretty damn good. his OPS the last 5 years is .876; .880; .868; .878; .855; how's that for consistency. now, he's been hurt (back) and will be on the wrong side of 30 this year, but his key run-producing stats are as good or better than much more heralded first basemen like Mark Grace, Tino Martinez, Sean Casey, Mo Vaughn, John Olerud, Eric Karos, JT Snow, Richie Sexon, and Doug Mientkeiwicz and is just a notch below Fred McGriff. and remember that Clark put up his recent stats in Comerica, which is death on power hitters. and he's cheap, especially relative to those other players with similar stats.
Trot Nixon is emerging as a top-flight right fielder (he turns 28 in 4 weeks and his last 3 seasons are .357/.829; .368/.829; .376/.881); he should get even better. He has better stats than a lot of guys perceived to be better than him, like Matt Lawton, Raul Mondesi, Jermaine Dye and Tim Salmon. Nixon might be the 3rd best right fielder in the AL, just behind Maglio Ordonez and well behind Juan Gonzalez (I'm not really counting Ichiro, as he's not a "run producer" in the mold of most corner outfielders; I would also note that the AL has a dearth of RF talent, while in the NL you have Abreau, Vlad, Shawn Green, Sammy, Alou, and JD Drew, all of whom are better than Nixon).
plus we have Nomar, Manny, Jason Varitek -- the guys everybody knows about.
this team has WAY more talent on the field than you think, and the pitching behind Pedro ain't bad. definitely good enough to take it all the way.
(as you can tell i care about this stuff just a little <g>. it also probably won't surprise you that i'm obsessed with Rotisserie baseball)
Cheers |
